***Trigger Warning – contains potentially distressing material pertaining to sexual assault
The Operation Of My Mind Through Trauma
If I could have actively avoided years nine up until I was in my early 20s without actually ending my life, I would have done so. Fortunately, my brain lived actively through autopilot mode helping me to survive the many ups, downs, bumps, and hostile turns of the difficulties, trials, and tribulations of my life.
Dissociation was in many ways a life savior and strangely something I could not control. Dissociation seemed to operate within the recesses of my mind. Out of nowhere I might be jarred into reality not realizing I was in some type of trance or daze. I seemed to always daydream my way through life living in an altered version of a world know one knew about.
Yet, my mind seemed to operate this way even prior to the sexual assault. There are many things about my childhood that I do remember, but when I have been told by a family member or a person who was connected to one of my family members about the odd things that I did as a child or the horrible things that happened to me prior to age nine, I am often shocked to find that I do not remember.
There have at times been flashes of occurrences in my brain that shot through me like flashes of pictures. There have also been nightmares or night terrors that I have experienced that have flashed before me as a movie. In each of these experiences, I have experienced what I can only call headaches or brain pain because I remember things so frequently out of sync that I do not often know if the quick flashes I have seen were even real.
For years, I would hold onto these “memories” and write them down. For a time, I would spend time with former caregivers who would answer my questions about my childhood, and the things that they told me more than often confirmed what my mind seemed to be permitting me to forget. “You do not want to open up a can of worms. I fear that you will only be hurt by what you learn.” I remember this being told to me by a woman whose mother, daughters, and her would frequently care for me from my infancy to toddler years as both my parents were at work.
Apparently, this woman believed that I suffered through ritualistic abuses, but when I would share specific memories, she was never forthcoming with the details of what she knew. She would simply tell me with fear in her eyes that it was best to leave things alone. In due time, she figured I would come to know if God allowed it. So for years, I prayed for God to allow it. I was dumbfounded when the floodgates of memory opened, and if I did not know the truth myself, with the confirmation of others, I would not even believe it.
The brain is a powerful organ, but when it is impacted by trauma, it changes. These changes often happen as the brain’s way of helping us to survive. My brain actually hurts just thinking about it. So many functions within the brain even slow down as a result of trauma which disables the functions from returning to normal. This type of functioning can be nonstop depending on the trauma.
Sustained trauma is often the case with domestic abuse, sexual abuse, narcissistic abuse, and other forms of trauma that can keep the brain functioning in states of hypervigilance. The constant state of hypervigilance results in the suppression of memory and impulse control. You can be left with ongoing emotional reactivity when you want it to stop which is often in the case of uncontrolled flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, triggers, and nightmares.
For years I felt that I functioned as altered versions of myself never quite clear on how I actually made it through until I actually arrived to a destination. I can only liken this experience to the number of times I have driven somewhere not knowing how I actually arrived to my destination because I could recall absolutely nothing about the drive. It was as if I had floated quickly through some time machine and was transported by the blink of an eye.
These experiences would always baffle me because I always made it safely to the destination without having any recall of the experience getting there. I often wondered how I had not had an accident when it did not seem that I was even operating the vehicle. This experience of dissociation has not always happened to me while driving; it has also happened to me while I was doing normal activities – working, eating, watching a movie, etc. Sometimes the mind just drifts from stress or for thought processes.
Needless to say, during this traumatic time of my life while staying with my aunt, I had a lot of gaps in what I could recall. It was as if I functioned without the knowledge of so many immediate things going on around me. There are fragments of pieces that I have taken years to patch together to gain insight into this part of my past to understand my mode of thinking. Yet, that is the problem.
Most of that time, I functioned as if I was a person within a person with the main person controlling the shots. I do not know how to make this not sound like some sort of possession because it was not. I knew I was me, but there was also a “me” that I was trying to protect. That is the only way I know how to describe it to make sense of it. It is like I have always pictured my mind operating in the fashion of turning wheels.
My mind has its wheels turning all the time. It is like I have minds within minds. And this has always been the case since I can remember even prior to this traumatic event. I can always hear those minds talking all at once. I can even hear my thoughts thinking. In fact, this is often how my mind works to discern what is going on around me within the dichotomy of the spiritual and natural realms. That is how my mind often works to discern the motives of people and what is going on with them while I am engaging with them. That is often how I get to know a person to their core too.
When connecting with a person, my mind will stay with a person on the surface while another mind (or maybe part of the same mind) goes deep below and pinpoints what I really need to know about the person. Then from there, I discern who the person really is and what the person is really about all while my mind files away on any nuances in tone, inflections, facial expression, and body language (or anything else that stands out).
Nevertheless, through specific types of trauma, my brain tends not to help me. I find that I most often freeze in place. There is no ability within me to run or fight even though I desire to do so. In fact, since that sexual assault and two other situations where fighting or attempting to flee did me no good, my brain just now tends to capture a freeze frame where I do not think because my mind goes blank, and I do not move. It is almost as if hindsight or my body tells me that fleeing and fighting are not even worth it.
Instead of my brain helping me, it only seems to always aid the other portions of my brain in keeping things from me, but my body knows. My body remembers. My body has always kept the score, and what my brain does not allow for in remembrance, my body holds onto the scars. I do not know if this is how the brain works for other survivors of trauma or those going through trauma. That would certainly be an interesting collective study though.
The worst part of it all is that I could not always feel the emotions that have come with trauma until I had already reached a point of no return. I remember being such a “mean” person for an empath. It would almost be strange to have even called myself an empath, and if I did not know any better and if I did not wear such strong emotions on my sleeves while feeling my heart bleed out, then I would have to indeed wonder if I inherited narcissism as a disorder.
Nevertheless, the brain indeed goes through changes when a person is traumatized no matter the event. The changes can often take a while to recover from if there is recovery. Sometimes, this is what I believe happens to some narcissists. They often do not recover and cannot recover because they are held within their trauma and within themselves (but I will explain more on this later). Nevertheless, getting through the trauma is necessary for healing even though it can be quite difficult.
Stay tuned for more posts.
My Voice Unchained 