Once the door was closed without incident, a sense of relief washed over me. The most treacherous part of using the bathroom at night was over. Or so I thought. As I tiptoed toward the toilet, I was still in the dark in the outer vanity area because even the light coming from under the door could cause problems with my parents. I had to wait until I got to the water closet to turn on the light. My left hand located the doorjamb. Just inside on the wall at about chest height I found the light switch and flipped it on. I froze. There was my mother, passed out naked on the toilet.
Immediately, I felt a rush beginning in my feet, an electrical warmth filling both legs simultaneously. Envision something like the old Star Trek show when they were transported out of the USS Enterprise. As the rush accelerated and began to overtake me, I heard myself screaming inside, “I’m changing, I’m changing.” I instinctively knew that who I was up until that moment at age ten was leaving me. I would never be that person again. The “I” or “me” that I knew was dying and I could do nothing to stop it. Just before the final surge of electricity swept over me, the completion of my previous life, I tried to shake my mom awake. I attempted to sit her up and begged her to speak to me. That’s when the tears started to cascade down my face and the panic set in, “Mom, please don’t be dead. Please Mom, wake up.”
I have no memory of what happened next. I felt as if I were transported out of my body like Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock being beamed to an alien planet. I had to separate from this moment before I could be put back together and go to another place. My next memory is being on the couch in the family room cradled in my dad’s arms. My head is buried in his chest. His powerful hands are rubbing the hair on my head as I am sobbing uncontrollably. I only recall one piece of the conversation. I had asked my dad, “How long has this been going on?” He replied, “Kenny, this has been going on for years.” It was then I was hit with the next most intense feeling I have ever experienced. This was the first time I felt it. Shame, utter and complete shame. I literally convulsed as I replied, “Oh my God, Dad, I’m so sorry. Look at how upset I am. I have only seen this once, but you have been dealing with this for years. I feel so selfish!” Physically, emotionally, I became a different person right then and there. That night, everything changed. The trauma took away my sense of self and my inherent power. My trauma changed who I was as a person. I now felt rejected, inadequate, powerless, and worthless.
Trauma Wears Many Different Faces
Some people equate trauma to something big like war, death, extreme acts of violence, physical abuse, sexual abuse, or natural disasters. While those are all examples of trauma, trauma doesn’t have to be big like that. It can be any significant negative event or incident that makes us feel bad, scared, ashamed, or hurt. What trauma is to each of us depends on a variety of factors, including age. No matter what kind of childhood we’ve had, nobody escapes trauma while growing up. If you define trauma as any sense of loss of self, we have all been traumatized as children. Like it or not, events from our childhood shape us. Without being intentional, parents, teachers, and coaches inflict trauma in simple, subtle ways like making sarcastic comments, being dismissive, being late, and not valuing our time. Being controlling, being judgmental, or always having to be right are other ways that adults may inflict trauma on children. It is just like the kind and loving words my dad said to me. His intent was to love me but I felt shame.
We may experience big traumas later in life, like the death of a loved one, divorce, or a tragic accident. But those bigger traumas evoke the same feelings we had in response to the often more subtle original traumas we experienced as children. How we cope with life depends on how we make sense of those traumas. For those of us who haven’t been taught how to deal with our trauma, we get stuck living in the worst day ever. The intense feelings of those moments replay themselves throughout our life because, in an effort to heal, we unintentionally and proactively seek them out and re-inflict them upon ourselves.
At any age, we tend to rationalize trauma, to minimize it, suppress it, repress it, and most of all deny it. We have to do all this so we can survive it. Now, as adults, we are completely unaware that we are reliving our trauma daily. Many clients who come into my office believe they have never suffered any trauma. That is how severe the disease of denial is in our culture. I have yet to see a person who is not stuck in this cycle. No one is immune, regardless of personality type or degree of trauma suffered. We stay stuck because no one has taught us about it and we don’t know we’re affected. It has been my experience that if any part of our personal or professional life is not where we want it to be, it is rooted in the trauma cycle I am about to describe here. Unaddressed trauma survives in a vacuum, fueling our thoughts and behaviors, so we inadvertently re-create the same feelings we had when we first experienced the trauma. We call this the Worst Day Cycle.
The Worst Day Cycle
Trauma happens to us. When it does, our authentic self and power is taken from us.
Fear. Due to the trauma, we experience the fear of rejection, inadequacy, and/ or the fear of powerlessness itself.
Shame. Shame is the feeling of having little-to-no worth. We use those negative feelings against ourselves to try to get our power back.
Denial. We deny, suppress, repress, and minimize our trauma to preserve our self-concept. By doing so, we set ourselves up for repeating the cycle again.
The Cycle Keeps Circling
No matter what kind of trauma we experienced as a child, we replay that loop through our choices of friends, hobbies, careers, and relationships. We are attempting to take control of the trauma by victimizing ourselves because that gives us our power back. That’s what is happening when someone going through a divorce sleeps around and gets drunk every weekend. They feel rejected, inadequate, and/or powerless so as they head out once again they scream, “I’ll show them!” They are taking their negative feelings out on themselves. Even though they are unaware, their theory becomes, “I can’t get my spouse to love me, so I’ll show them. I won’t love myself either, but at least I am in control of doing it to myself. I got my power back!”
Stress versus Fear
The American Medical Association (AMA) states that 80 percent of all health problems are stress related. That stress reaction is actually fear. We call it stress because we are allowed to say it happens to us. If I tell you I am stressed, it sends the message, “I am powerful and superhuman in my relationship and career. I’m not a failure.” Fear is a different animal in our society. If we tell people we are afraid, it sends the message that we are weak and definitely a failure. To avoid this, we have all dropped into denial and created an empowering word to disguise what is really happening. We then continue our stress-related activity, which is self-victimization but at least we are in charge of it. This is another way we try to get our power back, though it inevitably backfires. When we are in denial, we keep self-victimizing ourselves, which keeps us repeating the cycle. When we use the word stress instead of fear, we are perpetuating the cycle. Society tells us, “it’s okay to be stressed because it means I’m doing more than you are.” By doing this, we gain sympathy from others for how much we are enduring. In essence, this gives us power. It also gives us permission to revictimize ourselves because we are stealing sympathy from others. If we used the term fear instead of stress, people would point out how we are doing that to ourselves.
The Research of Science and Emotions
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 85 percent of all diseases have an emotional element. That means it is incredibly rare that any illness or disease or injury is caused by anything other than what you feel inside. The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study) backs this up and is considered one of the largest studies ever conducted on the association between childhood maltreatment and health and social problems as an adult. In this long-term