Epiphany: Noticing How My Trauma Operates

The importance of self reflection in the process of sustainable and healthy growth.

Photo by Mitchell Griest on Unsplash

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Once again, I woke up in flight or fright.  I had the familiar throb just below my left shoulder and I held it gently for a while and breathed into it, welcoming the feeling, and not resisting.

The problem with waking up this way is that I seldom know what the triggers are – I might try to link it to a dream if I can remember it, or to a movie I watched the night before – or more likely the “news.”

But as I was coming “to my senses” – focusing on touch, sound, sight etc. and watching my thoughts I reminded myself, that, hey I wasn’t dead.

I became conscious of an appointment I had made at the DMV for the early afternoon.

I noticed myself getting tense once again.  I checked the weather on the phone and saw that we were still in the 30’s Fahrenheit.  I know this is no big deal to my Canadian friends but when my skin gets too cold and dry, I shrivel up.

I was under a cozy comforter and wondered whether I should reschedule the appointment.  It was not an urgent deadline, just something that would probably eat at me until it got handled, so I’d better handle it.

That’s when I noticed even more tension building. Postpone an appointment for no reason other than my own comfort?

Is that How We Raised You?

And there it was.  Another “rule” that I was in the process of discovering that my “self” had accepted growing up as imperative for the great reward of – approval.

My inner voice taunted me:  “I mean come on.  It would be almost 50 degrees by the time I would leave, and I could wear that heavy jacket I was given last year (so grateful) and just walk a few yards from what I remembered was big parking lot.”

So I lay there in a familiar conflict and one which I had generally lived my life resolving against my “self” and in favor of the rules.

It occurred to me now that this was kind of forcing things, which I had been trying not to do anymore.

And then I thought to myself, what if I was truly gentle with myself, as therapists and friends have often counseled?  What if, as Gabor Mate writes, I was truly compassionate with that little spot below my left shoulder and looked out for my “self”?

A Trip to the Laptop Settles It

Well then, I might actually go out to my laptop and see what other appointments were available.  Which is what I did and postponed it by two weeks.

And it felt odd. The annoying mental admonitions would still come zinging in.  But I decided to just rest in stillness, as I’ve been doing recently to take the edge off my nervous system.

I thought back to my parents who were obviously my main “rule-makers” growing up.

But I remembered another time, with my mother, after my father had died.  And I truly think of my father as a very gentle and loving person although he did have a temper and very strong beliefs.

My Father’s Rules Affected My Mother

I had come down to visit her in La Jolla and found her rubbing her forehead as she sat over a bunch of papers at our little table where we would have lunch.

She said that she had been trying to reconcile her checkbook and no matter where she looked she could not find it but she was off.

I asked her by how much?  She said, “thirteen cents” and we both smiled, and I hugged her.

My father had worked extremely hard and had left her comfortable in retirement.

But there was something else which she reminded me of – he had frequently articulated a fear that my mother could not manage her finances and would mess things up.

I Still Remember the Exchanges

He had had similar misgivings and would freely express them about my own sloppiness, with money and elsewhere and I remember how it had stung.

So as not to trigger such a response I had learned to listen to my mind when it warned me of an upcoming deadline or responsibility and become fearful that I would FAIL.

Yes, that was the word.  And as my mother and I laughed at the absurdity of fretting over 13 cents I had enormous empathy for her – because she had completed medical school.

She could manage a checkbook. 

And so could I.  And I did not have to continue to live by the “rules” – after my surgery when people asked me if I had had seizures, migraines I feared that that would surely happen if I did not do everything perfectly.  I remembered that feeling in my gut.

That’s what’s been programmed in me. 

Is Noticing Enough?

The thing is, my memories of my parents are loving, affectionate and highly intelligent people whose love for me I never remembered questioning.

But like my father with responsibility my mother also had rules – about how to take care of myself and when I broke these rules, even as a grown adult, they would still let me know, by word or by gesture.

I also understand that this was their way of preparing me for a world that had hurt them very badly.  (And those same horrific scenarios are happening again).

As I’ve come to understand this, I developed even more love and compassion for them but apparently not so much for myself.

Maybe that is the lesson here.  Is Noticing enough – for what?

For a mental sense of “awakening” to some true nature?  To continue the seeking that I have done for most of my life for something else?

Once again, I have to question my own thoughts and not give in to the mental tyrant, but just allow the mind to serve me as it has so well for a long time.

It has become my practice to try to consciously welcome and allow anything that comes up without, as the Dalai Lama said, “judging the universe.”

I won’t say it’s easy.  The judge is deeply programmed and relentless.  But the reminder to be gentle and compassionate with my “self” has been helpful.

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(Tom Bunzel was a contributor to Collective Evolution and now writes for The Pulse.  His new book "Conversations with Nobody: Getting to Know ChatGPT" – a book written with AI, about AI and giving a taste of AI, is available on Amazon.)