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Our ability to manage the trauma of this experience is affected by many things—some of which are in our control, and some of which are not. Below I have copied and pasted some ideas about what may be making your trauma harder to manage. Some things you may be able to change. Do it. Other things may be outside your control at this time—you will need to find ways to minimize the impact and manage it when it comes to bear.
Each of us comes with a different life, and each life comes with particular opportunities and particular constraints. I am very lucky that my children were older and away from home. I didn’t have to get up every day and deal with their toddler lives and labour intensive parenting. Some of you do, and that means you don’t get to fall apart or “check out” for a while yet, especially if you don’t have family to help you. I was also lucky to have a job because it meant I could plan my exit, but it also meant that I had to “store” the trauma as best I could while I worked 60 hours a week looking after other people and their problems. Every day was hard but I also knew that my two sons needed the money to stay in university. I have been lucky because I made it out and my sons both graduated with manageable student loans to pay back. But as I read the stories here, I know that the money factor is huge in being able to control what happens next—or not, including giving some lucky people the luxury of accepting their own traumatic immobilization and staying there until they are ready to emerge and face their changed lives. Also, we are all wired differently. Some start by trying to think their way through it. Others wear their broken hearts on their sleeves and just can’t stop crying. Still others wander around bumping into things because the meaning of their life has been blown up. Your wiring will make some parts of this journey easier, and some parts harder.
Barb Steffens has a section in her book that also outlines some of the pieces that help/hinder managing traumas. One of the most important ones for me that she mentions has been having control of my story. I know that some of the most terrifying moments for me were being to able to put that story out there my way on my timetable. Perhaps that’s because it loops back to financial security and like some many of you, I really don’t have any.
Regardless, I believe it is our responsibility to know out trauma, even if other constraints in our lives spread that out over time. I believe that knowledge provides necessary leverage to interrogate the reality we are perceiving and see things differently. I believe it provides a glimpse into our lives we rarely have–and that gives us wisdom about how we need to love ourselves.
So here’s the list so far and please know that adding to the list with your wisdom and experience is most welcome.
Diane wrote:
I think the level of trauma we are enduring is a big factor, but there isn’t much out there about that. I suspect the trauma is worse based on factors like the following:
the length of time you have been together
previous traumas in your own life
your ability to get out financially and have a life without constant worry
the age of your children, and their parenting needs
the kind of compulsive sexual activities in which he was engaging
whether you are now compromised by STD’s
the involvement of outside authorities (police, etc around criminal activities)
family support or isolation
religious pressure that ignores your trauma
the ability to find good professional care and treatment
these are the things my list. Feel free to add.Then Victoria added:
• Further relationship abuse adds a significant layer to the trauma.
Specifically peer support is a major factor. Can fall under what you’ve covered with isolation. However, the ability to connect with fellow survivors is massive. Trauma is disconnecting and dislocating — it can get much worse if the partner doesn’t have a safe place of understanding.
While partner healing isn’t dependent on SA recovery, ongoing active addiction after D-Day can increase the trauma.
Level and type of PTSD if developed: there’s PTS, Chronic PTSD, Complex PTSD. Believe this can affect how easier/difficult it is to think clearly and make decisions in order to get out.
Validation. This obviously extends across the landscape of the entire SA minefield — friends, therapists, family, institutions, society. Invalidation is considered a crucial factor in trauma worsening.
In addition to the partner’s ability to find good professional care and treatment, there may also be internal barriers — shame, denial, feeling the stigma of being with a SA, etc.Then Annie wrote:
Great list, Diane. I would just add physical health as a factor as well. Which I think sometimes can be a cause and effect thing after discovery. Like our defenses or immune system or something gets affected.yes, Annie—Barb Steffens also talks about the physical effects of trauma on the immune system and other things. One of the things she mentions is hypothyroidism, which I have (all the women in my family have it). I have not been able to stabilize those numbers until the last four months, and my doctor has been slow to respond to the wild changes because she doesn’t get the trauma connection. Since the symptoms of hypothyroidism include anxiety, depression, insomnia, among others—managing this physical dimension can make or break it. It was only when I broke down sobbing in her office with books about hypothyroidism open to show her what was happening to me, that she finally nudged up my medication enough to get me through. But it takes such effort sometimes to get good care, doesn’t it? I think some women just give up.
Please don’t give up. You will get there. You may stumble. You may have to go back and have some “do-overs”. You may not have the support you need when you most need it. But you can still do it. After all, it’s your trauma. Owning it is the first step to getting over top of it, and getting past it.
Diane.xo
Hey, Diane,
My PTSD is too fired up from the last week and a half of dealing with doc e (culminating in the PSAT fight) for me to read your post all the way through.
I will tell you the number one thing that affects my trauma is having to interact with doc e in any way, shape or form. My heart races if I even THINK about opening that email account. Everything else is pretty minor in comparison with that. Not that they really are minor, it’s just he has such a huge impact.
Yes, Teri.
And so many women here have made the point that “no contact”, moving out, putting physical distance between them and the SA is a crucial step for their own sanity.I know that I realized I couldn’t manage the stress of having to keep working without any reprieve to process what had happened, and live with him. With few options I chose the one that I could make work. I forced him to get out, and then we had to sell the house in order to afford two places. It was a huge stress to accomplish, but I saved my sanity. Looking back it’s all a blur and my beautiful home that I worked on so hard (like Desiree) was suddenly gone. My realtor knew what was happening, and gave me the pro pics she had done of my house. Sometimes I look at them–I’m grieving the loss of my home that I didn’t have the luxury of doing at the time. There are a lot of task-oriented things we may have to do to save our sanity. I believe getting away from the SA is a crucial step, and minimizing contact is another one. It’s hard to explain until you do it. It’s like the world works another way entirely than what you thought. It takes courage, however you accomplish it and whenever you accomplish it. The order of how these things unfold depends on the stress points in our lives and when we can put the courage together.
Everytime I think of the women who are trying to make it work, I think of BTK and how he was a model family man who was president of his church and a cub scout leader. He just had a little torture and murder problem. No one would ever suggest that he and his wife try to work it out, that she should stick around while he went to therapy for a year, etc. And while SA’s don’t kill, they do use human bodies for their fix. And we are asked to support and forgive, etc.
I understand staying to protect the kids, keep them in therapy, financial reasons because the system does not get what these guys are. I do not understand trying to fix the marriage. I think whatever you have to do in your head to get there, your mind fights against for good reason, and it messes you up. And I say that because I really tried to do that. I can feel the difference between then and now, even with my horrible PTSD.
Diane, I wish I could focus more to read your post, because I am sure it talks about other factors. I hate when I get like this and I can only skate along the surface of things outside my own brain and emotions.
I know you said something about telling or controlling your story. I know being able to speak my experience and have other hear it makes a HUGE difference in processing and getting out of the red, as my therapist calls it.
Teri, you are heroine every day here. If you are really foggy today, it will be better tomorrow.
I sometimes imagine those weather reports that show the hurricane gathering speed at sea, and the countdown til it hits land, the untold terror of it, and then the pictures that show it losing steam and petering out. Where are you in that picture—keep the whole thing in mind and just batten down the hatches and wait for the wind to die down.
One of my favorite gospel stories is Jesus stilling the storm in the boat with his terrified disciples. The danger was letting the storm get inside them. The answer was to let the peace inside get out.
Thanks, Diane,
I love that all the good answers are ancient and can be found in stories from so many sources but all point to the same truth. You do have to find your peace inside. And I love when I find people who embody that because it is so hard for me with my 170 bpm heart rate- but they are almost contagious. I don’t know how someone can radiate peace, but they do.This is so great, Diane. It is so rarely as simple as just ‘leaving the bastard,’ because we all come with our own individual characteristics, histories, finances, ages, health, the whole shebang. Your post is such a great acknowledgement of that fact. xoxo
My PTSD is so bad!!! I go from 0-100 in seconds. I have a new workbook that I trying out to help me manage my severe( often not thought out)acts of revenge. I think I was a gangsta in my previous life
Ok I don’t know where to post this but since I’m working on my PTSD I’ll ask here because I know you wise girls will have the answer. What things do you girls do to calm yourself? I’m a crafter.. A crafter with add so I start things and often don’t finish. I’m like a crafting circus . I was wondering if there was a place on here to share ideas of things to do to keep the mind from going dark. Maybe things to get your mind off the ass wipe. I’m a crock pot whore and love collecting and sharing easy recipes.. Just thinking of ways to share small glimmers of fun and hope amongst the swamp of shit
I’m only browsing quickly and will return to this thread post haste. But I am reminded by something I read in the New Yorker last week, a piece on Elizabeth Smart (check it out). A serious element of trauma has to do with a perpetrators place in the victim’s life. If it is a stranger rape or abuse or abduction, at least the victim does not have to look around her home, family photos, listen to family discussions, etc, hear defenses of the perpetrator at dinnertime, and be reminded day after day, moment by moment of the abuser’s face and connection with herself.
Not that stranger rape is any less traumatic than familial abuse (& here I widely include the SA induced trauma), but that it adds a complex dimension to the partner’s or abused’s victim trauma that must be acknowledged.
I have never been raped or physically abused so I cannot speak to this unspeakable travesty, but I do know how much SAC is so imbedded in my world as to be unescapable. I cannot turn a corner without his benevolent presence being overtly acknowledged by everyone who only knows about the myth, and my own madness being subtlety referenced.
Diane, I’m not sure I’m going to write this right. You are so good at writing, I know I pale in comparison. But in regard to health . . .
I know for a fact, that I could have recovered faster, stronger, and with less medication from those 4 shoulder surgeries had I not been in the middle of all this bullshit. The first surgery was just a few months before I discovered his sex addiction, then the second surgery he was in recovery but I wasn’t sure how he was doing, then the third surgery came just before he got arrested, then the fourth came just a few months before his court case was to come to a conclusion. There were days when I didn’t want to do my exercises, not because I didn’t want to get well, but because I was wondering what I was living for. More than 3 years sleeping in separate rooms, not knowing from one day to the next what my future would be, how I would save my animals, wondering if I would have them in the end. It’s just so damn much to handle day after day after day for years from sun up to sun down and living with someone everyday that seems to be a stranger. Health was definitely compromised. I’m finally beginning to feel stronger and although I still have one more shoulder surgery to go, I am holding off on it until my life takes a turn for the better. Unless pain gets unbearable, it will have to wait. My body needs a break. Time to heal the heart.
Right on Claire. I am also sure you would have recovered faster without his sorry self in your life. YOu can’t fight everything on all fronts. Something has to give, and it does.
And I love your writing. I can feel you perfectly in it. even when it’s a hard thing. So you must be good at it.
Thank you so much diane, teri, et al. Putting into words concisely why this crazy shit is going to kill me if I don’t get some form of distance, at least for awhile.
SAC totally wants to be in recovery, but in my opinion, unless he can break through to the “guy in the cage”, and speak honestly and process his narcissism, covert rage, etc. I am always going to be on the fence.
Our new couple therapist asked me (in front of SAC) why I was still here. I spluttered a few things. But what I really wanted to say (and my own therapist as helped me to articulate) is “because I am dependent!” Yes that’s a big facet of why I’m here. I am actually dependent on this man, and he has spent years reinforcing that dependency. It is not a co-dependency, but an inculcated dependency. And it was done by stealth. By gaslighting, the role of the kind, sympathetic, patient supportive husband, and he carefully cultivated and fostered that dependency. So now here I am, financially dependent, older and somewhat dependent for companionship, emotionally dependent, chronic illness stress induced dependency, and community and socially dependent. (I know, I’ve used that term several times here).
And that has been very destructive, and just leaving doesn’t solve it. That is the brutal truth of this answer, because if it did solve it, I would have left. But I’m caught between leaving and staying, and I think that’s true of many of us. As so well stated here. My goal is to be INDEPENDENT. With or without him. I have to find a place between “just go” and “just stay”
I’m rambling now, but this thread got me going. Thank you, thank you for letting me.
Thank you Diane for this excellent post and forum you wrote about trauma. I think it is something that is not well understood by the health community in general. Of course, there are those health prof that understand it well. If trauma is mistreated it can make the trauma worse not better. I’ve read trauma in childhood may lead to personality disorders later in life and trauma in adulthood leads to PTSD.
As far as the general public, and I’m generalizing here, they think you need to be in a war to develop PTSD. They don’t realize that trauma from life circumstances can lead to PTSD.
Myself, I was traumatized as a child, I was traumatized as a young adult (attempted rape by a stranger) my first semester away at college I was 17. My college was 7 hrs away from home the police called my parents. In a state of shock, I told my mother what happened crying hysterically, and her first words to me were “What were you wearing?”. I stopped crying and handed the phone to the police officer. He said are they coming to get you and I said “no”. The next week was finals week and I couldn’t leave my room even during the day. I failed all my finals.
Anyway, there are many other traumatic events before my daughter was sick, my house burned down, finding out my xh had a secret life after 25 yrs, living in a hotel for 5 mo during my divorce. I think the most traumatic thing EVER was the abandonment of my mother and the power she had over other family members. That’s the one that blew my mind the most. I’m better now for sure, mostly due to a really good therapist and a tenacious zest for life.
NAP, You are a testimony to the force of life that brings new life out of death, over and over again. You are evidence of a woman’s capacity for courage to trust that force again and keep going. And you are so beautiful, NAP. Not perfect. None of us are. But you are a humbling presence for us, and at the same we are ennobled by you.
Yes, trauma upon trauma upon trauma….it’s turtles all the way down. And here you are. You know your story. You understand where and why you are broken, how the healing is coming along, how easy it is to slip back into the swamp, and you are resisting those seductive emotional hooks.
Thank you for giving us your list of traumas that washed you up on our beach like a perfect pearl of great price, that once found, is worthing giving everything in order to have it.
What will you do now with this beautiful pearl that is you?
NAP, I am so sad to hear your mother’s reaction to your horrible incident. I too was raped when I was 18. My boyfriend of quite a few months, date raped me. I was passed out from drinking too much at a girls slumber party with my high school friends (he was the older brother of my friend) and when he came home he raped me. I woke up to him holding my arms down and grunting and moaning. I yelled, what are you doing? and he told me to shut up. I cried all night in a fetal position. I never told a soul. I broke up with him very quickly.
So sorry shattereddreams. How sad. Diane what you wrote was so beautiful and I thank you for all your kindness and you too Liza. I don’t feel like a beautiful pearl although I hope to someday. I feel like I’ve been knocked around like a soccer ball and don’t yet know where I’m going or what to expect next. I don’t have much self discipline, I mean I probably do I just don’t practice it and get yelled at by my
therapist. I think I have been free associating for a while now and shes probably right. I need to live to my potential and maybe then I’ll be a shiny pearl. Love you guys, lots!
NapNAP, I couldn’t sleep last night. But your list inspired me to write out the things in my life that were traumatic. The list went on way longer than expected as I actually put down in words things I had never said before, and some things happened often. I was able to see some patterns, and also saw how saying no to my ex, his MIL, my former employer, were all the right thing to do. I had to divorce all of them and I did. But it is a starting over and my, the flesh pots of Egypt can come calling! It is a challenge as a traumatized person to engage and interpret life in a different way than as someone trying to be safe AND visible at the same time.
At the end of my list, I chose three words to describe how I had emerged from those years of various traumatic experience: They were “abused, abandoned, and alone”. That scared the shit out of me and I had a good cry. (I think this may have been like some of the Barbra has been doing with Minwalla). But I decided that I would choose three new words that I wanted to describe my state of being in the world: They were “affirmed, attached, and accompanied” I think I’ve actually made progress here already, but I drew arrows from each negative adjective to its mirror positive one, and I thought about all that it required to move from one to the other. I came up with some good ideas with more focus and purpose.
(I’m telling you this because I’m hoping some of you might try it out now, in case I should include in my “book” that I can’t seem to write)
Anyway, for example:
Abused
Affirmed.
Stay away from toxic people
Get in touch with my negativity and daily negative experiences so that they don’t subversively influence me.
PAY ATTENTION when someone says something affirming to me. Don’t brush it off. Keep track. Write it down. TAke it seriously.
Review my trauma list and declare something good about myself that exists in spite of the list, to demonstrate my own power to keep a core with something good in it.Abandoned —- Attachment etc.
Alone —- Accompanied, etc.Do you see how this might provide some direction and empower me? I do. Any way I’m going to give a try, and I wanted to share it in case, like the Recover Diane Project, this could part of a Toolkit I could develop.
Thank you NAP. You continue to be an inspiration. Say hi to George for me.
love Diane.
Diane,
I love your perspective on the mirror of the abuse, abandonment, and alone. You definitely have a beautiful mind. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and writings with us. It’s VERY helpful and insightful.
Love you, NapxxooLynn,
Live to my potential. It sounds sensible but for me it’s hard or I make it hard and I don’t know why.Any thoughts?
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