A feeling of being deprived and squeezed : some personal experiences with unravelling traumatic traces and flashbacks

I had the thought after reading through several posts on trauma and flashbacks of how captured by my symptoms I used to be on most days… I also realise that in chasing my healing I triggered a re-enactment in terms of the head injury of 2005. Today talking to my brother about a difficult situation which feels repressive I had that sense of being crushed and squeezed, prevented from moving, held fast in place. I noticed how activated I became and how he reacted which didn’t help us to really connect since he could not understand my reaction. That happening, even though painful to me was something I managed while using my voice to at least try to get through to him what was bothering me. In a short space of time things did de-escalate and I recognised was happening.

It was not an uncommon experience in my childhood, wanting to reach out to embrace something, move forward in life, or make an effort only to have it denied, be told I couldn’t have it or lacked the capacity to generate that power. Another common feeling dominating my childhood was the crushing loneliness of coming home to an empty house day after day after school. Often when I arrive home I go through a trauma spin/repetition/flashback…. sometimes I see myself in the role of my Mum and my dog as myself, loyally waiting for her to come home, gearing my self around her as much as I could in the hope of being seen. I have that sense of feeling unmirrored, or unseen. I may also not allow myself the time to down shift on coming home, I race around manically to get things done and forget to breathe a deep breath, have been noticing a lot lately how much I hold my breath or even hold in my wee in sometimes..

In childhood I was a frequent bed wetter. I am sure this was due to the over control of the environment, the feeling of having to ‘hold it all in’. Often on long car trips Dad would not stop for a toilet break. I watched an episode of a reality show lately in which one of the participants who had a very obvious needy inner child on the show spoke of how he also had this problem.. seeking the attention of someone and holding it was more important than his own need to wee.

This can play out as me not being able to get up to go to the loo in the middle of the night, to not even sometimes recognising the body signals that say I need to do it. To me it speaks about how much I had to shut my own body down in childhood and how little available attention or ‘holding’ there was.

I noticed lately with waking I am not as stuck in spasms and contractions as I deepen into the breath, long inhalations and exhalations are possible that were not possible before. I can look around up and out which is something a body therapist recommended I do some years ago to anchor more in the present time than focus on body centered symptoms. A spiral effect goes on in my body and all along my limbs, (arms and legs) at times.. There is a twist to do with my body I work with each morning due to the pinning affect of 101 days of skeletal trauma and the repeat of the first traumatic injury within the second. As a result of the head injury my body got twisted as that shock threw my head, neck and spinal alignment around. In time it weakened the roots of the tooth that supported my bridge and had to be removed a few years ago and over the past years I have gone through about four major dental surgeries all of which triggered both flashbacks and pain, I had to work to manage the best way I could.

My body has a swing bias to one side that I have been working over time to correct, no one could know the hours I spend on the floor with charges running through, while I use different yoga stretches and twists to re balance along the axis of my spine. I noticed today how badly riddled with varicose veins the lower portion and foot of my left side is. The left side is the feminine side, it seems to have been pressed down by the more rigid, active, masculine side over all of these years. Shock and fear at times made me twist away from connection too. I have noticed that at times being with family activates memories or energy that feels blocking or restrictive in some way, its only lately I can be in more comfort with my sister as I counter that tendency to pull away or avoid that can be a huge part of trauma.

It seems to me that so much of our trauma gets buried in symptoms.. The name of Peter Levine’s book on healing trauma In An Unspoken Voice articulates this… Peter advocates the use of sounds too such as the long exhalation of Vooooo which I have experienced helps to move vibrational charge through the body. Over past years I have had to find my own unique combination of things that help.

The post has been a weak attempt to articulate some of what was prompted by reading recent posts on flashbacks and trauma. Of some use to trauma survivors may be the blog I wrote a while back which includes 13 tips from Complex PTSD specialist Peter Levine for dealing with flashbacks.. I like to share some of this from time to time in the hope it may help others.

https://emergingfromthedarknight.wordpress.com/2016/01/25/understanding-and-dealing-with-flashbacks/