I hate days like today. Every once in a while, I have a day where my daughter’s very presence is triggering for me. And today is one of those days.
She is seven and she and my husband are by far the best things in my life. I adore her, and so much of the time she is a huge comfort to me. She is kind, cuddly, and sweet, as well as active, silly, stubborn, bright, challenging and all sorts of other things that make her the wonderful creature that she is. We end every day with “cuddle time” in her bed, and we usually tell each other what the best and worst things in our day were. All too often I can’t tell her what the worst thing about my day really was and on those days, generally my “favoritist” thing was cuddle time itself.
Because a hug and a kiss from her can be so comforting, I have come to realize that I have to be careful that I don’t rely on her too much for comfort. I felt responsible for my mother’s emotional well being and I definitely do not want to place the same burden on my daughter. Fortunately, I don’t need for her to comfort me in order for being with her to be comforting. Seven year olds are so very much about the moment, so spending time interacting with one can actually be grounding, making it easier for me to step away from whatever “then” memories/emotions that are plaguing me.
So days like today are quite unpleasant for me. I can’t tolerate having her very close to me- I start to feel claustrophobic and like I am going to jump out of my skin when she comes within about 3 feet of me. This is a real problem, because normally I encourage her physical affection and I absolutely don’t want for her to feel like I am rejecting her. Simply seeing her move starts to remind me of things, although so far I have managed to avoid following those memory traces and only have echoes of what is there. Unfortunately, she is a noisy chewer, and I cannot tolerate hearing her eat right now, so I often get up to do some chore when she comes to the table with a snack. Honestly, if there was some way to avoid seeing her for the next 6 hours, where she was happy, I would welcome it. Her presence is a real stress for me and on top of that my worries about making her feel rejected just make things even more stressful. To compound it all, to some extent I am having a freeze reaction to what is being evoked in me and I stop thinking clearly about how to help myself until it occurs to me to take myself out of the room.
Thank goodness these days only seem to come once every couple of months or so! I wish that I had some understanding of what is causing this. In general they have followed on the heels of a particularly difficult flashback, but that doesn’t seem to have been the case this time. Something did come up yesterday, but it wasn’t anything new and it didn’t leave me feeling horrible afterwards. If these days are caused by flashbacks, I don’t know that there is anything that I could do to prevent them, but if they are caused by something else or some combination of factors, maybe there would be a way to prevent them.
In the mean time, I am trying to counter my reactions to my daughter by remaining as grounded as possible in the here and now and resisting the urge to “follow” the bits of memories that are being evoked. And I keep on reminding myself that while this is very unpleasant for me to experience and it makes for a not fun day for my daughter, it will pass before too long and it doesn’t happen very often. It is better for me to remain as calm as possible about it, because getting upset will only keep me in an unsettled and unstable feeling place longer. Yes, it is that whole, “don’t fear fear” thing. I may not be able to stop my reactions, but at least there are some things that I can do to help keep from escalating what is happening.
And I am very grateful that she has a wonderful daddy who can and will also spend time with her. Right now the two of them are downstairs together, letting me have some welcome time to myself. Knowing that I can take breaks and remind myself of the ways that I can work on managing the day helps me feel calmer about the whole thing.
I have been reading a book on mindfulness and the author is currently talking about learning meditation and how the mind will wander during meditation, but rather than getting frustrated with the wandering a person can look at each wandering as a chance to better learn how to notice what is happening and bring his or her self back to their focus. At the moment, that is how I am trying to look at today. I can’t make myself not be triggered, but I can notice it as it is happening and try not to engage in the reactions that are being evoked, but instead refocus myself on what is actually going on in the room at that moment. The more often I do this, the better I will become at catching it quickly and successfully keeping myself from being fully drawn into a triggered state.
Excellent post! I had a family member with complex PTSD, and this all sounds very familiar. The best thing I’ve found, and what had the most profound healing results for my family member was Somatic Experiencing. I’d recommend you find and read Waking The Tiger and In An Unspoken Voice both by Peter A Levine.
Mindfulness and meditation are both great pursuits as well 🙂
Good luck and I hope you find the healing you deserve 🙂
Thanks for sharing.
Rohan.
Thank you! I have heard about Peter Levine, but haven’t yet read any of his books. Mama Bear did recently tell me that she was reading a book of his and would lend it to me when she was done. Unfortunately, our library system doesn’t carry any of his books, so I can’t check them out that way.
Somatic was life changing for me!
Very astute observations on your part. I think you are well on your way to a healthy way for dealing with this trigger! 🙂
Thank you! I sure hope so, because it really makes me sad, in addition to all of the other stuff.
wonderful what you’re doing to cope, taking care of you! i think every parent needs breaks from their kids at times! you talked about not being able to handle listening to her eat, for me, I can’t handle listening to our dog lick and he licks obsessently. it helps now for me to know the reason i can’t stand it, is because it’s a trigger. now too Hubby understands why it makes me nuts!
lotsa love xo
Well, I have Mama Bear continually encouraging me to take the next step in learning how to take better care of myself. Sometimes I would rather just have comforting, I think, but I do know that in the end this is better for me.
While talking about this post with some friends of mine, I realized a few things: 1) I have been fighting a migraine today, which always reduces my resiliency (migraines hit me very hard emotionally and they make me sound sensitive- chewing.) 2) One of my friends who doesn’t have PTSD said that she is having many of the same reactions to her kids, because they are all stir crazy, what with being out of school for vacation, but cooped up inside of the house because of the weather. This is yet another one of those things that is not exclusive to us with PTSD, but may be more intense than for the average person. 3) My daughter absolutely is going stir crazy and is about to drive her dad crazy as well me! 4) Writing about this and thinking through how I can deal with it intentionally was very helpful to me.
This may bring me to writing later on about something else that Mama Bear and I have been talking about- my tendency to be overly aware of internal states that could indicate a trauma response.
well all those things would really make it hard for anyone let alone us to cope!!
i’m sorry you’re fighting a migraine. that’s the worst! i hope it doesn’t last long! xo
The good news was that it never fully developed, but the bad news is that it still hasn’t gone away completely. But I am coping ok now. 🙂 Thanks!
awww although i wish it was gone completely, i’m glad it didn’t worsen!
My ‘T” thinks the migrains I get are trauma related and has showed me a technique to use if i get one…well i haven’t had one in a long time (thankfully) to try it out on yet. if not done right it can be triggering too.
You sound like you have a lot of awareness and such a good heart. That is such a gift to your daughter.
I agree that somatic work is excellent. Some of the healing work needs to address pre-verbal or non-cognizent levels. As well as the physiological level of trauma. And somatic body work can do this sometimes better than talk therapy, but even better is doing a combination. Right now I’m pursuing neurological repatterning through developmental movement patterns but I’ve also been curious about Somatic Experiencing.
I googled ‘Peter Levine Healing Trauma’ and found a lot of sources. I really liked what I found here:
http://www.traumahealing.com/somatic-experiencing/healing-post-traumatic-stress-disorder-using-lessons-in-nature.html
Thanks for sharing your process on your blog. It continues to inspire me.
Thank you. 🙂 I will admit that at the moment I am feeling a bit confused about how I need to be proceeding. But I did watch an interview with Peter Levine last week and I was very intrigued by what he said.