Continued from part one. How You Behave
Of course, how you think directly affects how you behave.
“Life is 10% what happens and 90% how we react to it” (Charles R Swindoll).
The negative reactive thought patterns can cause trauma survivors to avoid life and people. This is what happens to me. Looking down when walking anywhere and missing potential beauty, connections and opportunities. I hide away in my house with window blinds down and doors locked. This is not just to keep out the wind and rain. It’s also to keep out all humans with malicious intent. Holding a permanent expression on my face that screams ‘Keep away from me.’ I do not respond to people when they say hello. I take all the side streets to avoid contact. I go out only early in the morning or after dark to avoid people. Avoiding all social situations from restaurants to theatre all in an attempt to avoid people. Living in isolation with only my two cats for company is not really living life. I am alcohol-free now but for many, many years. Since age 14, I have relied heavily on alcohol to get me through. Drinking every evening at wine o’clock was something I looked ahead to all day. The pressure of masking my anxiety was exhausting, and I was in a constant state of fight or flight. Longing for 5 pm when I would start on the bottle and relieve the anxiety. The days I did work were so overwhelming. I couldn’t cope without thinking of the evening shutdown. It was a time when I was able switch off everything and get lost in red wine. I feel a song coming into my head:” Red wine goes to my head, makes me forget this life,” etc. But, if there was an unexpected change or an evening of responsibilities, that meant I had to stay sober. For instance, I had to drive the kids somewhere. Or, I had to pick them up after a party. My irritation at being unable to dull out the noise and have space for myself was almost intolerable. Being forced to extend the ‘masking hours’ of the day trashed the rest of the week. Mind mush mode subsequently set in and nothing got done. But of course, alcohol damages your brain cells. Soon, my ability to perform tasks I once found easy was in decline.
Overcoming unhealthy coping mechanisms and replacing them with healthy ones is a real struggle. Christian Larson said we must “believe in ourselves and all we are. Know that there is something inside you that is greater than any obstacle” I agree with that statement. We all have something inside us. We are all unique, and we all have exceptional skills if we can focus. There is a light in the shadows, and to find the light, we must first sit and look and feel. Then, as we peer in, the shadows lift, and the light begins to take over. The sun rises on a new day. It spreads light first on the mountains and hills. Then it gradually spreads down into the valleys. Through the windows and doors and into our hearts. We learn to give to ourselves in a way we would give to others. We start to care for ourselves in the way others should have cared for us before. Some of us remember who we were before the trauma. Others reflect on who we would have been if we had not been traumatised as children. Everything we want is on the other side of fear. And the other side of maintaining sobriety. (FEAR: False Emotions Ain’t Real)
Today, I’m sitting on a train to Barnstable. After two years of therapy, I am writing this post to help everyone who is lost in fear. It’s been a truly transformative journey for me, and writing this blog has become part of my healing journey. A lady just sat opposite me. We both thought we would do the smart thing since it was mid-afternoon and sunny. We assumed the train would not be busy. But it’s crammed with equally smart people. This conversation would have terrified me in the past. Now, it was a pleasure to have the brief exchange. You, too, can find pleasure in small exchanges, start small. You can heal. Take the first step; breathe, you got this.
Personal Beliefs and Emotions
I believed I was unworthy and that everyone would instantly dislike me. That’s about it in a nutshell. In my twenties, I used to get very emotional. Yet, by the time I was in my thirties, I had shut down my emotions. They were just a cause of constant tears and not very helpful. My only overriding and all-consuming emotion was fear. I was afraid of life. I questioned my faith and my belief in the origins of the universe. I doubted the spiritual path I had taken and the intentions of others. My subconscious was sensing a shiftiness in the sands of my world. I could not seem to get a grip on life or grasp reality. Whatever reality was. My competing beliefs and delusions would jostle for prominence in my mind. As the battle in my brain raged on, I felt lost and alone. Uncertainty of absolutely everything led to despair. Crushing hopelessness pervaded every hour of every day. Many times I found myself prostrate on the stairs, trying to fathom how my life had come to this. My life seemed utterly meaningless to me. While the confusion trudged on, I felt helpless, hopeless and powerless to change. The grief stuck in my craw like a rope around my neck would sometimes give way to anger or guilt. The roller coaster of emotions on a never-ending ride of disturbing descents and terrifying peaks. Every night I faced dark nightmares. Black hairy shadows hallucinated their way toward me. They came close to my face. I tried to bat them away with my hands. My heart raced and my body was damp with sweat.
How You Relate to Others
If I had to relate to others, it was through the mask of superiority. I had created an aloof, standoffish persona to protect myself from embarrassing outbursts of tears. My unhealthy way of coping was to ignore any attempts to connect with me. Pretend I didn’t care. But that just wasn’t true; I did care very much. I deeply wanted a connection. But swinging between sharing too much or not sharing anything was not helpful at all. I trusted all the wrong people and mistrusted the ones I should.
I never understood what was happening in relationships. What did the overtures of communication mean? Did they like me, or were they using me? How am I meant to comprehend this baffling arrangement called a relationship? I suppose this is an area where my autism interferes with my trauma. The outcome is that over the years, I just stopped seeing people as people. I just saw them as enemies. I managed to alienate all my family and friends, who did not understand my behaviour, and the loneliness only deepened. My withdrawal from society left a void in my soul so vast the universe could not contain it. I had created a hard spiky shell. And no one dared approach me, let alone talk to me and that is just how I liked it. But did I? I felt barely human.
Physical Feelings
The background noise that I successfully ignored for a few years was pain and rejection. But my soul hurt. My subconscious mind had managed to block out the pain of isolation, but my body had not.
My chest ached, my bones hurt, and my eyes burned with holding back the tears. My voice was hoarse and grating with the strain of holding in the emotions. My cheeks were flushed with anxiety and the increased metabolism from all that cortisol wasted away my body. I felt fatigued; I couldn’t sleep; I was swinging between binge to comfort and starving to stay skinny. Maintaining management of my weight was one thing I obsessively controlled. Endless bouts of stomach cramps, headaches, dizziness and vomiting. It was all taking its toll physically on my body, but I did not see the connection at the time. Repeated trips to the GP, thinking these symptoms were cancer or thyroid, diabetes, or multiple sclerosis. Repeated blood tests, x-rays, and CT scans all came back clear. There was nothing wrong with me. Nothing they were capable of testing for, or measuring. Thus, the debilitating consequences of trauma in an autistic brain.
How Do We Recover? Is it Even Possible?
“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow’” – Mary Anne Radmacher.
This is what we must do. Treat every day as a new beginning. Keep trying to walk the road to recovery. It’s a complicated process, and the road can be challenging, dry, dusty and uphill. But it does need to be walked. It’s a tremendous personal achievement, but it does have to be walked. It can take great courage as it is an unknown path, learning and accepting the new normal. But it has to be walked. And essentially, it is walked alone. Learning to sit with your feelings can be uncomfortable even painful. Still, allowing yourself to feel them and identifying where the emotions are coming from is the beginning. Its a process of taking them out of your subconscious, where they subvert and sabotage and bring them into the conscious, where a degree of control can be achieved.
A support network will help steady you when you wobble, but they can’t walk the path for you. Accepting help can be challenging if trust is an issue. Yet, you know you have helped many in the past, and you will again. Never forget the path is yours. You must find the courage to keep going. Get up after each stumble and fall. Keep going with new lessons learned and new insights. Peace and freedom await.
The bottom line is don’t give up. Don’t just accept the thoughts in your head. Allow yourself to feel, acknowledge and challenge the things that come to mind with reasonableness, honesty and an open heart. This is the path. Still, I think that while therapy gives us tools and a path, this path is not linear. Think of it as a spiral that goes up as well as down.
While we process and try to reframe our story, sometimes just having a compassionate listening ear is all we need. Someone to acknowledge that what happened hurt us. That it should not have happened and that we are allowed to feel hurt. Being heard is a healing balm. That someone listens, accepts our truth, and acknowledges what we went through. They understand and accept how much it has cost us to survive. Initially, the overwhelming feeling of being heard for the first time can send us into a downward spiral. When telling our story, we feel all the raw emotions again, but the outcome is a relief. A warm safety blanket of unconditional love that we should have had a long time ago.
Some essentials that will help are eating well, exercising, resting and relaxing, doing crafts and music, and maintaining social connections.
For me, a lifesaver was the craft group set up by CCMHT. One of the effects of my experience of trauma and autism was isolation. I was afraid to express intense and painful feelings. I believed it was better to keep myself to myself. I feared they would not understand or judge me adversely, and I would ultimately drive people away or be rejected. Fear of rejection is a key feature of my trauma response. Attending the craft group was initially daunting. It took me quite a while to settle in. Eventually, I got comfortable with people. It is now the highlight of my week. It is very soothing to be with others who understand my experiences. They are sympathetic, supportive, and non-judgmental.
Finding a way to relax is also important. Walks in nature, meditation, and deep breathing are all tremendously helpful. They help control the suffocating anxiety that permeates every waking moment and often sleep, too. which helped the night terrors and terrible dreams that left me exhausted and anxious during the day.
Still, forcing myself to leave the house always required a significant amount of effort. Yet, it was rewarding. The change in mood when I returned home meant I could achieve more. Even cooking myself a meal was a pleasure once my mood lifted instead of eating out of a tin. It was also easier to relax after spending energy outdoors in the fresh air, with the trees and birds. Noticing the sounds and smells and being present ‘in the moment’ is an incredible healer. But the most helpful activity I found is writing. We all can write our story. We may not be Shakespeare, but that doesn’t matter. Getting our story out there is an outstanding achievement; then, we can allow it to float away into the ether. Neatly filled on the cloud.
SO…please share your story here. I would love to know if you relate
Part 2, coming soon will tackle Safety and Personal care…..please subscribe to read the next weeks post on Trauma and Autism
Living on the Edge 
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