BeTraumaFree

This is where I document my recovery from complex trauma. How did I do it? Therapy with a licensed trauma therapist for 5 years. (IFS and EMDR).

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

I was traumatized when I was very young. I spent my entire life dissociated, disconnected, anxious and depressed. I wanted to feel better but nobody was able to help. Eventually I connected the dots and realized the suffering I experienced had a name and it was "complex trauma".

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

My high school English teacher told me I didn't have to come to class and I could read my own book list and write essays about what I learned. I don't think he knew I had autism but he definitely knew I was different.

[♰ 𝙽𝚊𝚎𝚝𝚘 @fw_naetoblaq]

You can tell how neurodivergent someone was in high school by how much they depended on their English/humanities teacher for emotional support and validation

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

@Michell52714638 😊🥰

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

I very much avoid napping during the day because I did a lot of daytime sleeping when my trauma symptoms were really bad a few years ago. My sleep was so disordered I was only sleeping about 3 hours a night. That slowly improved but it took a few years.

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

I'm retired and I don't work 9-5 days but I do participate in occasional brief work a few hours a week. I only take jobs that I enjoy. Even that, however, can drain me dry. *sigh* Today I had to nap after lunch after two short work commitments this week.

[Aim True (Amy Pagett) @AimTrue7]

Dissociation can sometimes look like someone who is relaxed and regulated.

In reality they aren’t present or engaging in the here and now.

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

There is a book about this called "Spiritual Bypassing".

[Jeff Craft /Kali Das @atltantrayoga]

Some people are using spirituality to avoid having boundaries, difficult conversations, responsibility, or emotional honesty.

That’s not healing.

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

This happened to me, with my addicted and mentally ill mother and father. It was not until after I retired, after a few years of trauma therapy, that I was able to feel anger towards my mother in my therapy sessions. I literally screamed into a pillow, witnessed by the therapist.

[Fav ⛧ @Favwontmiss]

There is a documented phenomenon in
CPTSD research called "betrayal trauma theory," developed by psychologist Jennifer Freyd. It proposes that trauma caused by people on whom the victim depends for survival produces a specific kind of cognitive adaptation. The child cannot afford to know what is being done to them because knowing would threaten the attachment they require to survive. So the knowing gets blocked. Not as a choice. As a survival mechanism.

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

@DZafred31814 its not anything advertised. These are small jobs I created by offering my skills and services.
What skills and strengths do you have? Focus on that.

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

One job I accepted requires that I be chatty and extraverted. I love the work but being a small-talk chat box is so hard for me. It is putting me way out of my comfort zone. Weirdly, I can see the benefits of it, though. People like it when you are chatty. It puts people at ease.

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

I'm retired and I don't work 9-5 days but I do participate in occasional brief work a few hours a week. I only take jobs that I enjoy. Even that, however, can drain me dry. *sigh* Today I had to nap after lunch after two short work commitments this week.

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

This is why childhood trauma is often called complex trauma. Kids are trapped. They can't get away. They don't have the luxury of "no contact". They can't change their abusive, neglectful caregivers... so they change themselves to adapt and survive.

[Roland @rolandgavince]

I was fifteen when I realised my mother's sadness was not a phase. She stopped cooking and going outside. Some mornings I would find her sitting in the kitchen, staring at nothing, still in the same clothes from the day before. I became the adult in our house without anyone asking.

I cooked, cleaned, and made sure my younger brother ate before school. I checked on her before bed every night and left a glass of water on her bedside table because she often forgot to drink. I did all of this while attending school, writing exams, and trying to seem like a normal teenager.

Nobody at school knew. I laughed the loudest in class, was voted most likely to succeed, and teachers called me mature for my age. They had no idea maturity had been forced on me by circumstances, not chosen. I was not mature. I was just a child with no option to be one.

My mother got better slowly over two years with therapy, medication, and time. The day she cooked dinner for the first time and called us to eat, I sat at the table and cried into my food. She thought they were happy tears. They were, but also years of exhaustion finally finding a way out.

I am an adult now and still check on her every day, not out of fear but out of love forged in the hardest years of both our lives. If you know a child who seems too mature, too responsible, too okay, look closer. Sometimes they are carrying things no child should carry alone.

[Aim True (Amy Pagett) @AimTrue7]

Moodiness is not a good trait in a leader. Good leaders create safety & security by being regulated.

Yes we all feel things & can become upset but as a leader, that’s when you take a step back give yourself space, preventing your dysregulation to spread to others.

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

@EffingPoppins you're very welcome!

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

For me, it took five years of IFS trauma therapy to get rid of the worst trauma symptoms. Now out of therapy I am in recovery. That means managing what shows up every day. It also means making changes so my life can be better. I am an adult. I have agency. I can do that.

[yana @Madame_Ennui]

When people say “you need to just unlearn your trauma and go to therapy, you’re an adult” they seem to think there’s a magical therapy switch where you go to therapy and within 180 days you just become a more socially acceptable person that’s released their baggage

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

@tempovoyager yes!!

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

This is why childhood trauma is often called complex trauma. Kids are trapped. They can't get away. They don't have the luxury of "no contact". They can't change their abusive, neglectful caregivers... so they change themselves to adapt and survive.

[Fav ⛧ @Favwontmiss]

ptsd: something terrible happened to you.

complex ptsd: something terrible WAS your entire environment and you had to just live in it. there was no escape.

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

@AudreySeawood OMG how terrible! I am sending unconditional love to that terrified little girl. I am letting her know she doesn't have to live in terror any more.

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

IFS (parts therapy) has been amazingly helpful in my recovery and healing. A lot of my complex trauma happened in the first five years of my life so I had a lot of wounded child parts. IFS brought a lot of healing to that.

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

@VirgilMSW re: "desire for people to behave a certain way"... I did 10 years of 12 step meetings which helped a great deal with this. In 12 step, each person works their own program.😊

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

I like this! When you are healed and in your Window of Tolerance, you are able to give grace (calm acceptance) to others. When I was experiencing trauma symptoms every day, I was not able to do that.

[Ryan Malphrus @VirgilMSW]

Grace is a word one of my former supervisees and now friend gave to me.

“New day new grace”, is a saying she would often share.

This was often in reference to clients we worked with that may have spit or hit one of us that day. Despite however they acted the day before she was deciding to give grace to allow a new day to happen.

I like that grace is something that is given. It really is a choice whether you give that gift to someone.

I think we need more grace at the moment.

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

@AudreySeawood that's great you are working on safety!!

[BeTraumaFree @BeTraumaFree]

@AudreySeawood In IFS you get to know your own parts with self compassion. Ultimately, you heal the "exiled parts" that hold the pain.