I haven’t had time writing a blog for a while. Lately I have gone through a four-month personal matter, and I want to take some time share my story, and how I understand what had happened and hopefully some coping strategy, at least in this blog, the definition of the trauma.
Story
It all started when me and my wife decided to get separated, and since then my life got 180 degree turn. I moved myself to an apartment, fired my boss at work and attempted suicide at one point. I lost almost everything within a week or two. Yeah~
I had been the drama queen for at least couple of weeks until the point where I realized that either I can continue to behave like a miserable homeless or maybe I should grow out of this destructive behavior and pull myself out. I didn’t really know how to pull myself out, but subconsciously I knew I shouldn’t continue, or I eventually would die, only slower.
During this period of time, lots of things and people that I have known for quite some time left me. I don’t blame any of them because I was in no condition to maintain that relationship. However, there’re still quite a few staying with me the whole time. My parents, my kids, some of my friends (not very close ones before) they chose to stay with me. Interestingly they didn’t see me as any different, they had faith in me that I was just lost somewhere, so they were willing to do anything they can to drag me out. It was hard for myself to be that helpless in front of everyone. But I seriously needed help.
Trauma
It occurred to me in the end, that I had a trauma during the time me and my wife decided to go separate way. But I hadn’t thought of any consequences that would bring to the family. Everything happened too fast to me, the first month I even felt happier, but right after it, especially after I visited my parents once, I started to experience the trauma.
I had trauma in my early age, however, over the years I got over with it, at least that’s what I thought. I thought I have grown much more stronger in managing my personal feelings and blending into the society. Well, at least in my past 15 years, it worked. But then it broke again, and I suddenly lost the ability to cope with anything in my life.
The first lightening stuck to bring me back is that I start to see this is a trauma. Once I see it that way, I go to look for friends to help, ask families to support, join group sessions to share, I also read books to heal. I know there’s something I can do, I need to find them all and experiment with each to see whether something can work.
After four month, I’m getting better first time this morning being myself. Not 100%, but I feel I can be that some day soon. So let me state what I have learned so far about trauma.
What is a trauma?
A trauma is an illness. Like a cold, you catch it without knowing it. Maybe you think you know it, but you don’t really know anything about it until a bit late. By the time you have realized it, it could been months or years already. Within that period of time, you are somebody else. You would be having a split world in front of you all the time. That is where all the pain is coming from. Yes, old memory won’t die, but there’s no new memory formed yet.
No one can beat the trauma when it happens, no one. Because it happens too fast and the damage can be unmanageable, especially to yourself. You will experience quite a combo of emotions every second, including guilt, fear, insecurity, lose. It’s the whole package.
Every one who had trauma or is having the trauma can tell you this is the default setting. And you can get the flashback memories triggered by anything any time, and sometimes for even no reason. It’s worse than Hollywood movie. And you aren’t looking for strategies to cope with it, since you are only busy experiencing it.
The kicker is that, the trauma doesn’t give you time to prepare, and once you get hit, you are done! Because after that you will be traumatized into a loop with no exit statement written. So it’s an endless loop, a bug shall we say?
“To exit the loop, you need to exit. “ — Fang
Exit
Since the trauma only kicks off the loop to crush us, we have to build the exit ourselves. You can’t rely on the medicine or drug or alcohol, the chemicals in your unbalanced brain cells can’t be controlled since you are the one generating them every second. You can’t beat it if you are helping the trauma. You have to be the enemy of the trauma at all cost.
Start to realize the following:
- You are sick and you need to get help
- When you go back to old memories, you need to know you are going back. You don’t stay in the current timeline to experience the old memory!
- You have to accept the past in some degree if not all
- Use logic and reasoning to access situation at that moment
- Figure out what you need to get better!
The right way of coping with the trauma is to cut the cord between you and the trauma. Don’t spend time living in the past moment, instead, spend time asking yourself: what do you need to get better?
I can give you couple of clues that I have collected:
- Income
- Food
- House
- Families
You get the point, nothing special. The reason you got the trauma at the first place might have something to do that you over-think you might need something else, but you actually don’t. You need the basic stuff, as long as you can work the above list out, you don’t have excuse not to walk out of the trauma soon.
And if you don’t have everything in the list, try to work them out little by little. Declare what you have as today, so that you can make it better. Also when you ask for help, make it clear what you want, you can repay them in the future. No shame when you got beaten this bad. Everyone gets beaten by something once in their lifetime.
The point is not about not to get the trauma. Maybe you want to prevent that, that is the whole different story.
The main thing is to give yourself a challenge to heal it, or if you have done it before, can you heal it faster with less damage done, haha. Just an idea.
