Trigger Un-Happy

It was an exciting week in Trauma land this week. I had not one but TWO trauma triggers.

The week started off with more enlightenment training landmines. We do this thing in my enlightenment training that's kinda like group therapy. I was working on some particularly lovely issue about my mother, when in the middle of being all vulnerable and open, one of my group member's phone beeped. That's not what bothered me. What bothered me was that he said; "sorry about that, my wife is in labor". All eyes turned to him, with a couple of female group members making ooh-aah eyes at him. It didn't help that I had already been obsessing that I was supposed to be delivering about this time. As I felt my whole nervous system beginning to go haywire, I managed to hold it together enough to say, "I'm done". I thought I had dodged a bullet, but the trauma reaction came around and got me the next morning with a full blown panic attack upon waking, much like the ones I experienced when I was pregnant. I called in work sick and moped around much of the day.

I recovered from that when just two days later, I get a phone call from the local multiples group I joined back in April calling to see how I was doing. Apparently this woman didn't talk with the women I broke the news to in July. I said something like, "I don't think you got the message..." Then, the uncomfortable reply of, "well that doesn't mean you can't be part of our club. We have people that work on that kind of thing." My jaw dropped, as in a Katie-Couric-interviewing-Sarah-Palin type of jaw dropping.

"...if you don't want to talk about it, I totally understand..."

"I don't want to talk about it."

Talk about ruining your day.

Before, I used to talk about how I was traumatized. Now, I get to experience what trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder means. Trauma is something that happens in the lower brain center, the limbic brain, and your nervous system. Trauma is also experienced physiologically, such as in panic attacks or dissociation. Triggers are anything that remind you of the trauma and set you off emotionally. In my enlightenment training, you are encouraged to feel your feelings. During an enlightenment training exercise a few weeks ago, a woman in a group of three next to my group of three decides to let out an ear-piercing scream. My group was exploring the openness of love when this scream happened. I was immediately reminded of my mother being crazy and screaming. All my good feelings vanished, my nervous system started going haywire, and I started shutting down. This is an example of what a trigger can do to you if you have not worked out all your trauma.

In hindsight, I realize the trauma began last year. I think each loss the fertility treatments brought was a new trauma. Then, my pregnancy opened up memories of trauma that were deeply hidden. One of them, I think, was my birth trauma. I'm not sure about this, seeing as I didn't have language back then to remember the trauma, but I had this recurring nightmare as a kid about being suffocated. The dream was so confusing because it had very abstract images, but with a crippling sensation of being crushed. The feeling of being suffocated come up again when I was pregnant. I think it might have something to do with being born breech with the umbilicord wrapped around my neck and being blue when I was born.

Next week, I will start back up with the trauma therapy, so I'm hoping that will help.