I did not set out to be The Trauma Lady. I’ve been trying to avoid it for most of a year, but sometimes we’re called to do something that doesn’t leave us alone until we do it.
So welcome to The Trauma Lady. The Trauma Lady has been transpiring for a while now, unbeknownst to me until about a year ago, when I was hit by an episode of PTSD that laid me out flat for a week.
It was triggered a combination of circumstances, one of which included not working more than full-time for the first time in decades. I suddenly found myself in a place where I wasn’t pushing through something every waking hour.
It was like collapsing at the end of a marathon. I wrote a few essays at the time as Songlightning on blogspot. I didn’t publicize it. I’d had as many as 10,000 followers on social media as a tech reporter, but I was extricating from social media, and I really didn’t want a lot of attention. I didn’t need to hear from clueless people.
Clueless people make things worse. They’re like, “oh, you have a broken leg? Does it help when I hit it with this hammer?” There are three general categories of clueless responses:
The brief uncomfortable silence followed by a change of subject to something “more pleasant.”
The inference that your trauma “shouldn’t bother you so much.”
How something like what happened to you happened to them or someone they know and this is what they did and life is a magical rose garden of unicorns now.
For those interested in a more non-clueless response, try:
I am so sorry.
You did not deserve this.
It was not your fault.
After the initial episode when I was bedridden and couldn’t eat for a week, I developed a case of psoriasis that made my hair fall out, plus I couldn’t sleep through the night because of joint pain. Psoriasis is an auto-immune disorder, a common manifestation of PTSD that can become debilitating if it’s not managed into remission. Pain is a whole category of its own.
I was lucky enough to be able to nurse my body back to relative health over the course of a year, although my hair came in gray and I can no longer wear heels or anything at all binding on my body. I always had low tolerance for crowds. Now I have none. Same with noise, aggression and socializing with people who are trauma-illiterate, or worse yet—someone who knows everything about trauma because they study it. Not all who study are annoying—but many are, especially when they know everything about what you’re going through.
Reading or hearing about trauma is to experiencing trauma what watching football is to being the guy on the field getting plowed into by a 300-pound meat sack. Being there alters your brain and your body.
Someone who experiences trauma is the one and only expert on their own trauma, but it also may relate to one of the 17 types of trauma-inducing circumstances listed on Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website (before an update disappeared the page. Here it is on the WayBack Machine.) Here is the quick list:
Sexual abuse or assault
Physical abuse or assault
Emotional abuse or psychological maltreatment
Neglect (the most common form reported in child welfare cases)
Serious accident, illness or medical procedure
Domestic violence victim or witness
Victim of, or witness to, community violence
Historical trauma, which can be “transmitted across generations within a community”
School violence
Bullying
Natural or manmade disasters
Forced displacement
War, terrorism or political violence
Military trauma
Victim or witness to extreme personal or interpersonal violence
Traumatic grief or separation
System-induced trauma or retraumatization
It’s easy to read that list and think everyone’s traumatized, and to a degree, that may be true, but remember—everyone experiences trauma personally. In their own unique way. Plus, there are circumstantial factors that can make all the difference in the world. (The National Institute of Mental Health provides a broad overview of “risk and resilience factors.”)
A child who is molested by a family member and whose caregivers are complicit will have a much different outcome in adulthood than a child whose caregivers are well-adjusted and able to confront the situation. The family dynamic could mean the difference between a lifetime of flourishing and a lifetime of depression and suicidal ideation with bouts of PTSD.
The availability of people who respond properly is a key resilience factor with PTSD. The problem is that so few people respond properly. (See “clueless responses” above.) I think most of us would prefer to not be clueless, but that’s hard without clues. Unfortunately, this general lack of awareness perpetuates an ongoing silence that keeps traumatized people isolated and often struggling for their own lives.
Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in this country. Drug overdoses have killed more people than the Civil War. Both are on the rise. Both are outcomes of trauma, but we still focus on those outcomes without fully considering their origin.
That’s why I’m becoming The Trauma Lady—to investigate this relationship, and to promote and encourage awareness about trauma, starting with what to say to a traumatized person.
I am so sorry.
You did not deserve this.
It was not your fault.