This seems like a useful thing to share with the world. I kind of miss sexblogging, but I think I'll be mentioning my trauma a lot more in the future, so, here's a bunch of vocabulary I use. I've tried to talk about the vocab in terms of my own experience-- everybody's experience with trauma is ultimately a little different and a little similar at the same time, but I can only give voice to my own experiences.
Trauma: the aftereffects of abuse.
Abuse: situations and/or behavior that causes trauma.
Processing: comes from the idea that post-traumatic stress is at least partly due to memories not being integrated or processed properly. Usually, when someone is dealing with their trauma, the idea is to "re-process" the memories and make sense of them and re-integrate them. Usually, if I say "I'm processing" I mean I'm sitting with a memory and thinking about it a lot, turning it over in my head for a while-- sometimes hours, sometimes weeks.
My Subconscious: this is a model I use to describe the way my truamatized brain operates; not everyone talks about it like this. My subconscious is like, my gut emotional reactions to things-- usually negative reactions. Oftentimes my subconscious will be at odds with what my conscious self might want, which is why I find this model useful-- "I really wanna go see Fast Five, but my subconscious is absolutely not having it, I will dissociate so hard if I go." --- true story. I was so bummed. My subconscious communicates with me by triggering me, making me dissociated, by having a strong negative or positive gut reaction to doing something or to thinking about doing something. Sometimes I'll have the urge to do something, but I know my subconscious will flip a shit if I do it, so I don't do it, and then it kind of feels smug at me.
Sometimes my subconscious freaks out and it's really helpful-- if I'm panicking at the thought of a situation, it might be genuinely unsafe for me, and then I usually ask whatever questions I need to ensure that it is a safe situation, or get myself out. Sometimes my subconscious freaks out and it's not very helpful, although it's trying to be. For example, say my SO has something superficially in common with my abuser. My subconscious might be all "THIS MEANS DANGER" and I have to be like "listen, if it's just that they both watch Doctor Who, it so does not."
I feel the desire to add: I have no idea how scientifically (or otherwise) accurate this model is, and I don't care. It works for me, and that's what matters.
Triggers: are stimuli that remind a survivor of the trauma in an extremely distressing way. Triggers can be pretty much anything-- the way a person looks, a noise, a song, a food, a place, a time of year. I distinguish between triggers that people have a responsibility to avoid (eg rape jokes) and triggers that you can't predict and shouldn't stress about avoiding (like a certain type of clothing).
Being triggered, for me, has been different as I've gone through the healing process. At first it felt like I was being raped all over again, then it felt dizzying and pokey (like every single thing around me was somehow related to my trauma), and lately, it's been a tight, tense feeling that won't relax, or a sudden sense of panic.
By their nature, triggers are the kind of thing that are horrifying and make you want to hardcore avoid them by any means possible. They are actutely, intensely distressing. I tend to approach mine with an attitude of "welp, this sucks, gotta work through this," and I try to just deal with them as they come. As I process them, most triggers go away, and stop being triggering. It's really awesome when that happens. :)
Flashbacks: usually triggered by something, a flashback is a re-living of some aspect of the trauma in real time. Sometimes they're short and sometimes they're longer. All of mine have been really short, just moments: for a few seconds, I didn't realize I was at work or on the bus or whatever, I felt like I was somewhere else (which honestly, I think that my brain has the infastructure to do this is really frikkin' cool XD).
Sometimes flashbacks, for me and for others, are more like an insistent tape playing in the back of my head that I cannot ignore (or a gif, as the case may be). Sometimes just my emotions flash back to whatever they were at the time, which can be really weird. One time this spring (in 2011), I kept writing the year as 07, 08, or 09 when I wasn't thinking about it. Once I wrote a check out to 2009-- it was pretty horrifying to me. I think of it as my subconscious not knowing what year it is, my subconscious as having a flashback to 2009 or whatever.
Dissociation: It's a survival mechanism that a lot of survivors use to escape the trauma while it's still happening -- I know I dissociated when I was raped. Later on, it's usually a response to triggers, in a way-- if I get triggered at work and can't sit down and deal with my shit, I tend to dissociate, to escape it. For me, I feel kind of floaty and detached from everything, not like my normal self. As a general rule it is not under my control, although I do have some tools to check if I'm dissociating or not, or to make it less intense. I used to dissociate very strongly, for long periods of time (it would wear off after a few hours, usually). I haven't dissociated in quite some time, now, except momentarily as what feels like a warning sign.
All of this was a lot more prominent in my life about six to three months ago. My triggers are much more mild now, and I can handle them better. I haven't dissociated really hard in a while. I chalk this up mostly to having healed a lot, but a little bit to being single again-- I think a lot of my issues rear their heads when I'm trying to date or have sex with somebody. Anyhow, seemed like it might be useful to put this out there.
1 comment:
Godspeed!
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