The hyper arousal of a fear/flight/fight response can be very hard to slow down if multiple or complex trauma has wounded us and altered our wiring. If we had to fight for our life we may be on a hair trigger, those who live with the traumatised also learn to live ‘walking on eggshells’ which is the name given to a book to help those who live with people with what is known as borderline personality disorder.
In BPD the border between conscious and unconscious is porous or shaky and painful contents that slumber are all too easily trigged by reminders in the here and now that activate old wounds. It is one of the reasons many therapists cannot deal with BPD in my experience as the person had to develop scatter gun defences that are so intense its likely they may blow another person away if they lack the necessary ego strength to withstand it and understand the deep psychic pain that lies buried underneath.
The saddest thing for sufferers of BPD which would probably be better labelled as Complex trauma or Complex PTSD is that the very consequences of their traumas end up pushing away just the kind of love and support a sufferer needs and the need for mirroring is very essential too which means that anyone working with this kind of defensive pattern has to be willing to understand and empathise with much that cannot be spoken and may just live somatically, not even accessible to conscious memory.
I personally went through about 4 or 5 other therapists before I found my therapist Katina. Kat and I have had some boundary skirmishes in our time but we have always been able to repair misattunements when they happen and at times I have been so angry I wanted to cut off contact but am glad that I did not as she always empathised while having to help me realise she needed her own boundaries too and could not always be available 24/7 for me. That said, some deeply scarred by attachment trauma may need this, something another therapist told me many years ago, its just that not a lot of therapists are willing to make themselves this available and if they did they probably would need to have only a small client base or they would just get too drained by it.
Today I think of how ferocious I can be when triggered. I am also starting to feel legitimate anger over past times I have been abused emotionally by people who had not one iota of understanding into the level of my trauma. I see now that I have been scapegoated at times for being real and it has lost me some friendships though the true friends have always understood and stayed close to me, affirming my goodness even though in my family I took on the mantle of ‘bad one’ for speaking out and standing up at times.
I still struggle at times with this sense of bad self. Just this morning my inner critic said it was just as well my last partner left me as I was so bonded to trying to be there for my damaged family in the final years before my older sister and mother died, that said I now know it was good when the relationship broke down and I was finally forced to come back to my home town and face my past. Today after a walk with Jasper at the lake beach I was flooded with memories of my past 57 years, most especially the five or so before all the traumas hit listening to the Carpenter’s song Close To You while gazing in my adoring spaniel, Jasper’s eyes. I thought of my sister who was more of a Mum to me when Mum was absent, how sad I was when she left when I was only 3, of how I longed for and how lonely the afternoons were all alone after school or subject to upsets with my other sister who resented being stuck with me after school. I thought of how my sister fell down one afternoon with an aneurysm and of how each night when Mum and Dad went to be with her I sat in the bean bag watching television tyring to blot out the awful truth with mugs of claret stolen from the cask on the top of the frigde. This was only 6 months out from my own near death crash at 17.
So much more went down but prior to this we did have some golden times in that house. I remember the songs and the dinner parties at the long table my Dad built. I think of the part alcohol so often played. And when I hear certain songs I am right back there at that time on the bring of adolescence when all was burgeoning but ended up getting torn so desperately apart.
The truth is I lived to tell the tale and I was lucky to get sober at 31. I had at that time about 14 years of active addiction behind me and that was when the real journey began. I have been sober by the grace of God for nearly 26 years now and for that I am so so grateful.
Today I can talk of things that happened. I can feel the feelings of loss I had to bury with alcohol and drugs increasingly as my father struggled to support me and failed miserably. I know now he did the best he could as a product of the times. I forgive him now for it all and I feel the love I felt for him, a man who struggled in so many way was to build a safe secure family life on the back of complex war trauma.
Today I give love to the painful places in me. When I lash out at others I know why and I listen to the wounded child within who struggled with so much even in the painful aftermath of active sobriety as Jonathan left me alone to face years and years of trauma abandonment pain and then Phil too. I see it now as all meant to be. And I bless it all. I want to be free to love again. I want to be free to trust again. I want to give up a lot of the suffering and keep the pain close but not turn it into suffering using it rather as a reminder of what is most essential to my heart and soul. Love, compassion, trust, forebearance, clarity and courage. Courage to speak my mind, share painful secrets and seek as deeply as I can for love and the wisdom to not pass the wounds onwards any further, love to bend deeply and give soothing to the hurting over aroused places of pain.
Emerging From The Dark Night 