Sharing traumatic memories for the first time is scary as hell but as liberating as the Fourth of July. Traumatic events become memories. Sometimes the mind seals these memories so tightly you don’t remember at all. Often bits and pieces of the memory torments your dreams, certain activities, or locations. Waking from a deep sleep in panic, pain, or crying stirs portions of these hidden or blocked memories. Denial of the events, diminishing their significance, or denouncing your reaction fights the revelation of truth and feeds the urge to keep them hidden. To share or not to share becomes mental gymnastics practice.
Walking through a mine field fully expecting to be destroyed in the process is what feels like when sharing traumatic memories for the first time. Memories sealed during a heightened struggle for survival can return with similar heightened gusto. It is hard enough to remember the facts but significant memories bring with them physical aspects of the memory. Not only is your mind abandoning its post to protect you but you mind has solicited the help of your body to really bring the memory out.
Smells of trauma.
Cologne to the victim of rape. Gasoline to the burned. Napalm to the Vietnam veteran. These scents seem reasonable but what about peppermint candy, fresh cut grass, or mildew? Virtually any scent can trigger a memory. Additionally the mind can use every sense experienced before, during, or immediately following a traumatic event to release the memory. Sharing traumatic memories allows your mind to relax. Freeing the memories reduces the power they have to disrupt your thoughts or trigger their remembrance.
Death and Dying
Elizabeth Kübler-Ross changed the way people responded to terminal illness with her book, On Death and Dying in 1969. Her focus was on individuals who learn they are dying and how they respond to their new reality. Traumatic events are near death experiences and the minds struggle to help the body survive is focused on getting out alive. Once out and safe the mind attempts to process the near death experience with the reality of successfully surviving. The problem is the memories feel like being back in the near death situation.
Responses to traumatic memories resemble those Kübler-Ross documented in her book: shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. hopelessness often accompanies shock and denial are with. We deny the significance of the experience, significance of the memory, the intensity of the need to survive and we get angry at our actions, the decisions made in the heat of battle to live. Simultaneously we bargain with our minds to keep the memory suppressed with self-medication, denial, and fear of reliving it. We hope it will just go away but the impeding memories into our present day breeds hopelessness to ever be free.
Opportunity Dawns in the Trenches of Grief
What we don’t realize is all this effort to suppress the memories is bringing us closer to losing. In desperation, I talk to myself. Actually, I pray and talk to God though talking may understate these discussions. The comments start with why, how, what, where, why not, how could, and so on. In the process of bitching and complaining, I share just a little. Sharing traumatic memories for the first time is a barrage of questions, emotions, self-anger, anger toward God, and other deflections. You have to start somewhere and this is as good a place as any.
When triggered by a song I would just avoid it. Avoidance is a type of bargaining, telling your mind ‘if I will avoid this then you will not stir these memories’. Triggers are not just to torment you. They are telling you your mind is on overload from trying to protect you from something which is no longer a threat. In order to live a happy and healthy life your mind needs to be able to engage and enjoy the fun of life. Sharing just a little frees your brain from guard duty for that little bit. Fewer things to guard requires less work to guard them.
Accepting your story
Sharing traumatic memories for the first time is always the first step to acceptance through sharing with yourself. Now that you are in a safe place, allow yourself to speak aloud at part of your story. It is normal and natural to be critical of what you did or how you did it. Do NOT allow yourself to get stuck there, you did what you did and now you are here. You will never be able to return and have a redo and Lord willing you will never have to confront a similar event. Focus of having a better today and tomorrow by taking the power of those memories back.
Expanding your audience carefully
In my post titled Positive Listening to Traumatic Memories I share an experience of sharing with someone close. There are several reasons it did not turn out well. First, he was an intimate partner. Intimate partners or parents want to fix things that hurt or take them away. They can do neither in the traditional sense. Men don’t want the women they love to hurt or relive a painful experience so they may encourage denial and blocking the memories release. This is not healthy or practical. Women want to empathize and sooth through understanding details. This applies pressure to share too much too fast or blocking sharing all together. This too is unhealthy and not recommended.
Sharing for the first time to other people can be incredibly hard to confront. To minimize additional trauma your mind will often release portions at a time. Unfortunately, denial and bargaining apply counter pressure causing the mind to seek additional outlets for the memories. This is why support groups, casual relationships, or fleeting opportunities are so valuable. Sharing traumatic memories for the first time in a low risk environment allows you to hear you share your story without additional shame, judgment, helpfulness, or pressure. Your ears hearing your voice share your story is a priceless first step to true healing and freedom. Sharing at a retreat to a person I did not know well, and would never see again, allowed me to be honest with myself about my story.
Regardless of who you share with this is foremost a personal journey. Even sharing with other people who were present at the event can cause issues because we all remember differently. Eye witness accounts are incongruent. Incongruence in memories when sharing for the first time can destroy a valuable relationship. Share with yourself, with low risk individuals, in safe situations so you can begin to accept your story.
Be Creative
Francis Scott Key was held under guard on a ship in the Baltimore harbor watching the British bombard Fort McHenry. In the morning, he saw the American flag flying over the fort and wrote the Star Spangled Banner. Expressions and sharing memories is not always verbally telling your story. Paint, draw, write true or fiction stories, compose poetry or music, or take pictures. Build something, cook something, or design something. Just create something. I write, pray, journal, paint, sing, and plan things. Doing things helps relax the mind and assists in living in the present.
It won’t take long to find a few important tasks which help you relax. They will also build your confidence and hope. Sharing for the first time is just the first step. Knowing what to do to help yourself process the emotions, and memories will assist you as you share again. The longer your mind has been holding these memories in protective custody the more it will take to adjust to them being part of your story. Each release, every time you share, the less power the memories have and the more freedom you have to live happy and healthy.
©2018, 2021 Elayne Cross
