Tag: post traumatic stress

To the One Who I Kept Letting Back In

SamLeave a comment

Dear M,

I’ve reached a point in my healing journey where I have been forced to confront some ugly truths about myself and my behavior. The biggest realization that I’ve come to is that I have to reclaim some of my power that I’ve lost over the years through relationships with toxic people. You and I have a very toxic relationship which I’ve tried to ignore for far too long and allowed you to claim way too much power over me because of it.

You and I are not good for one another. I keep hoping that you’re going to change and become the person that I believe you to be and that’s simply not something you are capable of doing. I have tried to help you and that’s been to my own detriment. You are the person that you are and not likely to change and that is simply someone who is not a good person for me to have in my life. I have allowed you to claim too much power over me in the interest of keeping you in my life for selfish reasons. I became so accustomed to chaos in my life during my childhood that I sought out people and relationships which emulated that chaos and validated my experience that shaped my paradigm of how the world exists. But I’ve discovered that I have to relearn how to have relationships that are not chaotic and toxic and strive to validate a new paradigm that there is good in the world and that people can be healthy for me. I can’t do that if you are still on the periphery for me to come to when I need to seek out a chaotic and toxic experience.

I forgive you for the hurt and pain that you’ve inflicted on me over the years. I need to be able to move forward in my life and I can’t do that if I’m still clinging to the pain and trauma I experienced at your hands. My forgiveness doesn’t mean that I’m absolving you of any responsibility for the pain but I’m reclaiming my power and releasing the anger that I’ve held on to for far too long. It would be easy for me to remain angry with you for everything that you’ve done but that doesn’t help me and I need to heal from my experiences if I’m going to be able to move forward.

I’m at peace with how we’re ending things now. I’m going to move forward and build the life that I know I deserve without the specter of you hanging over my head. I hope you know now that words are powerful and are more careful and considerate in what you choose to say to those around you. I wish you to know that your anger has an impact on those around you and when you choose to become violent other people suffer. But most of all I hope you are able to live a life that you can be proud of and that you are able to find fulfillment. I forgive you for the things that you said and did in the past and while I have no desire to have any sort of friendship with you just know that I wish you light and love in your life.

Best,

S

The Tools That Have Helped Me Along The Way

SamLeave a comment

In every journey, we find tips, tricks, and tools that can help us move along the path we’re taking more effectively. Healing from complex trauma is no different. I’m not a therapist, psychiatrist, or in any way capable of providing you with advice on how you can move along the path most effectively – I’m merely someone who has walked the path and found tools that helped me along the way.

Books

I’ve always been a vivacious reader, books provided me with an escape from the situations I was living through and gave me a way to process what I was feeling. I started reading “Self-Help” books when I was a teenager, living in the chaos I was living in I didn’t have someone I could talk to about how I was feeling or what I was thinking, and found books gave me insight into how I could process those thoughts and feelings. Even now, I’ve found several books that I recommend to anyone working through complex trauma because they are able to provide that insight and have allowed me to process.

Complex PTSD Workbook: A Mind-Body Approach To Regaining Emotional Control And Becoming Whole

This book has been the one my therapist and I use the most, it provides a hybrid approach to “self-help” because it’s written as a workbook so it contains areas for you to journal and process everything that you’ve read.

A Practical Guide to Complex PTSD: Compassionate Strategies to Begin Healing from Childhood Trauma

Written by the same author as above this book is a helpful reference book and companion to the workbook I already mentioned. It’s available as an EBook which makes it handy for me to have it downloaded and available on my phone when I need to reference it quickly.

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Dr Van Der Kolk wrote the first book I read on trauma and helped me understand that a lot of the physical symptoms I was experiencing were tied to the trauma I’d survived. His work has been referenced by countless other professionals and is considered to be one of the foremost works on post traumatic stress.

What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

I personally enjoyed listening to this as an audiobook and hearing the conversation between Oprah and Dr. Perry more than reading the book itself. My therapist enjoyed reading it more than listening so I think it might depend on your own preference. It’s a powerful conversation between two experts on trauma and reinforces that it’s not about “what’s wrong with you” but rather “what happened to you”.

Apps

The app stores are filled with “self-help” apps and it can be hard to navigate and wade through to find the ones that are actually worth the download and even more so the ones that are worth paying for the premium content.

Headspace

I use this app when I’m feeling overwhelmed and need to meditate. Part of my healing has focused on bringing my attention to the “now” instead of the “then” and grounding myself in the present moment. Available as a monthly or annual subscription I have found this one to be worth the cost.

Calm

This is the first app that my therapist recommended to me, I personally don’t find it worth the cost of an annual subscription but I do know others who have found it helpful and use it regularly. I prefer Headspace for my meditation.

Rootd

I use this as my “emergency” panic attack app, when meditation and grounding techniques have failed and I am in full panic mode I have found this app useful and helpful in bringing me back on solid ground. It has a red button known as Rootr that with one press will ask if you want to face the panic head on or if you want them to contact a trusted friend to help you through it.

These are just a few of the tools I’ve found to help me along in my journey to feeling empowered and reclaiming the life that I want to have. I encourage you to work with a qualified mental health professional to find other techniques that might work for you.

To the Boy Who Made Me Feel Powerless First…

SamLeave a comment

Note: These letters will have any personally identifiable information removed not to protect my abusers but to allow you to see yourself within the words. I want these to serve as a jumping off point for others and the best way I know to do that is if you are able to envision yourself saying these words to those who hurt you.

Dear K,


I realize it’s been over 15 years since we’ve seen or spoken to one another but as I work through healing from things that have happened in the past I’ve been reaching out to those individuals who had a major impact on my life all those years ago.


I want you to know that I forgive you for the things that you said and did. When I moved to that tiny town 25 years ago I was coming into it with my own heavy baggage and I can acknowledge that I may have made it challenging for others to get to know me. Objectively, you and I should have been friends
all those years ago. We were in the same class, went to the same church, and your family was friends with my extended family yet you chose instead to bully me and make me feel small, powerless, and insignificant like I had no friends in the world and somehow deserved every mean word and action hurled my way.
This forgiveness I’m offering you is not me excusing your behavior in the slightest. What this forgiveness does is release me from the pain I’ve been carrying for 25 years. The things you said and did to me for the 10 years we were in each other’s orbit may not have seemed significant to you and you may not have thought about them in the years since but they altered the course of my life in many ways and while I can now see that you may have had your own struggles and thought that bullying and harassing me somehow made you more powerful and released some of your own pain. Your life may not have been the sunshine and roses that you wanted to portray, based on your family’s behavior towards me – a virtual stranger – I can only imagine how they were to those they considered family. I hope you find healing from any pain and trauma you may have experienced at their hands and that you are able to find a better path forward.

I know from family who still live in town that you’re married now with a child of your own and my hope is that you can do better for them than your family did for you. I hope that your wife has never lived through the pain of having someone tell them to “not bother coming to school on Monday” and encouraging them to “kill yourself this weekend”. I hope that your son never knows the struggles of not having a safe space to express himself and that he never knows the sadness of having to be followed home from school listening to the taunts of those people who should have been his friend. I hope you know peace and safety, that you are in a place in your life where words are no longer your weapon.

As for me, I have peace now – I removed myself from the toxic environment of that small town 15 years ago and choose not to look backward. You may have heard that I’m married now, which is true – my husband and I got married over a decade ago and I’m living a life that I can be proud of working in a career that I am passionate about and allows me to help those who need me the most. I choose to have a very small circle of friends who show me the friendship I should have known all those years ago. I hope you know now that words are powerful and are more careful and considerate in what you choose to say to those around you. I hope you are able to live a life that you can be proud of and that you are able to find fulfillment. I forgive you for the things that you said and did all those years ago and while I have no desire to have any sort of friendship with you just know that I wish you light and love in
your life.


All the best,
S

The Letters I’ll Never Send

SamLeave a comment

I received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder over 2 years ago, by the time I received my diagnosis I’d been living with the fallout of things that happened to me for over 30 years. I’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, and was struggling with chronic health issues. My life was in chaos but the chaos was familiar to me and I had learned to thrive within it. Just like Bane was born in to the darkness I’d been born into chaos. I struggled with eating disorders, depression, self–harm, and was being bullied at school and at home. I never received any reprieve from the chaos so I adapted to it and learned to exist within it.

Part of healing from trauma is learning to come to terms with those things which happened to you. I have always been a vivacious reader and consumer of words. Words have power. You put them together and create sentences that can harm or heal. You string those sentences together to create prose which can give a sad, depressed teenager the feeling that they’re not alone in this world.

I’ve found that writing letters to my abusers has been cathartic and healing for me, these are letters which I will never send for a host of reasons. Not the least of which is because the healing is mine. In healing from the things which happened to me, I’m taking back the power that I had to lose all those years ago.

Letter writing has been a proven therapy technique for years, decades even. But when I sat down and started writing my own I searched for examples so I’d have a jumping off point to know if I was doing it “the right way” and didn’t find the resources I needed so I decided to create my own. Some of these letters have been shared with my therapist as part of my healing and some she hasn’t even seen they’ve only been written for me. But, I want to help those who come after me in their own healing journey if I can in even a small way so I’ve decided to publish them here. These letters may never reach their intended targets but if they can help you to write your own letters of healing then they’ve served a greater purpose than I could have ever envisioned.

I encourage you to read my words and use them to create your own letters of healing because when we are able to heal from that which happened to us then we can find a path forward.