I looked down at my hands as they shook as I stood in the bathroom stall in the basement of my freshman college dorm (2013). All I could see was my non scarred hands shriveling away slowly. I didn’t panic, I was just confused. What is happening to me? Why am I seeing this? I can’t let anyone know about this. I tried to just tell myself to stop, it didn’t work; later I tried to numb it with alcohol, it didn’t work (actually made it worse); I tried to distract myself and keep busy with my school work, but it still found it’s way out. I couldn’t make sense of what was coming up in my head, let alone explain it to someone else or have them look at me like I am ‘crazy.’
In that short time, more and more things began to come up in my mind but in a distorted way that I couldn’t describe. Although, never in a way that interfered with my day-to-day life or in a way anyone would notice or know even if I would have told them. In time, I expressed some of the things coming up to my mom. She and my step-dad picked me up and brought me to the ER to make sure I didn’t have some sort of infection causing me to ‘hallucinate.’ Sure enough the doctor gave me the all clear, they told me I was ‘fine,’ so I told myself I was indeed ‘fine’ and then ‘they’ slowly disappeared.
At the time I couldn’t identify what it was but now I know I was experiencing flashbacks of repressed memories resurfacing. What you just read was the first time I actually remembered my experience of my body being burned alive in the fire. In time this memory would become clearer and clearer to the point I can remember all the feelings I felt, the sensations, the shape of the room, where people and I were in the room and even what happened prior to the fire in detail. Now I can even remember medical procedures, dressing changes and pain associated with it all, even though I was just 2-3 years old at the time of my burn injury.
Throughout my entire life people have always asked me, “What Happened?” As a child most of the time I was confused by what they were asking and once I realized they were referring to my scars I would give them a scripted response on what I was told happened. I didn't remember. I didn't remember any of it. I couldn’t remember even if I wanted to as a child because it was too much for me to comprehend and process at such a young age. As I got older I remembered the rational side of the current surgeries and medical things I went through, the story I was ‘told.’ I could talk about it in detail, yet my story, my truth around the emotions around it - I wouldn't and couldn’t talk about - it isn’t that I didn’t want to, it was that I didn't remember and I didn’t have the words to articulate it even if I wanted to. My mind and body protected me by dissociating in those moments and then blocking the memories and feelings from my mind. But those memories didn’t disappear for good, rather those memories were still stored in files deep in my subconscious waiting for the right moment for them to reveal themselves and for me to truly process the pain I experienced. Little did I know in order to gain this memory (and have it become just a - memory), in time my body and mind would take out all of these files and make me relive them all.
So the journey to restore and heal from these memories continued:
In 2014 I had to have an emergency appendectomy. The physical pain triggered the memory of the fire again, however this time more intense. I began to be able to identify what was appearing in my mind, although I would have never said it and I couldn’t acknowledge it in myself.
“You are far to functional to have PTSD”
“You’re fine”
“You just don’t know how to cope”
These are things I was told when it would come up and I began to express concern about it. It was invalidated by all of those around me, so I invalidated it in myself. I need to be ‘fine,’ I am ‘fine.’ But I was anything but fine. As time went on that year in my junior year of college it was clear I wasn’t dealing with the effects of the emergency surgery, the wound healing issues and complications that came with it. I was immersed in hidden anger, rage and discontentment and -- flashbacks were beginning to surface in a confused way, although you would have never seen it or known. See I hid this side well, it hide inside me for years so I was all too good at hiding this side from others. All I wanted was for the pain to end and to move forward with life, as that is what I had always done.
But that side was coming out whether I wanted it to or not.
I can remember falling down in my room paralyzed in pain after attending my wound with distorted memories taking over me. None of it made any sense, I couldn’t even identify it as a flashback. All I knew is that at that moment, I just wanted to feel the physical pain of being in the hospital again because at least then the pain I was feeling inside would make sense. This is because “to people who are reliving a trauma, nothing makes sense; they are trapped in a life-or-death situation, a state of paralyzing fear or blind rage. Mind and body are constantly aroused, as if they are in imminent danger. They startle in response to the slightest noises and are frustrated by small irritations. Their sleep is chronically disturbed, and food often loses its sensual pleasures. This in turn can trigger desperate attempts to shut those feelings down by freezing and dissociation” (Van der Kolk, p.97).
Even with my best efforts to hide this side of me, it found its way out. On a casual night drinking for my friend's 21st birthday the flashback switch turned on and I was a ‘different person’. Filled with ‘anger and rage,’ rather than my ‘nice, kind, normal self.’ I fell apart in tears and my friend brought me home as I cried “I just want to be normal, I just want to be normal, I just want this pain to end, make it end.” It was the first time anyone besides my family saw me in this state (and it was extremely rare for them to see me there outside of hospital visits or surgery recovery), and I worked very hard to keep it that way. I didn’t understand why this was happening or why I felt this way, but regardless of this I learned know matter what my behavior was, it was my responsibility and accountability to own it. And from that experience I learned that at some point I would have to address this darkness inside me so it wouldn’t come out again at others around me in that way. I began to recognize what this was coming up in my mind and body as memories - memories replaying and bringing me back in time to see, feel the pain and emotions I once felt causing me to act in a way that was not ‘myself.’ Little did I know that this remembering of the fire was just beginning, and more and more memories would come up in the future in a debilitating way, but also in a way that would lead to deeper healing I didn’t know I needed.
“Our bodies are the texts that carry the memories and therefore remembering is no less than reincarnation,” Katie Cannon states (Van der Kolk). That year I began to acknowledge and accept that my trauma and burn injury would not be something that would go-away (that surgeries wouldn’t just end and I’d be fine) like I believed when I was a child, but rather was a life long injury with long term effects and would continue to effect my everyday life into adulthood. This acknowledgement is what started me down the road to healing. Yet the unhealed trauma continued to affect my life over the years. Physical symptoms of trauma came; chronic pain, inflammation, digestive issues, nausea, fatigue, exhaustion, and ultimately being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. Little did I know at the time came to me all because of repressed and unhealed trauma. All of these symptoms were and are again a result of repressed and invalidated emotions, unhealed emotional wounds and unmet needs.
2020 - COVID-19.
“I don’t feel safe,” Everything and everyone felt like a threat. It started with the mask mandate. Seeing everyone everywhere with masks on (especially surgical masks) would send my entire body into a state of hypervigilance - everything in me told me - EVERYONE was going to hurt me and there was nothing I could do to stop it, even though rationally I knew they weren't. Given that my trauma is largely medical, the entire world felt like one big walking hospital and my mind and body could not differentiate the difference, even though my rational mind knew the difference and wasn’t worried.
I couldn’t look at the person with a surgical mask on, and when I would finally escape the masked face, my entire body would shake uncontrollably and a memory would try and take over me. In time through healing and exposure I could be around individuals with masks on, but in groups my body would still panic. All my body knew when it came to masks was - pain - and now I felt like anytime I left my house I was surrounded by it. There was no pretending this wasn’t happening like prior times. This time I had to remember to process it and truly heal and that meant feeling it. And now I am able to be around others with masks on (within reason).
This time was different than the times before, I knew what was happening, and I knew I was finally ready to heal what I couldn’t in previous times in my life. I was finally in a place in my life where my body and mind felt safe enough to allow me to remember my truth as a child. As I began to write about my story a few years ago I began to make sense of all the things that have happened to me, the order, the date stamps, the ‘more technical’ side of it. Now I see I had to learn everyone's story around me in order to make sense of my own. Yet, the way my body and mind remembers isn’t necessarily even the exact way the event went down, as I was so young. I have learned the facts, the logical side and this has happened, now I had to learn my younger self's interpretation and story of what had happened. The flashbacks and other symptoms - hyperviligence, avoidance, hypersensitivity, anxiety, intrusive thoughts, self-destructive urges, nightmares and severe depression got worse and lead me to formally seek out the diagnosis of complex PTSD and receive treatment including EMDR, Brain-spotting and DBT. In time the files of memories began to unpack. I could and can remember the visual, the feelings I felt in the hospital room, the beeping noises, the lights, fighting in the room, specific people talking to me, voices and blurry shadows of people as I was unable to move. Seeing my bloody patched together body confused at such a young age why I am feeling all this pain. At the worst of it, I could feel them moving my skin from one part of my body to another. I could feel the connectedness of the skin from one place on my body to another. Another time anytime I looked at my scars I saw them as they once were, a bloody mess. I felt intense emotions with little explanation on why. Even memories of bullying, comments, people setting limits and ableism discrimination I experienced because of my burn injury. It was as though all my worst memories, feelings, sensations and pain were doing everything to suffocate and take over me and cause me to fall victim to my burn injury like it once caused me to be.
“Go away, quit hurting me, GO AWAY,” I screamed throwing things across the house at them one of the first times the memories came up in 2020…. But it didn’t work. So I held my dog Eli and called for support as Eli continued to comfort me until it passed. Soon he would be trained to recognize the cues on when I would be ‘triggered’ and needed comforting without prompts from me. When the memories would come up I learned that know matter how hard I tried not to, it was coming up whether I wanted it to or not, so at least I could let it come up in a safe way - laying in bed with or without music on and when that isn’t an option I taught my dog Eli grounding and supporting techniques to help me through those moments.
The chronic feeling of being unsafe became a constant and overwhelming feeling taking over my body, even when I was. Everything felt like a threat to my safety making me hypersensitive to every light, noise, word or tone. So I focused on doing things I felt safe with - my home, my animals - my horse Mia and dog Eli, and people who I could trust were not going to invalidate my emotions, truth and could support me. I stayed away from the people and things (such as going around large crowds of people with masks or possible covid carriers) that sent my body and mind into panic for my safety.
Slowly over the course of 2020 and 2021 more and more memories began to appear in the form of visual, yet mostly just physical sensations, pain and the intense emotions. This is because “when you are trapped in a flashback, you are reliving the worst emotional times of your childhood. Everything feels overwhelming and confusing, especially because there are rarely any visual components to a Cptsd flashback” (Walker, 2013, p. 145). The more I have tried to fight it, the more it hurts and tries to take over me and cripple me. I learned that “your repressed memories come to you when you are finally ready to deal with them” (Rossi, 2019). The memories appeared now, yes because of the pandemic trigger but also because I was finally old enough, safe and secure enough to confront and deal with what had happened to me. It’s like my body and mind are telling me “your story isn’t finished yet, you need to see and feel this now.”
Yet without a doubt navigating through these memories is by far the hardest thing I have ever gone through, even harder than surviving the fire. I would be lying if I said I managed it all with a strength and sturdy head 100% of the time. This is because“we’ll do anything to make these awful visceral sensations go away, whether it is clinging desperately to another human being, rendering ourselves insensible with drugs or alcohol, or taking a knife to the skin to replace overwhelming emotions with definable sensations. How many mental health problems, from drug addition to self-injurious behavior, start as an attempts to cope with the unbearable physical pain of our emotions? If Darwin was right, the solution requires finding ways to help people alter the inner sensory landscape of their bodies” (Van der Kolk, p. 76). It took all the strength in me and a large amount of support and strength from others to get through the mental health implications my burn injury caused me this year and not fall into unhealthy coping mechanisms or addiction and fall victim to it. But through - time, support and love from others and my animals - I have been able to make it through the other side and I will continue to fight this fight.
Today, I have processed a large amount of the trauma I have been through, yet I know this part of my past is never going away and a certain part will probably never be ‘fully’ processed due to the complexity of my trauma in nature. These memories and experiences will always be with me, and I can’t and wouldn’t take them away as they have greatly influenced who I am as a person today. They are what make me a survivor! And I refuse to fall victim to them and let them take over my life (know matter how hard they try to take me down). I have ‘processed’ a lot of the memories and those no longer bother me, I am able to look at them and identify ‘this is just a memory, you are safe now.’ Even though I know new memories will continue to come up for me to process, but at least now I have new resources, tools to cope, my animals by my side and I can look at how far I have come and know I can make it through reliving these memories again until they just become that - a memory.
References:
Rossi, A. (2019, July 5). What Happens When Repressed Memories of Trauma Begin to Resurface. The Mighty. https://themighty.com/2019/07/repressed-trauma-memories-resurface/ .
Walker, P. (2013). Complex PTSD: From surviving to thriving. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
A., V. der K. B. (2015). The Body keeps the score brain, mind and body in the healing of trauma. Penguin Books.