Big T, Little t

We regularly talk about trauma in our community. We define it as either Big T trauma (a one-time cataclysmic event) or Little T trauma (think of it as the steady drip drip drip of being in a non-nurturing environment). These two kinds of trauma make it hard for some of us to recognize that we are experiencing the consequences of living with untreated trauma.

Do you wonder if you might be feeling the effects of trauma? One symptom is feeling different from others. Traumatic experiences (big or little) typically feel surreal. We are likely to minimize or excuse them - especially the Little T traumas. The type of trauma can dictate how an individual feels different or believes that they are different from others. Traumas that generate shame will often leave survivors feeling alienated from others. Feeling bad or fearing that they might behave badly, trauma survivors makes it even more unlikely that they will seek support and healing.

This sneaky trauma response might leave us more brittle and judgmental, or too pliable and people pleasing. Here's my point: it's not enough to just try to behave perfectly or believe flawlessly or better ourselves. We need to give ourselves permission to open up our lens of compassionate self-awareness. Get more curious! Explore the ways our behavior might be more about symptoms than character or competence.

This exploration has been tremendously healing for me; I hope you will consider the possibility that life could get better but the return to joy may require taking the road less traveled.

Make Life Less Hard

I am totally opposed to this belief that we should celebrate doing hard things as if hard things are awesome gifts. Hard things are stressful and can be traumatic. This is why my blood pressure goes up when somebody posts on Facebook, "Hey, I think kids who got spanked turned out better than those who were put in time out." This is utter bullshit - pardon my language. This kind of misinformation drives me nuts! Do you know how many grown ups slink into my office and recount the trauma and humiliation associated with being parented by an adult who took out their rage on a little kid and called in discipline? Again, I've said this before, do you notice how many high functioning adults we have dependent on alcohol to get through their day? Is anyone else curious as to the high rate of addiction and mental health disorders? Where do we think these problems originate? Trauma. Genetics. Deprivation - a belief that the world is not a place that cares or supports us when we are struggling.

However, I am thrilled with this concept that when faced with hard things, we will be less stressed and perhaps less traumatized if we recognize that life is hard. We are not being picked on, life is not treating us unfairly, we are not more stupid or especially cursed. We are living life. Life is hard.

Given that, I am on a personal mission to try to NOT make life harder than it has to be for myself or others. This requires me to learn and grow and accept responsibility for my life - every little piece of it. It requires us to go out and find the support we need heal and grow SO THAT we learn what support looks like - and we can support others as we have been supported.

The goal is not to make life easy; the work is to figure out how to mitigate the damage caused when life is hard and we do not have the resources we need to survive and eventually thrive as a result of what we are learning.

Today, try not to make life harder for yourself or those you love. Life is hard enough without us making it harder.

You are NOT the Problem

Remember my friend from yesterday's post who felt her problems were too unique for anyone else to possibly understand? I feel her. I understand, maybe not perfectly, but I do have some experience with a problem or two that has been statistically unique and complex. I do not happen to have that kind of problem today, maybe tomorrow a problem like that will pop up. But today, my brain is not on high alert trying to make something complicated simple. My brain is relaxed and more able to fire on all its cylinders, not just the survival instinct part of my brain.

When I can have a "whole brain" experience, I can ponder and remember and learn and consider new ways of seeing an issue. One hypothesis I have about my friend, because I've history with the same issue, is fear. I don't know about her, but when I have one of those big hairy problems that feels like it might swallow me, my last nerve resists MORE problems. And, I am deathly afraid someone will tell me that a problem this big is all my fault. I am bad. I am wrong. I am to blame. Who wants to add THAT to an already over-heated brain trying to survive?

Let me just say one more personal thing, to give you, dear reader, a bit of context. I have survived big problems in the past. Not the biggest, not the most unique, not BIG T trauma (well, maybe a couple of BIG T traumas), but I have survived problems. But my brain, for reasons I have some clarity on at this point in my life, has always believed that if I were good enough (not bad), smart enough (not dumb), worked hard enough (not lazy), then I WOULD HAVE NO PROBLEMS. So every problem, no matter how big or small, was in some way MY FAULT. See the reasoning? This kind of belief, will, eventually, say after your mother dies, a pandemic strikes, you live through a politically tumultuous time... cause your brain to short-circuit and explode.

And when that happened to me, I carried on, because isn't that what you're supposed to do? And...I got help. Lots of help. Lots of different kinds of help. And to my utter amazement, whether I was learning how to dead lift more weight than I believed I could lift, or zooming with my therapist, or talking with my physician, or taking a tennis lesson... I learned that mistakes are not big deal. Problems are inevitable and that you can have a multitude of problems without ever having to point a finger and assign blame or declare a winner of who is at fault. If my mind were not already blown, this would have surely resulted in the same outcome.

I did not know this. I could explain to you why I think I did not know this, but the whys no longer interest me. What has captivated my attention, energized my mind and body and spirit, is this idea that having a problem is inevitable and normal. Our work is NOT to avoid problems; our work is to take responsibility for our problems.

Mind blown. How about you?

Responsibility vs Fault

My mom's death was...complicated and it left me completely bereft. I desperately wanted to understand the circumstances surrounding it. But there was no way that would ever happen because the parties involved all had their own experiences that colored their interpretation of said events...including me. But it was a great lesson in learning that problems can be powerful, and less painful, when we take full responsibility for the issue at hand. Problems can be powerful in that they provide us an opportunity to self-examine, reflect, and notice our failures, blindspots and even innocent-ish mistakes.

One of the issues that slowed my own recovery from this traumatic event was my confusion over responsibility versus fault. My therapist kept telling me, "This is not your fault" and she was right but it was hard for me to agree with her.

Over time, I came to realize that I resisted her determined attempts to draw a distinction between responsibility and fault because if I could find a way I was at fault, I unconsciously believed I could find a way to control and change the outcome. Which, when I think about it, is really silly. But it is true. I also had the opposite problem. There were parts of this family drama that I absolutely did not want to claim any fault for - no way! I did not know how to believe that I could be responsible without being at fault. And, I struggled to think about how to be responsible in areas where I was at fault.

Here is what was helpful for me. Fault is past tense. We find someone at "fault" as a result of the decisions they already made. Responsibility is what we choose to do in the present moment. Responsibility is claimed as we make choices in the here and now.

There are people whose decisions and their outcomes can result in fault being found and named. But no one is responsible for my situation because my situation is always my responsibility. The guy who hit us head on was at fault for speeding, driving on worn out tires and trying to change his radio while smoking a cigarette and navigating a turn on a rainy day. But only I am be responsible for how I follow up after the accident. I had to choose how to treat my medical conditions; our family had to choose the next vehicle. He is not responsible for that even though his faulty driving resulted in us needing to take on some additional responsibilities.

If you were able to separate fault from responsibility, would any of your nagging problems become more clear? Would solutions present themselves? Would life feel a bit more free from the burden of complicated grief?

The Walking Through…

A bird sitting in a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because her trust is not in the branch but in her wings.

On January 7th, whether we recognize it or not, most of the citizens of the United States of American experienced an event worthy of triggering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. If you watched the storming of the capitol in real time and in person, on television, or replays, then your brain experienced a stressful life event. The brain, regardless of political affiliation, sees acts of violence as over-stimulating and traumatic. This creates a set of emotional problems that most of us do not even recognize as traumatic.

There are two types of PTSD - one is “simple” - meaning a single incident, usually occurring when we are adults; the second is “complex” - and is from repeated incidents such as domestic violence of abuse. It triggers a cascading broad range of symptoms including: self-harm, suicide, dissociation, relationship and intimacy problems, memory, sexuality, health, anger, shame, guilt, numbness, loss of faith and trust and an uneasy sense of being damaged or broken.

Both men and women suffer with PTSD. Often PTSD and substance abuse travel together. This makes sense. PTSD sufferers have feelings or memories they want to escape or remember, they need “support” to go through the day and often mood altering substances seem like a quick fix (initially), they need pain relief (physical and emotional), they want to self-destruct, or simply because self-care is not on their radar.

PTSD and SUD are treatable. But we need to know that we need treatment!

Another way to view these maladies with compassion is to realize that we may develop strengths via these “gifts of suffering” (which may explain why we sometimes say what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger). It is possible for profound growth to occur as we overcome difficult experiences. We might learn, with the clarity of hindsight, that we have the ability to survive under tough conditions. We might develop the capacity to use imagination and creativity to solve problems. We may gain more depth of character, awaken spiritually, find more empathy for self and others, strengthen our resilience, and even appreciate what we have.

But the key is in the overcoming, the walking through - not running from, denying or fighting against the symptoms that naturally occur when our bodies are exposed to suffering.

Do you ever wonder if some of the issues that you find challenging might be related to unacknowledged and untreated suffering? Tomorrow, we will explore the signs that might help us answer this question.