Processing the Pain of Past Trauma

Documenting how I process my emotional triggers so others can learn

Recently I have had several conversations about mental health and trauma recovery. I decided to document the process I went through recently in trying to understand and process some of the emotions I have been feeling lately.

Every year around the beginning of autumn, I feel an emotional rollercoaster of depression, anxiety, fear, and a general sense of feeling overwhelmed. This year it hit my again a couple of weeks ago. One night I was pretty tired when I went to bed. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I was wide awake. I could not sleep. After laying there for several minutes, I felt like I needed to run or I would jump out of my skin. I got out of bed and wondered out onto the terrace walked around. Yuri was still up, and sitting on the terrace. He had been talking with some other guests at the hostel. I sat down to talk to Yuri. I told hi what I was feeling. I then started telling him about the last time I felt that way.

A Previous Experience

The memory I related was from the start of the Christmas season in 2018. That was the second Christmas after Debi had died. I felt like I had done well going through the first Christmas, so I wasn’t really expecting to have much trouble with the second season. I few days after the start of the Christmas shopping season, I walked in Walmart. I immediately turned around, and started back to my car. As I walked I felt like I wanted to climb up the building and jump off. Immediately I thought to myself “WTF, what is going on?” I talk a deep breath and started thinking through what I was feeling.

I really was not even in tune to the emotion I was feeling at the moment, so I started thinking about what I was feeling. I had a feeling of anger and overwhelming sadness. From my years of grief training, I knew there had to be a trigger. So I traced my steps back, and realized I had walked past the “Angel Tree”.

The Angel Tree is a Christmas tree many stores in the US put up. The tree is adorned with handmade ornaments each listing a gift for a child in need. Some trees are for children in foster care. Sometimes it is children in the hospital or whose parent is in prison. Since we couldn’t have children of our own, Debi and I always “adopted” a few children from the tree to buy/make gifts for and to pray for. So seeing the angel tree was a major trigger for the grief of losing Debi the previous year. Also, knowing the pain of the hardship the that Angel Tree represents brought some of the trauma of my own struggles through 25 years of caregiving. This was one of the first times I need to process not only grief, but also the long-term trauma the results in Complex PTSD.

Responding to Someone

Yuri has anxiety attacks, and so could listen calmly while I related what I was feeling. He also simply listened. All he said, is I understand what you are feeling. Which is the appropriate response. So many times, especially as in the church, we feel like we need to add some advice or smooth over the emotion. We need to let people feel that emotion. Often is gets very raw, and we hate seeing someone going through it. But that is why a therapist is trained to simply listen. This is one of those things the Bible refers to as baring one another’s burdens. Listening without judging or minimizing the person’s pain.

I am going to describe an experience that many Christians have an absolute wrong belief about. The Apostle Paul clearly describes it in the Bible.

(8) We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters,[a] about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. (9) Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.

2 Corinthians 1:8-9

Many Christian often say “He will not give us more than we can handle” which is a misunderstanding of another verse. Those statement often hurt more than help when someone is going through hardship. A person needs to be able to speak their pain. You do not need to say anything in response. The best thing is “I am here for you.” Once they talk about what they are feeling, they will eventually calm down. Sit there by their side and let them cry, yell, scream, whatever they need to release that emotion. Only intervene if looks like it will become dangerous.

Processing My Feelings

After talking a few minutes I was able to calm down so that I could go back to bed. I have been fairly anxious for several weeks, which is typical during this season. I knew there was more memories I needed to work through. The following day I spent some time journaling and following some of those emotions back in time. To me it feels like a rabbit trail of memories that are chained together by the emotion. What I was feeling was a sense of overwhelm and a need to run. I thought about other times I could remember feeling those feelings.

I could remember the time during the fall of 2010. When Debi was having a major mitochondrial episode, our business was failing, we were on the verge of homelessness, completely out of money, struggling with food insecurity, and…well it was bad. We were completely at the end of our rope. So I was feeling completely overwhelmed. I went out for a walk and was crying out to God. That conversation got very raw and ugly.

I realized that we had nothing more to lose. I could run off to someplace in a warmer climate and start over, but there was no way Debi could handle living like that. I honestly felt like running. I cried out to God, “I CAN NOT HANDLE IT ANYMORE! I cannot leave her but I feel like I need to leave her behind and start over.” (I am now crying remembering that conversation, which is good) It still hurts that I ever felt like walking away from her. And there is still so much pain to that feeling of overwhelm.

God’s response at that time knocked the wind out of me. He said:

Yes, my child, you can run if you need to but I will still take care of her. And I will take care of you too. Just as I am already doing. You are not caring for her on your own strength. I am caring for her through you. If you leave I will raise up someone else or some other way to care for her. Let me do that for you now!

That statement gave me the strength to keep going. I understood that I wasn’t doing this on my own. God would give me the strength and other resources to help. I also realized, I needed to learn to be better at seeking out and excepting help from others. Something I still have a hard time doing, but I am trying to get better at it.

And Even More Processing

Spending time living among people in such difficult circumstances (both Argentina and Brazil) has been trigger some of the memories that are very hard to handle. While I was journaling about these experiences, I realized there was more memories that I needed to process. My next step was to go back to one of the first times I could remember these feelings.

I remembered our decision to move west which resulted in my job at Echostar, which I left after only six months. A few years later, we were struggling to find a way to keep Debi off of a respirator while dealing with a very mean manager at Worldcom. Then the whole Worldcom bankruptcy resulting in multiple years of layoffs. Which continued on through many other financial and medical experiences. No wonder my work with the poor often brings up such deep feelings from my past. I actually documented a long list of things that started around July/August, got bad during the fall, and continued on for at least a year.

Walking with Someone

I have walked alongside many people in my life who needed someone to just let them describe the memories that lead to their pain. I’ve had several discussions recently with people who are experience traumatic pain, and needing to process through their emotions. Sometimes, medical intervention is needed, so I recommend finding a good counselor. A friend or pastor cannot substitute for psychological intervention when it is necessary. But pastors and compassionate friends need to be able to walk alongside someone where is struggling with mental health issues. There is no “just getting over it”. Greif, trauma recovery, depression and anxiety are processes that we often go through for the rest of our lives. We can process the memories so that it becomes more manageable. We can also learn to recognize our triggers and develop coping skills. We all have our problems and painful triggers. We need to be patient with one another.

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