Yesterday was a tough day for me. A lot of pressures, including current events seemed to catch up with me all at once. I didn't even realize how thin the "membrane" was between being able to go about my day and care for my responsibilities and needing to scream my lungs out.
Trauma is like that. Sometimes I'm able to shore myself up, put those big girl pants on and just forge ahead because I've gotten good at that. Because for most of my life that was what was required, even as my conditions deepened. I didn't have the knowledge, the support or the wisdom to understand what it meant to be in fight, flight, freeze or fawn, I just stumbled through it getting more and more dysregulated.
I was holding it together only just yesterday when I burned myself getting things out of the oven (one of my responsibilities-getting food prepped for us for the week). The pain seemed to throw open the doors to everything else I was so carefully trying to keep in, (even when I painted this bird yesterday) and oh boy, did it come out.
With the assistance of a pillow I could hold tight to my chest I screamed as hard as I could over and over. I screamed so hard I thought I was going to toss my cookies. I pushed the screams out from my belly, with every ounce of air in my body. When I was finally done, I was gasping for air, shaking all over--but, something felt better. The boiling agitation in my chest was dissipating, the tension in my stomach was releasing.
I recognized the source of this screaming was old and new. It was the feelings of helplessness I had as a kid as I watched abuse occurring to people I love right before my eyes. It was receiving the abuse myself. It was the present danger of such abuses in current events (which I realize are going on all over the world all the time), but which seem even more precarious now.
I let myself scream it out and cry. I let myself be horrified and terrified, and then (and both pieces of this are equally important). I drank some water. I breathed deeply until I caught my breath. I held the pillow to my chest for comfort and covered myself in a blanket. I took my meds, and eventually, I even managed to eat.
Sometimes, loving myself means letting myself feel all the terrible things. It's not about bypassing what is real and what I am really experiencing. The brave face is necessary sometimes, but just as necessary is that afterward, I FEEL what I need to FEEL and allow my body to respond to it. I am still a constant work in progress, but I am heading every day toward calm as much and as often as possible.
I share this because it's knowledge I wish I'd had. I wish I'd known that years of therapy without ever releasing the feelings from my body were only going to take me so far. And I share it so that if you are feeling this way too, you know you're not alone.
Love yourself enough to let the brave face go and scream it right the hell out when you need to. And if it all feels too big, please seek help from a qualified therapist. I don't know what I'd do without mine.
Love yourself first.
Love, Cheri
