Trauma Wounds

As I learn more about myself, and recognize my highly sensitive sensory experiences as trauma flashbacks, I think that maybe certain actions I’ve taken in my life have been overreactions.

But then there’s a whole lot of my experiences in which I was being traumatized and/or triggered by past trauma, and could not effectively advocate for myself in survival mode.

Being highly sensitive, with emotional processing delays, chronic illnesses and inflammation, and cPTSD translates into having lived like a raw nerve. As a kid, I thought this is what it was like for everyone, but I got accused of faking sensations in my body to get out of school (which I loved from a learning perspective). So I kept telling myself I was only imagining the pain and feeling sorry for myself, because I was told nothing was being expected of me beyond what my peers were capably doing.

But it turns out, I feel things far more deeply and physically than most people. Emotions produce physical sensations in my body, and that includes painful emotions. There’s decades of those trapped inside my body, and I am never not in pain. I don’t remember a time when I haven’t struggled with pain.

The more I learn about our world and its history, the more I realize that I was correct to question why things weren’t more just and happy. My parents responded with the state propaganda they’ve been conditioned by their whole lives and repeated settler-colonial myths and lies, as their parents, grandparents, and all European settlers and their ancestors have been. They told me I just had to accept injustice as inevitable. It’s heartbreaking to me that they believe this and have not taken steps to break free from it.

When we were in the Jehovah’s Witness doomsday cult, they attributed it to Satan and his demons. Since we all escaped separately in the mid-to-late 1990s, they now attribute it to human nature that is impossible to escape. I pity them, because they do not recognize that while they managed to escape the JW cult, they are still mesmerized and under the spell of the settler-colonialist cult, like most white Americans are. I’ve tried for years to share what I’ve learned in my personal history and political theory studies over the past decade, but they are practitioners of premeditated ignorance, a common thing in North America. I have been actively working to decolonize my mind the last few years, and will be at it the rest of my life, and that’s why I can recognize all of this.

Anyway, I’ve had to accept that there are childhood trauma wounds that I am unlikely to ever get acknowledged or receive apologies for from them, because to do so would require them to adjust their worldviews. But I love them dearly all the same. I have adult trauma wounds that I’m contending with too, some are still fresh.

So I’m doing the work of promoting healing of my brain and body by checking in with myself more frequently, a li’l chkdsk operation, if you will. I’m focused on being in spaces where I feel safe, cozy, and able to access what I need easily. Mostly that means being home, but even within our house, I have little nests built in the spaces I feel best and spend most of my time.

I used to love going out to events of all kinds as a younger person: house parties, dance clubs, concerts, and other large gatherings. But I’m so burnt out and traumatized now that most of the time, the anxiety buildup for an event always ends up costing more than the dopamine payout from the event.

I’m reading The Body Keeps The Score and learning so much about why my life has gone as it has, and led me to where I am now.

Settler-Colonialism harms everyone’s bodies, even settler descendants like myself. It is an archaic, inhumane system, including its economics of Capitalism and needed to be in history ‘s landfill ages ago. But the ruling class of this system has managed to hold humanity back so that they can remain in power and build dragon hoards on our collective backs, using slavery, genocide and war to keep topping them up. I am not overreacting when I tell you I look forward to their class being eliminated under a Dictatorship Of The Proletariat one day, and hopefully I’ll make it to see it disintegrate.