Reliving The Emotion Of A Traumatic Event

I was watching a tv show called Crime Beat.   The show is about high profile murder cases in Canada.   This particular show was about an unsolved murder from ten years ago.  Part way through the show I felt a wave of anxiety (?) wash over me.   The victim was a single woman believed to be the victim of a targeted attack.   It triggered  the memory and fear/emotion I felt when I was stalked.    This woman’s case is still open and unsolved after ten years.    Ten years after my stalking the police called me to tell me that the case was still open.   Maybe it was the ten years, we still don’t know who did this  parallel that prompted the rush of emotion I felt while watching the show.   Single woman.  Targeted attack.  Ten years unsolved.  The only difference is I’m still alive.  Knowing how close I came to being a murder victim generates intense fear in me.  One would think that my emotion should be one of relief because I avoided contact with my stalker.  But it’s fear that has stuck with me.   Anxiety.   I’ll never forget what the detective said to me,  “it’s a good thing you didn’t go to that audition or I guarantee we’d be picking your body parts out of a garbage can”.    The stalking followed my decline to attend the [fake] audition.  

In the weeks, months, years …. decades …. that have gone by since my stalking,  the memory has slowly moved from the forefront of mind,  into the deep recesses of my subconscious mind.   And while I might not be ‘aware’ of the traumatic scar the event left in my psyche,  my behaviour and fears live as evidence that the ‘wound’ has not healed.   It’s borne out in the sudden fear reactions I have to innocuous situations like the fellow that jumped in front of me to open the door at a Tim Hortons, and subsequently being afraid to come out of the bathroom in case he was still there;  or when I feel panic if a car is following along behind me for too long;   or panic if I keep running into the same person in a store because it makes me feel like I’m being followed;  or when I feel trapped in a crowd of people;  in the murder dreams;  in my distrust and wariness of strangers;  in my fear of being outside alone at night;  and with the all too often feeling that there is a threat around the corner.    This is what trauma does to a person.    You think it’s in your past.  You think you’re over it.   But it’s always there.   Lurking.    It’s like be stalked by the trauma. 

 

The Weight Of Trauma

Trauma,  with all the rules, assumptions, fears, and associated behaviours it creates in us,  is a weight that we carry with us through life.   We hold it in our subconscious.  Or perhaps IT holds onto us.    Quite some time ago I read a story/analogy about how the weight of unaddressed trauma becomes heavier,  not lighter ,  with the passage of time.   The story went something like this:

Imagine holding a glass of water.   How heavy is it.   The actual weight is unimportant.  How long you ‘hold’ the glass is what impacts you.  If you hold it for a minute it’s no big deal.   But after a few minutes you begin to feel its weight.  If you hold it for an hour, your arm will tire and start to ache.  If you hold it for a day your arm will feel numb and paralyzed.   The actual weight of the glass doesn’t change with the passage of time,  but the longer you hold it,  the heavier it feels.    

Trauma is the same.   The actual weight/damage/wound of the trauma doesn’t change,  but left repressed and unaddressed,  the trauma starts to erode us and we find ways to ‘numb’ the memory and emotional pain, and we become paralyzed by depression.   As time goes by the trauma weighs heavier on our psyche.