Elle
[...]
Betrayal trauma was a notion I resisted. I remembered all too well my response when a friend asked the hypothetical question, "what would you do if your husband cheated." Back then, I knew exactly what I'd do. Dump him. I was so sure that I'd kick him out the house, march straight to a divorce lawyer, wipe my hands clean of him and move forward into my life. At no point did I imagine trauma. Wasn't that for people who'd been raped? Or prisoners of war? Or abused? A cheating husband might lead to anger, I thought, but not trauma.
File that quaint notion under the "yeah, right" category.
Following D-Day, I couldn't sleep more than a couple of hours at a time, waking to panic. I felt powerless. Enraged. Terrified. One day I would feel numb but fine. The next, I couldn't get out of bed. I became a stranger to myself, entertaining thoughts of suicide. Anything to avoid this pain that I thought was endless.
Then a friend, who worked with adult survivors of sex abuse, suggested I was experiencing post-trauma.
She gently explained to me that betrayal is trauma. Her list of "symptoms" rang true.
I felt guilty, however, putting myself in the same list as rape victims. Or abuse survivors. I felt like my experience didn't warrant being traumatized. I should be able to get over this, I thought. I should be stronger.
But I wasn't.
I wish then that I'd heard those words:
The worst is over.
According to Judith Acosta, who wrote the HuffPo blog piece and a book entitled The Worst is Over, those are the most critical words a terrified and traumatized person needs to hear.
And, with the brilliance of hindsight, I know she's right.
Knowing that the worst is over – that gut-dropping, brain-scrambling discovery that what you thought was...wasn't won't ever be repeated because you'll never be caught so off-guard again – can help you breathe again. It can help you focus on what's ahead, instead of what's behind. It can give you the trust in yourself to know that you survived...and that the worst is, indeed, over.
If you can't believe that, then more trauma work is probably a good idea. If you find yourself hyper-vigilant for any signs of impending pain because you just don't think you could go through it again, find someone to hold your hand and your heart (a therapist is darn good at doing that!) while you heal.
But in the short-term just keep telling yourself the worst is over.
Because it's true.
***
Reprinted with permission. Many thanks, Elle! Read the whole post here.
A pattern is emerging. I'll open up, be vulnerable, or relax for a moment, an hour, a day, and then - BOOM - I'll crash. It happened again yesterday - after a really lovely Father's Day, I watched a TV show with Drew, was reminded of the emotion of finding out that someone has made decisions that destroy some aspect of your life and it's outside of your control, and lost it.
This has happened often enough that Drew's come up with a term for it: The Happiness Hangover.
I think I have become so accustomed to negative emotions that positive ones feel unfamiliar, unsafe. When I'm enjoying a moment, there's a part of my brain that is constantly scanning my environment for danger signals, wary of being blindsided by betrayal again, waiting for the seemingly inevitable turn of the wheel of fortune. It sometimes even seems that I create triggers out of thin air.
This is unquestionably a side effect of the trauma of Drew's trust violation and the trickle-truth nature of his disclosures. For a few months, it felt like a new shoe was dropping every few days, leaving me constantly afraid of what else I didn't know. I am not, naturally, an anxious person - quite the opposite. This is not who I am, and this is decidedly not who I want to be.
Chump Lady would suggest that the only way I can escape these jitters is to get rid of the original cause (Drew). But I'm not sure I agree - this is now part of who I am, and it's up to me to deal with it. Divorcing Drew ensures that he cannot betray me again - but it doesn't remove the memories of his betrayal, nor does it ensure that the next person won't betray me.
So I'm going to focus on reminding myself that the worst is over.
It's not the same as saying that things couldn't get worse - things could always get worse. Drew could be acting like an ass, instead of trying so damn hard. I could find out something new - there's a love child, yet another woman, whatever. Or, the worst thing of all - something could be wrong with one of my girls. (He did, after all, cheat on me while I was pregnant, without protection.)
But in terms of infidelity, the worst is over. Even if there's another D-Day, with Drew or some future partner, I am not who I was, a person who could truly believe that that's-never-going-to-happen-to-me. I'm not going to be so invested in being a non-jealous partner that I don't speak up when a situation makes me uncomfortable. I'm not going to ignore red flags (though I might create some).
And the worst is indeed over. The times I can feel happy are expanding. The first few times I could feel only a glimmer of enjoyment, only for a moment - but now I can enjoy a family playdate, a long talk with a friend, a date with Drew, a day of productive work. Even when I'm in the grips of the emotional hangover, it's never as bad as D-Day. The pain doesn't cut so deep. It doesn't last as long. I can recognize and label what it is, and ride it out.
The worst is over. The worst is over.
I think I have become so accustomed to negative emotions that positive ones feel unfamiliar, unsafe. When I'm enjoying a moment, there's a part of my brain that is constantly scanning my environment for danger signals, wary of being blindsided by betrayal again, waiting for the seemingly inevitable turn of the wheel of fortune. It sometimes even seems that I create triggers out of thin air.
This is unquestionably a side effect of the trauma of Drew's trust violation and the trickle-truth nature of his disclosures. For a few months, it felt like a new shoe was dropping every few days, leaving me constantly afraid of what else I didn't know. I am not, naturally, an anxious person - quite the opposite. This is not who I am, and this is decidedly not who I want to be.
Chump Lady would suggest that the only way I can escape these jitters is to get rid of the original cause (Drew). But I'm not sure I agree - this is now part of who I am, and it's up to me to deal with it. Divorcing Drew ensures that he cannot betray me again - but it doesn't remove the memories of his betrayal, nor does it ensure that the next person won't betray me.
So I'm going to focus on reminding myself that the worst is over.
It's not the same as saying that things couldn't get worse - things could always get worse. Drew could be acting like an ass, instead of trying so damn hard. I could find out something new - there's a love child, yet another woman, whatever. Or, the worst thing of all - something could be wrong with one of my girls. (He did, after all, cheat on me while I was pregnant, without protection.)
But in terms of infidelity, the worst is over. Even if there's another D-Day, with Drew or some future partner, I am not who I was, a person who could truly believe that that's-never-going-to-happen-to-me. I'm not going to be so invested in being a non-jealous partner that I don't speak up when a situation makes me uncomfortable. I'm not going to ignore red flags (though I might create some).
And the worst is indeed over. The times I can feel happy are expanding. The first few times I could feel only a glimmer of enjoyment, only for a moment - but now I can enjoy a family playdate, a long talk with a friend, a date with Drew, a day of productive work. Even when I'm in the grips of the emotional hangover, it's never as bad as D-Day. The pain doesn't cut so deep. It doesn't last as long. I can recognize and label what it is, and ride it out.
The worst is over. The worst is over.
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