Days Without Incident: Eight

trigger warnings: alludes to assault in the first paragraph, child abuse, mentions self-harm and subsequent research regarding the topic, 

So the trauma is over, I’m safe now, and I’m no longer in a home where I feel unsafe going to bed at night. My partner loves me. He respects my boundaries. And I’m not interacting with the people who let those actions be swept under the rug both literally and legally. So then why do I still feel the negative effects of the assault which hasn’t taken place in over ten years? Is that the reason that I still feel unsafe? At this stage in my life, there are so many other circumstances that could have chronically shaken my nervous system. So then, am I applying meaning to a situation that doesn’t even affect me any more? 

Bessel Van Der Kolk wrote the book on the ways childhood trauma is engraved into our bones and our nervous system because he was literally there on the ground floor pushing for legislation that recognizes the effects of childhood trauma on personality and behavior. He was in every single meeting with the DSM board debating the need for a clear and concentrated research effort for childhood abuse and neglect, because he knew that it went far beyond just causing anxiety or depression later in life. Van Der Kolk knew that getting to the root of the abuse could potentially help end this cycle of violence and cruelty in the world. Sure, you can define a child’s behavior as “oppositional defiant disorder,” “major depressive disorder,” or even “disruptive mood dysregulation disorder,” but are you just trying to label this child with easy-to-manage and easy-to-treat labels? Are you able to actually understand the meaning behind their behavior and help future children who are experiencing the same pain? No. 

The NCTSN (the National Child Traumatic Stress Network) was established in 2001–after a long journey of collecting data, presenting findings, lobbying, etc.—and it was the first government-regulated organization dedicated to the research and treatment of traumatized kids (B. Van Der Kolk and S. Pratt, 2021). Van Der Volk and his group of colleagues worked on a proposal for that meeting for over four years before it was officially passed. That was only about twenty years ago at this point. 

In those four years, they were able to conclude that traumatized children often experience the following symptoms: dysregulation, difficulty fitting into a group, and then problems concentrating. These children would have intense mood swings that would range from extreme tempers and panic attacks to complete disassociation. As their body constantly pushes out stress hormones to combat the fire alarms going off in the child’s brain, it can result in physical problems like poor sleep quality, headaches, unexplained pain, and oversensitivity to touch and sounds (B. Van Der Kolk and S. Pratt, 2021). This directly relates to the findings from the book we talked about in our first few posts. Chronic stress can lead to a number of physical symptoms, which is why I feel the need to look at my health from a psychologist’s point of view rather than continue down our current path with the ENTs and GPs. Frustrated with themselves and the overwhelming presence of these symptoms, victims tend to engage in “tension relieving activities” including risk-taking behaviors, masturbation, or self-harm.

Unexplained pain, headaches, and oversensitivity to touch and sound are the three symptoms I would use to define my own health concerns. The lymph nodes under my jaw on the right side have been swollen for almost three years now. Is there an underlying health concern that the cameras, ultrasounds, CT scans, and bloodwork didn’t catch? Or, is it more likely that my chronic stress has begun taking its toll on my physical body? Though I have had moments where it feels like I’ll never escape this new reality of chronic pain in my neck, ears, and nervous system as a whole, I am hopeful that this research can help me overcome my circumstance. 

  Capturing the reality of childhood abuse is difficult for all parties involved. Nobody wants to accept that they played a vital role in their child’s turbulent upbringing. When my mother took me to the police station to bury that report that my therapist had made against my step sister, did she do it because she felt at fault? Was she hoping that denying the facts would derail the path to distrust and delinquency?

It was around this time that I became the “volatile” one in the family. I didn’t keep my mouth shut when it came to the small stuff I had control over. I didn’t want to eat anything I didn’t like. I started painting on my walls and wearing whatever the hell I wanted. I felt like I needed to tell my dad that all his girlfriends were irritating and fat. I’m sure my family thought that I was losing my mind. My parents sent me to a mental hospital, painted my black walls in my room bright blue while I was gone, and then told me that having a little more Vitamin C would “help.” They hid the knives in the house, took all the glass out of my room, and kept unloading art supplies on me in hopes that I’d pick up a paint brush instead of something more violent. I tried painting my legs, my stomach, my arms, and even my face. Nothing felt like enough. Nobody was truly listening. 

I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder shortly after that. I was only 16. They tried to treat it with mood stabilizers, sensory dampening pills, and therapy three times a week. Things got harder. I was cutting more often. People were glossing over the issue, telling me that I was broken in a certain way, but then never actually listening to what was going on inside. I was reading more and more books each week just looking for someone who I could relate to. That’s when I found Looking for Alaska by John Green. Alaska Young was everything I felt I was. She was strong, confident, and outgoing. But she was deeply broken. She was surrounded by books that brought her comfort, but she was also throwing herself into situations that would eventually kill her. She felt everything deeply, stood up for the ones she cared about, stood by her own beliefs, and then she died.

The second part of the book follows Miles. Miles wanted to understand why. He was the only person in the book who wanted to understand what led Alaska to that fateful day. I wanted someone like that. I wanted someone who was curious about what kind of person I was underneath the scars. It didn’t occur to me at the time that maybe my family should have cared a little more, and maybe that’s all I really wanted. I’m not even sure which members of my family knew that I self-harmed. None of them ever spoke to me about it aside from the occasional “don’t cut yourself over that” or “better not say that, or Mikaela will go cut herself.” Since the scars were never deep, neither was the concern.

Misdiagnosed and misunderstood, I was a sixteen year old girl with no idea where I wanted to go and who I wanted to become. My therapists were treating part of the problem, but didn’t understand the whole picture. They were likely doing the best they could with the research available at the time, but it was not a suitable approach to my diagnosis. That’s why statistics are so comforting. Knowing there is a growing research base surrounding this topic is a comfort that couldn’t be provided by all those fiction books I was stuffing my brain with in grade school. I will continue to do my research to better understand myself, and so that I can help you all understand that there is help out there. As we learn more about CPTSD, I will be sharing all of my findings with my readers. 

Thanks for joining me for day 7!