My Dark Bloody Triage Room of Healing

My personal experience with how it feels to heal from Complex PTSD and Trauma is that it was like a dark bloody triage room. From the moment I began therapy, I felt like I was simply moving from one scary triage room of trauma to the next without much of a rest in between. Each room was dark, frightful, and upon the first look, I would think, “This looks bad!” In an effort to console myself, I would then offer, “I’m sure it’s not as bad as it looks.” But as my eyes adjusted to the darkness of each room, I soon realized that it WAS bad. In fact, after taking a closer look, I inevitably saw more and more of the disturbing truths and images that resided in that space. I believe that one of the main things that needs to be addressed in order for a shift to happen is acceptance. In the 7 stages of grief, acceptance is listed as the last step, but for Complex Trauma Survivors, no real healing can happen without accepting what was done to us and how it affected us. Leaning in to these realities, feelings, and the pain and grief of not only what was done to us, but all that we DID NOT GET that we truly deserved as a child, is a huge undertaking.

The following quote is taken from the Substance Abuse Treatment for Persons with Child Abuse and Neglect Issues manual at the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment in Rockville, Maryland.

---

“Acknowledging past abuse can be an important step for clients in treatment because it breaks the secrecy and shame that are so often part of the abuse legacy. Many clients may find it easier to ‘confide’ their history to a computer screen or a piece of paper than to another person. For some clients, the act of acknowledging is so relieving that it is healing in and of itself. However, for most, acknowledgement alone is not enough and requires additional therapeutic work for full resolution of abuse-related issues.” 

This instruction manual then goes on to explain the importance on the counselor’s part to be aware of the client’s hyper-vigilant regard for the counselor’s reaction to their disclosed experiences, stating that clients will need “considerable reassurance from the counselor that she does not hold them responsible for the abuse or view them differently because she knows about it,” and warning that “clients may become withdrawn after having been so vulnerable.”

Dr. Adam Young emphatically states that we all have a Story. I invite you to start with Episode 1 of his Podcast, The Place We Find Ourselves, to begin to understand your own story and how it is showing up in your life now.

I didn’t know about this podcast when I started my healing journey, so my experience of “engaging my story” at that time was simply making a memory list with my therapist of traumatic moments from childhood. It was like opening Pandora’s box over and over again with each new piece of the puzzle revealed as my brain and body allowed it to unfold. However, walking into that room of horrible inexplicable trauma, seeing it for the reality of what it was, getting a 360 degree spin around that space while doing EMDR or talk therapy with repressed details coming to light during this process, working through all the bloody and frightening triage that each room represented and emerging on the other side is the ONLY way to truly heal.

Now, you might begin to argue that your story doesn’t include physical abuse, sexual abuse, or anything that you might consider “abuse.” Let me just say that 5 years ago, I would have said the same thing. In fact, many times in my past, I have repeatedly stated that I had a “Beaver Cleaver” upbringing because we were a church-going, seemingly normal family who lived in a residential neighborhood and everything looked picture perfect from the outside. I always had food to eat, clothes to wear, a roof over my head, and all my basic material needs were met.

Pete Walker, in his book, Complex PTSD: From Surviving To Thriving, addresses the issue of never having been “hit” and explains the effects of verbal and emotional abuse in childhood, including a section in Chapter 5 called, “Denial And Minimization.” 

“It appears to me that just as many children acquire Cptsd from emotionally traumatizing families as from physically traumatizing ones. Denial about the traumatic effects of childhood abandonment can seriously hamper your ability to recover. In childhood, ongoing emotional neglect typically creates overwhelming feelings of fear, shame and emptiness. As an adult survivor, you may continuously flashback into this abandonment mélange. Recovering depends on realizing that fear, shame and depression are the lingering effects of a loveless childhood. Without such understanding, your crucial, unmet needs for comforting human connection can strand you in a great deal of unnecessary suffering.”

If you are still unconvinced or find yourself starting to dismiss the possibility that you might have experienced childhood trauma, abuse, or neglect, I highly recommend that you purchase Pete Walker’s book or to at least continue to research childhood trauma and how it affects our lives as adults.

Check out these resources to learn more.
Childhood Trauma Recovery
What is Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? 

I went on a silent retreat two months after getting my Complex PTSD diagnosis and beginning therapy with EMDR and CBT. I’d like to share an image that I drew while on my retreat.

Trigger Warning: child abuse, narcissistic abuse, vivid descriptions of emotional abuse, control, enslavement, cruelty, wounded heart, serpent, hand of God, Scripture

I have come to learn from the vulnerable sharing of those who have survived Complex Trauma, that scripture can be triggering due to the nature of their abuse. It is my sincere wish to respect all who come here for healing. I will include two links so that you can choose which version of the image you prefer to view. I will also include a generic “scripture link” for anyone wanting to directly access the scriptural reference of anything that I will share in this article. If there is a better way for me to address this issue, I would love your feedback.
Click here to contact me.​

“Enslavement”
The representation of my childhood reality and trauma as revealed to my heart
on my silent retreat in August, 2016.

LINKS:
"Enslavement" without scripture.       "Enslavement" WITH scripture.

God spoke the words printed in red to me: “Do not minimize the reality of what happened or how it makes you feel.” I must admit that I didn’t have a lot of experiences with naming my emotions; I had just stuffed my feelings for my entire 46 years of life because as a child they did not matter or served to bring more wrath upon me. I was given a list of feelings and emotions at my retreat which I found very helpful in the beginning to help me identify what I was feeling. Click here to access a free PDF emotion listing. Being unable to name my emotion in the midst of a recalled memory didn’t exempt me (or my body) from being flooded with intense feelings and sensations. This is what Bessel van der Kolk calls reliving trauma months or even years after the event. In his book, The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, he says the following on page 66 about the reliving of these experiences.

“The overwhelming experience is split off and fragmented, so that the emotions, sounds, images, thoughts, and physical sensations related to the trauma take on a life of their own. The sensory fragments of memory intrude into the present, where they are literally relived. As long as the trauma is not resolved, the stress hormones that the body secretes to protect itself keep circulating, and the defensive movements and emotional responses keep getting replayed...many people may not be aware of the connection between their ‘crazy’ feelings and reactions and the traumatic events that are being replayed. They have no idea why they respond to some minor irritation as if they were about to be annihilated.”

I used my emotion list to identify the feelings of the enslaved heart (representing my child self) in my drawing where I listed feelings of being bad, worthless, powerless, helpless, fearful, ashamed, unlovable, and undeserving of love. My internal dialogue consisted of phrases adopted to keep me safe. Don’t speak. Don’t cry out. Don’t ask for attention. This led me to the place of existence where I sought no connection and suffered silently in the frightened despair of abandonment. The reality was that even if my father had entered the room (cage), killed the family cat, and then exited, no one (including my mother, who lived emotionally bound and gagged with panic in the cage with us), would have even dared to speak of the event, even without him present, because we all lived in such fear of him. This lack of ANY care or comfort from a parent/adult contributed to my total and complete abandonment in childhood. Hence, my statement written in blue at the top of the page, “No one spoke against him. It was not allowed.”

The right side of the page lists the behaviors or demands from the “slaveholder” aka, my father. Contempt. Destroy self esteem. Control. Submission. Scorn. Rage. Unfair criticism. Belittling. Disgust. Verbal and emotional abuse. This information led me to research narcissism and Narcissistic Parents to understand what this type of abuse does to a helpless child. This is why Complex PTSD can be caused by childhood abuse and being held hostage by a kidnapper–it’s essentially the same psychological abuse. It is disorienting, destructive, and devastating to a child.

The more I studied this type of abuse, the more disturbed I felt. I had begun to feel “unsafe” even in my own home with my children in 2014 when my life began to unravel and strange symptoms began to rise to the surface. I became paranoid about everyone in my life and about their intentions and motives toward me. This was the devastating effect of my childhood trauma reappearing with the other common
symptoms of Complex PTSD. I had 44 years of feelings that had been stuffed and my body and brain simply couldn’t hold the dam back anymore.

Learn More: What Feeling Paranoid or "Unsafe" Looks Like When You Have CPTSD

​And then there is the serpent. You may have missed him, although I unabashedly admit that I looked up a picture online in order to accurately capture this evil aspect of my drawing. I think I nailed it. The snake represents my father, who occasionally slithered in and would speak kind and loving words to me. At first I would just be stunned; was his kind smile directed at me? Was he happy with me? He looked happy. Maybe I had finally done something right? Maybe this was the moment where I would be favored, loved, chosen by him. On trembling unstable legs, I slowly rose and moved closer to the bars of the cage. He continues to draw me in with the unconditional love my Soul has craved from him since birth. When I am finally standing close to the bars, his look changes to one of power, accomplishment, and control and he reaches out to verbally gash open a fresh and bloody wound. The feel-good hormones my brain was just starting to dump at this unexpected love and attention are quickly extinguished by the adrenaline rush of fear, terror, and trauma at what just happened. We are all so easily managed by him. We are lulled into submission by his manipulation. We remain held there by imaginary bars by the paralysis of anxiety and horror. Did I mention how disorienting, destructive, and devastating narcissistic abuse is to a child?

Finally, we arrive at the restoration side of the drawing. Depicted on the left side of the page is the hand of God reaching out to me, the heart enslaved in the cage with the small hand reaching out to God. The verse [View Actual Scripture Verse Here] that God spoke to me told me that He brought me out of slavery with His strong hand because of His love and faithfulness to me. These were His words of comfort and safety to me after speaking His truth about my childhood reality in the form of the drawing. It brought my Soul comfort, care, love, and hope–not only hope that I could heal from Complex Trauma–but hope that drawing close to Him to be restored as His Beloved would also bring me to eternity with Him in heaven.

You are reading this article on this website because God has used my healing journey to call me to His purpose of sharing my story to bring healing and hope in Christ to others. I pray that God will speak tenderly to your heart in truth and love so that you may be set free from all that keeps you held captive.

Thank you for allowing me to share my story and for taking your time to witness it.
God Bless You.

​[Original article published February 4, 2020]