Wide Awake Part Six: Trauma and Recovery

By ReclaimMyLife MY PHYSICAL REACIONS

I had many of the common immediate and delayed symptoms of trauma. Physically, I experienced nausea, sweating, feeling faint, extreme fatigue, exhaustion, rapid heartrate, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), nightmares, hyperarousal, and a compromised immune system. I gained forty pounds during our marriage before Mike turned his violence toward me. At which point I began losing weight. I continued to lose weight until about a year after I left. These changes in my body were part of a larger battle with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). I had digestive issues prior to my relationship, but the symptoms had gotten significantly worse.

When I was diagnosed with IBS, my doctor asked if I was depressed. Thoroughly in denial, I said, "Of course not, I am a very happy person. People see me as optimistic." She insisted I had stress and anxiety, I insisted I did not. She advised therapy, I changed my diet.

Side Note: A dancer recommended I try a diet called FODMAP that dramatically improved my IBS symptoms. It did not improve my relationship.

Since I left at the end of March 2015, I have had a squamous cell carcinoma (a type of skin cancer) removed from my face, surgery to remove uterine polyps, a dilation and curettage (D&C), physical therapy for pelvic floor dysfunction, digestive issues, appetite issues, increased trouble with asthma, panic attacks and anxiety. I have been told my cholesterol is at the high end of normal and my vitamin D at the low end of normal. I have had low energy, times where I am hyper-vigilant and have experienced hypersensitivity.

My physical symptoms were worse six months after my relationship ended than they were the day I left. I was afraid of thunder. Really, any loud noise that was unexpected. Some noises that triggered my trauma weren't even loud. One day while I was walking back from the laundry room a snack baggie full of quarters rolled within my basket.

My heart raced, my breathing became heavy and I started to perspire. I had to stop and sit on the ground. I cried. I felt more alone than ever before in my life. I felt helpless, like nothing I had done to improve my situation mattered.

While this was happening I just wanted it to stop, for the feelings to go away. But after it was over it occurred to me, I am still alive, still capable of feeling. I had been numb, disconnected from myself. I had been unable to let myself feel the fear and pain, or even think of revisiting the memory of so many days in the past three years.

RELIVING TRAUMA IN MY SLEEP

I go through periods where I cannot sleep and periods where all I want to do is sleep. A month before criminal court, I started having intense nightmares about Mike coming back to killed me. The nightmare was always the same. He breaks into my place while I am asleep and comes up to my room. He tells me he made a mistake the night at the beach that he should have finished what he started. In the better version of the nightmare he shoots me, in other versions he strangles me. During that month before court, this happened every time I closed my eyes. Once, soon after, the horror invaded while I was awake. I did not know, until then, that daymares existed.

Eventually my nightmares decreased to once a month, and later once in a great while. My improvement might be related to having some distance from the trauma. About a year after my abusive relationship, I began to have new endings to the original nightmare. In these versions, the tables were turned. Now, when Mike broke in to kill me, I was ready. I would call the police, or sometimes defend myself. I would tell him I was not the same weak person he had tormented, that I was stronger and better prepared.

OVER AND OVER

Just as I felt I was in the clear, another reoccurring nightmare invaded.

The dream begins with a police officer asking me to come to the morgue to look at a body. The mortician pulls a young woman's corpse out of a cold chamber. The young woman has bruises and ligature marks on her neck. It looks like her cause of death was strangulation. I notice her forearms. She has bruising there too, as if someone grabbed her arms as a method of restraint. I look closer, the bruises are noticeably different in color, and they were at different stages of healing.

The officer asks if I know her and I reply that I do not. The officer asks if I know why I was brought in to look at her and I say, "You think my ex-husband did this."

She asks why I believe that, and I explain that the bruising on the forearms was something he was known to do. I ask if she was raped, and the officer says yes. Then I ask if it was pre-mortem or post-mortem. The officer says that there is inconclusive evidence. They are not sure.

She looks concerned, worried that they will not be able to get a conviction due to lack of evidence. I say, don't worry, he videotaped it.

She looks surprised, and I wake up.

MOVING FORWARD

I started to improve mentally and physically after my role in the criminal litigation process concluded. I decided that romance may be a nice addition to my life again. I started a new, healthy relationship that is free of fear and the feeling of walking on eggshells! We have been together for over a year, and I am happy to report that we did not rush to the alter.

I almost always sleep well when Will and I are together. Whenever I heard something disturbing about Mike, or saw his dance events (or worse, his picture) on Facebook, it always triggered a nightmare. Since I am no longer on Facebook, reminders of Mike are fewer and farther between, but have the same effect. This happened, for example, once after I found out Mike had asked someone for my address. Still, I am glad that I now suffer through just one bad dream rather than a series. There has recently been a new addition to my family, a German Shepard named Max. She protects me in my nightmares, which sadly never goes well for her. It does always give me time to call for help.

I woke up last month to the sound of a loud crash. I could feel the panic setting in. I called out frantically, "Max"! She lifted her head, which was inches from mine. I smiled, pet her and went back to a lovely slumber.

Small victories matter!

PHYSICAL STRENGTH

After I left Mike, and moved into an apartment, I desperately wanted to feel safe and secure. I walked a lot, sometimes for hours, and at times in the middle of the night, which was arguably the opposite of safe and secure. I started working on becoming more fit. I ran, did sprints, sit-ups and what I now know were poor form push-ups.

I met someone who was interested in dating. He had a black belt in martial arts (I forget what kind). I had mentioned a desire to learn self-defense. He said he could teach me (the implication was that we would be dating while he taught me). I thought, that makes no sense, I need to defend myself FROM the person that I am dating.

I feel it is important for EVERYONE, but particularly women, to develop greater situational awareness and to learn self-defense. Men and women do not experience the same level of danger in our interactions.

"Men at core are afraid women will laugh at them and women at core are afraid men will kill them." - Gavin de Becker

MY PERSONAL BATTLE WITH SHAME

Emotionally I was numb. I felt detached and minimized the gravity and extent of the abuse, I had dramatic mood swings, and lived in a continued state of fear. My emotions seemed beyond my control, particularly anger sorrow and helplessness.

I would like to go into more detail about my feelings of shame. When I began therapy, one of the more common answers to my therapist's many questions was, "I was ashamed." She asked how often I experienced the feeling of shame. I was not completely sure, but it seemed like... plenty. She explained that shame was often felt by victims of violence, particularly intimate violence. Shame differs from guilt is an evaluation of an action or behavior where shame is a judgement of one’s character.

We decided to examine this aspect of my trauma more closely. She asked me to take note of each time I felt ashamed until my next appointment. My total was seventy-two times over the course of the week!

WHAT WAS I ASHAMED OF?

In a word: EVERYTHING!

Shame has kept me isolated, caged in silence.

• I was ashamed to leave my marriage

• I was ashamed to stay

• I was ashamed to ask for help

• I was ashamed to admit that I had let the abuse go on for so long

• I was ashamed that I had covered things up, and sometimes lied to people I love in the process

• I was ashamed of things I had done

• I was ashamed of things I had not done

• I was ashamed of things that had been done to me

• I was ashamed of things I did not allow

• I was more ashamed of things I did allow

• I was ashamed of my choices

• I was ashamed of where I was in life

• I was ashamed of where I was in life at my age

• I was ashamed of my financial situation

• I was ashamed of my naivety

• I was ashamed of my lack of judgement

• I was ashamed of my mistakes

• I was ashamed of others mistakes that were not my burden to bear

And, looking at the paper on which I kept count of my instances of shame

• I was ashamed about the number of times I felt shame!

Where am I now, a year plus down the road? I have a greater balance between positive and negative thoughts about myself. I attempt to extend the compassion I offer others to myself. But, I still fight feelings of shame. It sneaks up on me. Right now, at this moment, I feel a subtle hint of shame as I admit how long it is taking me to recover.

I have had difficulty concentrating and remembering things, my thoughts race, when triggered, I have felt like I am back in the past reliving the abuse.

TRIGGERS

I have had flashbacks, preoccupation, and difficulty focusing and concentrating. But I would like to talk about triggers, more specifically my biggest trigger, the Prius.

Some of this is understandable. There was no shortage of incidents in the car, from Mike driving recklessly to his punching the ceiling. There was also some strategic use of the car to harass me after I left. For example, Mike parked right next to us (I was not driving) in a huge parking garage at criminal court. When my witnesses and I went to get something out of the car, upon seeing Mike's vehicle, we did an abrupt about face and practically ran back into the building. I ended up throwing my Tupperware away rather than risk the approach to our car. We had a police officer escort us out when we left (she informed us Mike's window tint is beyond the legal limits).

Whenever I see a red Prius, my heart races and I hold my breath until I check the license plate. This happens even at my workplace, where Mike is not legally allowed on the property.

I cannot express the degree to which the abuse affected my mind, body and life. There have been strides forward. For the last few months, I believed I was beyond being triggered. When I see a Prius these days, I do check the plates, but then I move on with my life. I am not having the same physiological responses as before. With one recent exception where I saw a red Prius parked backwards in a parking space. I could not see the tag (my state only requires a rear plate). Having to get out of the safety of my own car to determine whether it was Mike's Prius took me back to the early stages of recovery. I had a strong reaction. The physical effects did not subside until an hour later.

It was disappointing, but a good reminder that there is more work to be done and that my healing will not take place at the pace I want. It may be a life-long process. I just need to keep doing what works and continue to celebrate my progress!

VICTIM MENTALITY

I felt this deserved a separate section because it was the most striking thing I observed in my support group. At the beginning of each session, (after a grounding or mindfulness activity), we were asked to do an exercise involving contemplation and writing on a topic. We would then use these reflective writings as a starting point for group conversation and hearing expert and scholarly knowledge. Some exercises involved completing a survey, drawing a picture, or writing a definition.

I noticed at times, group member's responses were quite varied. This clearly illustrated the way everyone experiences both traumatic events and the process of recovery in her own way. No two people in the group had a situation or response to it that was exactly alike. Not all members, for example, had left their abuser. We came from different backgrounds and were at different places in life. We had unique personalities and had developed our own lenses through which to view the world.

Our responses to the activities also revealed distinct patterns. We were going through the phases of recovery at different paces, not always in the same order. But we were sharing the larger process. Some had experienced more severe trauma and abuse, were victimized for a shorter or longer period of time, some of the perpetrators controlled more through isolation and others jealousy, but the overall scheme and the underlying motivations were the same. And our reactions to some things closely mirrored one another.

In all the times we met, there was only one question that elicited EXACTLY the same response from the entire group. The question, what does the critical voice in your head tell you most frequently?

The answer: "I'm not good enough"

CRITICISM

No matter what I cooked or how I cooked it, when I asked how it was, Mike gave me the same response. "Eh, it needs more salt."

Not good enough was the theme that cut across EVERY topic, interaction and area of our relationship.

I was not good enough at parenting, shopping, interior design, cleaning, dancing, and selecting movies or sex. My hair, breasts, style of clothing, music choice and proposed vacation destinations were never good enough (that is why we never went on a honeymoon). I was not fast enough, smart enough, punctual enough, patient enough or attentive enough.

Comments that were not critical were outright contemptuous. Sometimes the criticism was disguised as praise, or praise of someone else. I even coined a term for Mike's praise of someone else to insult me. I called it a comp-usult. This was one of his favorite forms of passive aggression.

When someone gets the same message again and again, in different ways, inevitably the result is internalization.

With Mike out of the picture, I had taken his place as my own worst critic. I have spent two years trying to reverse this underlying message. To un-internalize the idea that there is nothing about me that is good enough.

UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS

It is important to remember WHY abusers have unrealistic expectations. They allow for the rationalization of abuse. The victim is set up to fail to meet the impossible expectations, and WHEN (not if) she fails, it is used to justify the explosion.