I’ve been thinking about survival. Before writing this morning I asked myself, “How did you survive when things were so awful?” When I was a child and teen I had a very rich inner life. When I was a little kid my imagination helped me to go to other places in my mind. Most of the time this was a good skill although sometimes it would lead me into imagining hell and other scary scenarios. At times I would get stuck in a loop and it would be almost impossible for me to escape these imaginations. It was like a virus that had to run its course. Now I understand that it was trauma. Often escaping these cycles of thought required something stronger to override their power.
On good days I would imagine myself as Wonder Woman. My bike would become her invisible plane and I would fly through the neighborhood solving crimes and kicking ass. When I close my eyes I can still go to that place. I can still feel my bike beneath me and the wind gently sweeping across my face. When I allow myself to go to that place in my mind immediately a smile creeps in. My bike was freedom. It was a way for me to work out all of my frustration and pent up anxiety. Those endorphins are good medicine.
Physical exertion has always helped me cope in difficult times. When I was a child riding my bike along with other things like gymnastics and hitting my tennis ball against the wall could help me get out of my head. I never enjoyed gym class but it wasn’t because I hated exercise. It had more to do with the social dynamics at play and being forced to participate in team sports that I did not care for. I have never really been comfortable with competition. During gym class I was often picked last. My family did not care much about sports so I had little exposure to things like football and baseball. My parents enjoyed solitary sports and my father enjoyed boxing. They instilled in me an appreciation for being outdoors and competing against self vs others. My father in particular was always pushing me to run farther and faster. He would shadow box with me and I was fond of playing with his boxing equipment. Jump roping was another activity I enjoyed. I would count my jumps to see if I could beat yesterday’s number.
Luckily for me I had a very creative mother and she instilled in me a love for art and music. Art in particular helped me to escape the sadness that permeated every part of my life. I could lose myself in a flow state. I could spend all day drawing or gluing popsicle sticks together. I played with clay and always had tons of coloring books around. To this day when I need to shut my brain off for a bit I will color in my adult coloring book.
Music was another thing that supported me when life was too tough to take. I have always enjoyed singing and my mother would sing with me at home. My father was very sentimental and he always had music on as well. I liked some church music but secular music was so much better. Church music just reminded me of things that made my anxiety worse. It is true that listening to “worldly” music would bring about a sense of guilt but the happiness it brought made it worth it. Secular music offered me a chance to escape into the world of the song and imitating the artists allowed me to try on different identities. It did not take long for musicians to surpass television and book characters as the focus of my escapism. I spent so many afternoons singing into my hairbrush imagining being anywhere but my bedroom.
Fast forward to now and my coping mechanisms are the same. I would like to say that they are all good but that would be a lie. I can still go inside my head and lose myself in my inner world. Sadly it is not always friendly inside my head and I no longer see myself as Wonder Woman. Going too deeply inward can often turn into dissociation. It is like I’m not really present but floating above my body or just outside of the frame of my life. Disconnected from what is happening right in front of me. It isn’t that I have anything terrible to escape but it has become a coping mechanism I employ in order to handle anxiety. Suffering from Complex PTSD means that as good as life gets I always have to remind myself that I’m no longer living the life I lived in the past.
Television helped me to handle the lonely days of childhood and it can still help me at times. I have to be careful because it can become a numbing mechanism, keeping me from being present. I realize that it was a numbing mechanism when I was a kid as well, but survival requires doing what you can to get through. Now I have other better ways of coping and so I have to remember that. What works best is being mindful. Mindful of which television shows I watch and that applies to other things as well, like podcasts. By choosing things versus just numbing out it helps to keep me present.
I still love to exercise. Moving my body helps to keep me sane. Just like when I was a kid, endorphins are great medicine. I can tell when I haven’t moved my body enough because my anxiety becomes really high. Exercise allows me to shut my brain off for a while and just be in my body. Not floating above like when I’m dissociating and not numbing out either. It is like my brain becomes still, which is not a state I can easily achieve. My body gets to release all of its pent up frustration and anxiety. Even as I write this I can see how I separate my mind from my body instead of seeing myself as a whole being. Fractured is the word that comes to mind. It probably would not surprise you to know that I view myself as broken. I have to fight that thought and feeling. Yes, I have C-PTSD and that makes me different from most people but it doesn’t make me broken. I have to work very hard to send my poor injured brain love instead of berating myself for not being “fixed” by now.
Creating art is probably the most pure thing in my world. I still use it as a coping mechanism but at the end I have this beautiful piece of expression to hold in my hands and enjoy. The act of using my hands to create soothes my anxiety and allows my mind something wonderful to focus on. If left to its own devices my brain just naturally wonders to a sad place, that is my set point. Sometimes it is depression and much of the time it is just a result of my lived experience. Creating helps me to breathe deep and lose myself in that flow state once again.
Music is still so dear to me. Some of my only happy memories involving church revolve around singing and music. My husband and I recently went to see The Avett Brothers in concert. Nothing beats being in the midst of a crowd singing along to your favorite song. I often come away from these shows with aches and pains from dancing and jumping around to the music but it is worth every bruise. Music is a double edged sword. It can heal or hurt depending on what I hear. Hearing hymns or the dreaded Thief in the Night song which shall not be named can trigger me in pretty profound ways. Songs get stuck in my head and it can be VERY hard to get them out, that being said nothing heals like music can. It can erase my anxiety and help my mind to shift when a trigger threatens to overwhelm me.
“One little song
Give me strength to the leave the sad and the wrong
Bury safely in the past where I’ve been living
Alive but unforgiving
Let me go, let me go, let me go, let me go”
Souls Like The Wheels- The Avett Brothers
It’s funny how I’m still that little girl I used to be. I still use the same coping mechanisms to survive. Someday I would like to see myself as thriving and not merely surviving but I’m not there yet. When people ask me how I made it through my childhood it can be hard to answer. Some of it was the methods I mentioned above, some was luck, and some was a toughness gifted to me through my parents. Yes, things were very hard but they could have been worse. Especially when you stop to consider how often I was left unsupervised. In many ways my life is a miracle. I’m here and I’m safe.
If you are a survivor I hope you can hear this next part very clearly. If you need to numb or dissociate to get through whatever you are going through do not beat yourself up. Are there better coping mechanisms? Sure, but sometimes you can’t reach them for a whole host of reasons and so doing the best you can today is ok. I am 51 and I have been working on healing myself for a long time. We are not all in the same place and so wherever you are I’m glad you’re here and I hope that tomorrow is a better day. When I speak about my own survival I am not judging you for where you are in your journey towards healing.
Debbie McNulty 