“When people suffer from trauma however, their threat sensor becomes hyperactive and hypervigilant, convincing them that things are dangerous and wrong, right now constantly. It’s like a threat sensor recognizes that it was unable to prevent the initial trauma and now it is trying to make up for it by being active and loud all the time.”
- Trauma, the Invisible Epidemic: How Trauma works and How we can Heal from it
- Paul Conti, M.D.
I’m starting to unpack the roots of my past trauma’s to understand how they have impacted my current state. I will get into the years as a first responder and ski patroller at a later date, but for now I’m going way back to my pre-teen years.
I hate my name. My full name Jacob anyway. It was the root of a lot of teasing and taunting as a kid. A lot of tears and anguish, a lot of pain and fear and anxiety. The teasing led to the bullying and the beatings, until one day I lashed out and everything started to change.
I’ve spent most of my life in a state of hyper-vigilance and stress. I only started to really realize it a few years ago, but I didn’t realize it was a problem until now. My parents built a house in the suburbs when I was 4 or so. When we moved in we were one small neighborhood surrounded by lots of vacant fields, canals and good times. Our house was one of the first to be completed and we were one of the first families to live there. IT was a pretty good place to grow up for the most part. We rode our BMX bikes everywhere, had jump tracks built all over and could fish for carp in the canal and shoot pellet guns in the fields without a care. Young boys dream life. But there was a dark side. A side I have thought about most of my life, a side that laid the groundwork for my mask and my fear of being held down or restrained.
I had a few good friends my age, but for the most part, our neighborhood was older boys. There were three sets of brothers and their friends I remember clearly. I see their faces, I know their names. They were all older than me and they started the taunting… at some point I don’t recall, I lashed out at someone taunting me and I was quickly and easily beat up by the older boy. I was small, I wasn’t as strong or as athletic. I didn’t have big brothers who beat me up and taught me to fight. I was mocked for my name. I was mocked for being small and weak, I was mocked for being a little sensitive and a little awkward.
As years went on, my brain tells me most of this stuff started occurring between 3rd grade and 7th grade but my timeline may be completely distorted by a year or two in either direction, it got worse. Once the older boys figured out I had a temper, they would encircle me and tease me. Sometimes the teasing would involve physical contact or taking my things, but mostly it was just kids being cruel. They would push me around the circle, sometimes in my own backyard, sometimes in my own garage. They would tease and tease and tease. I remember crying, a lot, just making things worse. And eventually I would break, I would lash out at someone and they would attack me. Holding me down and beating me up, leaving me their crying and laughing as they walked away. It happened a lot over those years and then three things happened that changed it.
The first was an incident over a new bike. One of the neighbor kids came over to show me his new bike, it was blue, I remember well. We were in my garage and I remember being teased for my older bike that still had a skid brake. He mocked the color and its age, he made fun of me. At some point, I grabbed my dad’s axe and chopped at the spokes of the new bike, I’m sure I bent a few but did no real damage. He left, his dad came back. His dad was bigger than my dad, but it didn’t matter, my parents weren’t home. His dad picked me up and hit me so hard it knocked the breath out of me. He threatened me and warned me against telling my parents. I don’t think I ever did, in fact they may be learning about this now.
The second happened in neighbors side yard. I was in the circle, being teased, being taunted. I was on the ground in the gravel and they were kicking rocks at me and laughing. There was a piece of an old broomstick nearby, I was able to grab it and I swung. I don’t know who I hit, but they backed off, and as I fought the tears and the pain, I slowly made my way home, swinging the stick. In that moment I learned that the only way to stop the teasing and the beatings was to be armed, to attack while being attacked. To lash out with superior force. It took me a long time to stop doing this.
The third. My little brother had gotten in a fight with a kid a few houses away in their garage. When I heard him scream I ran to help. As I jumped between them and grabbed the other kid ( I was maybe 11 or 12 max?) his mom came into the garage. She was a large woman. She grabbed me and picked me up, carrying me out in her front yard and beating me with her free arm. I struck her, in the face, breaking her glasses and she proceeded to beat me more. It was all witnessed by another woman down the road who came to my aid. She got this woman to let me go, to stop hitting me and she took me home. This started a cascade of events, I lost most of my friends – they were not allowed to play with me anymore, she demanded restitution and respect. I was ostracized from my own neighborhood for coming to my brothers aid. We were kids, doing things that I imagine almost every kid in the world did at one time or another. It sucked. I drifted into new, less healthy friends and habits, I hung out with other ostracized and wounded kids at work. I put up more walls, I became less kind and less sensitive. I became shy and reclusive, my school work suffered, my already fragile self-image was destroyed. I’ve been trying to put it back together ever since.
So what? I’m not looking for sympathy. This isn’t a self-pity talk. This is looking at the roots of pain and fear. Of not feeling safe in my own neighborhood. Of not feeling safe in my own skin. Of changing my name on school assignments because the pain caused by the teasing.
What I’ve come to realize is I have never felt safe since. I have been looking for a place to feel safe, to be loved and accepted for who and what I am. To allow this pain to run its course and not feel like I have to be constantly on alert. Constantly on the defensive and constantly ready to respond. I see all of these factors and contributors to my breakdown. A life of feeling unsafe, a month of intense grief and a few hours of extreme alcohol abuse. If I take these three things in reverse, I see a path to balance and healing.
The extreme alcohol abuse is the easy one, it’s the tangible thing that I can most easily eliminate (and have eliminated) from my life. It’s the key to the door that allows me to say and do things that I would never do sober. The horrible things I’m paying for aren’t me. They don’t even live inside me. They are made possible by the complete loss of control, logic and reason. They are made possible by the heightened emotions, loss of emotional control and sensory overload that alcohol creates. I’m 30 days sober and haven’t thought twice about drinking. It’s a positive change that I am embracing not dreading.
The grief. I’ve written about this already in a previous post, but suffice it to say it’s going to take some time, effort and tears to resolve thirty years of stuff.
Safety. This is a big one. When my therapist asked me what I most wanted for Amy in this process, I said I wanted her to feel safe and happy again. He stopped me. He asked how I can possibly worry about another person’s safety if I wasn’t in a safe space myself. And that’s when I realized, I have spent my whole life afraid of the circle, I have been hyper-vigilant worrying about being held on the ground and attacked again. When people restrain me or hold me back or down, all of these childhood fears are revisited and they are overwhelming. My response has little to do with the situation at hand and more about the original trauma. This is the big one. This is the hard work. These are real tools I have to develop, learn and build. This is the pain I wanted to escape when I made the decision to end my life. I was a scared little kid, who didn’t have a safe place to hide and I pay dearly for it now.
So what? I had a long talk with an old friend last night. She is a professional in the mental health world, and as I shared some details that I haven’t shared publicly, she gave me some comforting words. She said in her practice, she believes nothing is irreparable, and while we were talking about a few specific issues, I realized as I sat with it, that I can repair these old wounds. I don’t need to keep picking at these scabs and feeling this fear and pain. I can learn to trust and be safe. I can show that I can be trusted. I can show that these events where the culmination of years of abuse and trauma and not habits or traits of who I am. This singular, horrible event was the culmination of years of neglect, addiction and pain. I’m not a monster. I’m a wounded kid who made some bad choices out of fear and pain and anguish. I can fix it all, I can earn the trust and rebuild the love and repair the damage. But I can only do my part as well as I can, as openly as I can, and as honestly as I can. And hold onto a little hope, that someone will make a choice to meet me in a safe space, to start a conversation, to be given a chance to make things right.
One thought on “Hyper vigilance and the Root of Fear”
Comments are closed.