Reliving trauma

Over the weekend, I was unexpectedly called upon to help out in a situation that triggered me. I was attending a weekend orienteering meet for which Eric was one of the organizers. I learned when I arrived Friday that he had not yet produced the hundreds of maps needed for the event, and that help was needed all night Friday and all night Saturday. As the map productoin work progressed, new, unexpected needs made themselves known, and throughout, it seemed that I was the most appropriate person to fulfill most of these needs. So I did so. The first night I worked most of the night together with one to three other people; for the final hour (4-5 am), I worked alone. The second night I worked all night with Eric until 4am.

Throughout all of this, I experienced anger and resentment. My mind kept wanting to dwell on strategies for revenge and for avoiding such situations in the future, along with self-loathing for my emotions, for my circular pattern of mind-states, for allowing myself to be in this situation, and for not having a generous attitude.

I have been in many similar situations before, and in this one I was more objective about the situation than ever before. I was more successful than ever before at repeatedly removing my attention from the thoughts and placing my attention on the physical feelings. These feelings were located in my right throat and torso, specifically in the lower right chest and upper right abdomen. The sensations were more well-defined than usual. When I tried to describe them to myself, the word "panic" came to mind. Whenever I didn't have a handle on what the situation was, and especially whenever Eric took actions without explaining to me what his intentions were, the panic rose to fever pitch and I felt that I could hardly stand it. The mind was flooded with thoughts of violence and escape. The sensations and thoughts became most intense just as the situation was about to close: it was 4am on Sunday, the work had been completed, and I was sitting in bed waiting for Eric to join me. As is typical for him, he did some additional tasks that he hadn't explained to me before coming to bed, and as I observed this I felt utterly beside myself. In the past I would have raged at Eric or physically escaped. Instead, I stayed still, focusing my mind on the sensations and verbalizing them to Eric. My verbalizing was a mixture of objective description of how I was feeling ("I'm feeling really horrible, it feels awful, I feel crazy, I want this to stop, I don't know what to do, I can't see a way out") and blame ("I want you to tell me what you're doing. When you don't tell me what you're doing I feel horrible. I want you to stop acting like a crazy person. I want you to act more sanely and stop harming yourself by depriving yourself of sleep."). I felt that if I didn't verbalize the blaming thoughts, I would be shouldering all the blame myself and I would have felt completely hopeless. At several points I began sobbing and a couple of times I vocalized the thought that I wished this life was over because it seemed like I was never going to find a way out of being repeatedly retraumatized.

The next morning I slept until noon. When I awoke, I felt depleted.

The more I refrain from rage and escape, and the more I focus on the physical sensations, the more I believe that I did experience trauma as a child. On a gut level, however, I find this very difficult to believe. I wonder whether it would seem more real to me if I were in a support group of survivors and/or if my friends, relatives, and associates knew I was a trauma survivor, but I feel very uncomfortable about "coming out". On a gut level, I fear that people won't believe me, or will make incorrect assumptions about me (e.g. that I was sexually abused), or will give me attention that's painful to bear, or will think less of me. I feel angry and disbelieving that Trip, my therapist, had no information for me when I asked if he knew of support groups for trauma survivors, given that he is a specialist in working with trauma survivors. I just now searched the web for "survivor childhood trauma" and felt very unsatisfied with what I found, though I am not sure I know what I was looking for.

During this weekend's internal ordeal, I reflected on other situations in my life where it seems I am triggered, and found an incremental amount of new insight. I reflected on how I feel when I witness the anger of others, and it made more sense to me than before that I absolutely cannot be present for such situations. It's not a matter of trying harder, it's just not possible for me right now, given that I can barely be present for my own anger. It also makes sense to me that I can't be present for Rosemary's adolescent suffering, since it is so similar in character to my current suffering. Today, after I awoke at noon, I spent about 30 minutes sitting in bed and gently directing my attention toward the sensations, which are still present and which can be further activated in a fraction of a second simply by reflecting on the experiences of the weekend. I found (as I'd found in the past) that it was very hard to keep my attention there. I was distracted by fears that I should be doing something else, that I should escape, that I should be fulfilling the needs of others. I kept bringing my attention back, and even then it was challenging to bring the attention deeply into the sensations--I kept wanting to absent-mindedly float on the surfaces of them. It is richly rewarding to attend deeply into the sensations, but it takes a great deal of patience and focus. Of course, it is much easier to attend to the sensations now, in the absence of triggers, than it was last night.

Right now, as I write, I notice a self-critical attitude for spending my time here at this task ("when the sun is out!"), for slouching, for still being in my pajamas, for not having groomed myself, and for allowing myself to be alone instead of attending the orienteering event.