I'd like to share this piece of information regarding dormant trauma because I know that if I had understood this when I was a young adult - it would have helped me to avoid toxic relationships. My hope is that you can learn from my mistakes!

I believe I grew up in a narcissistic family system that had been in place sadly over generations. 

These family systems assign each child a role - mine was the scapegoat. Through the years I felt like the black sheep of the family, an outsider, something everyone had to put up with.

When I was 15 years old I tried to take my own life - I simply wanted the emotional pain of not feeling worthy or lovable, the pain of feeling deeply flawed and rejected, to end. I'm truly grateful for that failed attempt and at 16 years old I tried something else. I left home leaving a note on my moms pillow - I had nothing but the shirt on my back and a desire to find and experience happiness! 

So many things could have happened to me - but thankfully I was taken in by a wonderful family and my life did a 180.

The pain of my childhood - felt like a distant echo as I began learning who I was and how to love myself.

What I didn't know was that while my past trauma had become dormant, having no affect on my young adult life - and while my young adult self was developing agency and confidence - the pieces of me from childhood that had developed the painful trauma beliefs..... still felt the same way. The only difference was that these beliefs were compartmentalized and out of my conscious awareness.

Symptoms though, of this unhealed trauma showed up in things like people pleasing, hiding my true self, shape shifting and craving external validation.

But because I didn't understand trauma, I did nothing about the emotions and beliefs that lurked in my shadow... that is until a relationship woke everything up.

I had always had healthy romantic relationships (except when I was young, and truth be told - I was the unhealthy one since I didn't know what healthy relationships looked like.... sadly I hurt someone that was only trying to love me in a healthy way). 

Then I met someone that honestly - I was not interested in at all. But as the friendship grew - something woke up inside of me. That something was limerence.... sadly   thought it was love.

That relationship flung open the door to past trauma that woke up like a vengeance.

I found myself in a romantic relationship with someone that everyone loved, thought was amazing, told me that I was blessed to have in my life.....

At that time I was still a very trusting person. I thought people were..... who they showed themselves to be, at least for the most part.

I had no idea that the covert narcissistic relationships I would experience were with individuals that had two very distinct personalities - the one that everyone else saw..... and the one that only came out behind closed doors.

Because this behavior was familiar, it woke up a dormant fawning trauma response that my survival brain had adopted as a child. In childhood - a fawning response is smart - but in an adult, it can keep abuse alive!!

The fawn trauma response causes us to stifle our authenticity, to push down our true selves, our feelings, thoughts and perspectives and to socially engage with the other person in a way that calms THEM down. As Gabor Mate says - we sacrifice authenticity in exchange for 'safety'.

So, I found myself trying harder and harder to please this person. Amputating pieces of my personality in hopes of making the other person happy - because unconsciously I thought that then all would be well, I would feel connected and safe.

I didn't realize that this was the VERY same dynamic I had in place in childhood.

As children the thought of not being loved or worthy in the eyes of a parent is a survival situation. We cannot care for ourselves.... so as a coping skill we try to do, be, think, feel any way the parent dictates.

The whole reason our survival brain chooses the FAWN trauma response is because we are dependent on the very people that are abusing us, yet we are too young and small to fight or flee. Toxic family systems then condition you to STAY stuck in the fawn response and this becomes the template through which we enter ALL other relationships - romantic, friendships, co-workers, etc.

By fawning, the strategy we developed in childhood is - let's make the other person feel better so that.... we can feel safe and accepted. 

When this mechanism kicked on once again - I began showing up this way in romantic relationships. It felt like life or death - gaining this persons love and acceptance. This was my childhood wound that was woken up and frantically pushing me to try harder and harder while simultaneously blaming myself for not being able to find the secret formula to make the other person happy.

After living like this for longer than I care to mention.... I became a shell of a person. I was a body.... that was surviving yet not living.

The only emotions  I felt capable of feeling were.... fear, shame, rejection, unsafe, unworthy - and when I wasn't feeling that I was simply numb and detached.

I remembered the person I once was - and I wondered if I would ever feel like me again. I wondered if I would ever laugh again, feel joy, excitement, creative .... confident.

My body felt out of my own control.

Everyone is different - and please know that there is no cookie cutter approach to healing and everyone's time frame will be different as well. Here are some things that happened on my recovery journey:

* I stumbled upon narcissistic abuse information. I couldn't get enough of it. I binge watched information in shock at how well the information described my romantic relationships. 

* After learning about narcissistic abuse and realizing that  none of the people I felt were high on the scale were interested in self reflecting.... I began to break out of enmeshment, the trauma bond. I learned the tactics that narcissists use to cause you to react, to over explain, to feel as if you have to prove yourself.... and I began taking my power back, I learned how to establish and enforce boundaries. I learned  while THEY did not want to learn healthier behaviors.... I certainly wanted to break any unhealthy ones that I had developed due to my upbringing and past unhealthy relationships.

* At some point I detoxed my life from anyone that was emotionally and/or psychologically abusive. And so the abuse stopped... BUT the damage done did not go away with time. 

Time heals many wounds but it does not heal trauma wounds.

I waited, expecting to spring back to who I truly was.... but it didn't happen. Thus began a long journey of trying modality after modality. I desperately longed to be the real me.... without all of the coping skills, the over active trauma responses and the cptsd symptoms that had become my personality.

It was NOT easy.... it took time! There was no easy fix, there was no ... learn this and bam you're healed. My body could not be pushed or shoved towards healing - I had to learn how to work WITH it instead of trying to dominate, force and rush it.

All I can really say - is the recovery journey starts off from a place of hopelessness, learned helplessness and trauma loops... and slowly you begin unraveling the trauma.

Healing emotional trauma is not linear. We do NOT get better and better and better..... it's a spiral - so sometimes you have to endure those low swings.... remembering that it does spiral back up!!

It's hard work for sure, but it is so worth it. Having to endure trauma and not be allowed to live as who you truly are is bad enough - staying stuck that way even after the abuser is gone is something that NO ONE should ever have to experience.

Am I 100% healed? Are any of us?? I have shed most of the coping skills and trauma responses that had stolen my life and made me feel like a prisoner in my own body. There are some remnants left... when in social situations but I'm confident this will be a whisper of a memory very soon.

I've learned to have compassion for my body, even when it acts in ways that are so not me! I've learned to exercise patience and love to the pieces of me that are still healing.....

Early on my recovery journey I wrote a PDF Entitled I Miss Me & I Want Me Back.

Did I ever get me back??? 

Well, I realized that the me that I was missing was not whole..... Now - I may not be 100% healed but I do feel 100% whole! 

 Kintsukuroi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold with the thought the piece is more beautiful because of having been broken, Instead of the break "…diminishing [the bowl's] appeal, a new sense of its vitality and resilience raised appreciation to even greater heights." The bowl has become more beautiful for having been broken. The true life of the bowl "…began the moment it was dropped…" 

That is how I feel on this recovery journey and it is my goal to help as many as possible to break free of the crippling effects of emotional trauma.