The Trauma Olympics
Image by @austris_a via Unsplash
When I first started therapy at 15 years old, I did not have lofty goals.
I wanted to not feel depressed, wanted to stop having panic attacks, wanted to live to see my 18th birthday. I wanted to make it through life under the rule and chaos of an abusive parent. If I really dreamed, maybe I’d even get to live happily ever after, despite all the evidence informing me that this was not a thing.
Now, at 30, I’ve participated in therapy in some form or another for half my life. I no longer have panic attacks, no longer have clinical depression, and no longer have that parent in my life.
If you are a science person, I would like to underscore this as a direct causation, not a simple correlation. I escaped the person making me feel horrible and began to feel better, imagine that.
Now that I’m in a healthier and happier place in my life, this means that I get to spend therapy sessions really digging into the deep stuff instead of just managing distressing symptoms and surviving. It’s been a joy, both sarcastically and authentically.
I’ve learned so much about myself from digging into my many “little t” traumas, my attachment style, my family dynamics, my own personal hopes and dreams.
In terms of what my 15 year-old self had desperately hoped to achieve, I have achieved it. I know what triggers and what centers me. I know how to effectively manage big emotions in ways that do not include yelling at my family or making children feel responsible for my reactions.
I’ve became an adult who handles her own shit. But in the digging, I’ve of course uncovered more to attend to, more to excavate and examine.
I’ve interrupted a cycle of generational trauma and all-in-all yuck, but I want more. I want to not only manage my responses to any triggers effectively, I want to not be triggered at all.
I want bliss.
I want normalcy (whatever that is).
I want a brain that, when presented with the opportunity to help a friend wash dishes after a dinner party automatically thinks, “This is great, I love helping my friends!” instead of turning quickly to a static channel of rage and worthiness issues stemming from sexism internalized long ago from my grandfathers.
I want to not have to work to feel good, I want to just feel good. I want the gold.
Ultimately, I know I’ve made exceptional strides in healing myself and my future, and what if I only bring the baton this far? What if I decided to be happy and grateful for making it to the Olympics at all?
What if I stopped exhausting myself from constant therapizing - reading all the self-help books and subscribing to every podcast on healing from narcissistic abuse? What if instead of striving and continuing to run, I told my descendants about the leg of the journey that I traveled and prepared them for their own leg by making a nice pot roast for the road and loading up their backpacks with all of my favorite books?
What if I thanked myself for my work and decided to trot around Olympic village without a medal around my neck, but with a big fat goofy smile on my face?
Maybe, I’ve done it.
Maybe I’ve done it, after all.
Yours,
Emily Rose // Miss Magnolia
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