I recently listened to a podcast featuring guest speaker, Dr. Martha Beck. She is a sociologist who holds three degrees from Harvard University.
In this podcast she discussed recalling and working through trauma, both in her own life and for others.
She said something that really struck me:
It was something along the lines of this:
“Go back to that time. The trauma. Find the moment where you were okay.”
It sounds so bizarre and so counter-intuitive.
And yet, oddly liberating.
I am sure it would feel even moreso if my trauma was more recent, and if I had not undergone EMDR therapy.
But though painful and heart-wrenching for many to recall these moments, they also help us gain some agency over the situation.
There is a reassurance and a validation that even in the midst of this horrible event, when those with PTSD or those who have experienced a traumatic event, look back on it, we often just feel stiff or re-traumatized, but Beck reminds us:
Even then. Even in that moment of possibly the worst experience of your life. The time when you were not okay at all, even then—
It wasn’t constant.
There were moments of okayness.
You didn’t curl up in a ball and die, even if you thought you would and you may have wanted to.
Instead, you rallied. You carried on.
There were brief moments when you regained composure, held together.
This helped. For me. It really did. To reframe it in this way.
I’ve had so much therapy to try to convince myself that I am not hopelessly damaged irrevocably fucked, but I am a survivor.
And she is right. Even in the near future after my father’s suicide, I got myself up from the staircase in my academic building. I made phone calls. I traveled home. I took care of my mother.
Later, I went back; I completed the semester, finishing the work for my doctoral seminars after my dad died. I continued functioning as an adult member of society, and continued my role as professor after my brother died, a month after my mother did.
I did pull through. I found the okayness when I wasn’t okay.
We all have our own stories. The particular experiences may vary, but the trauma that we experienced, that we felt had overtaken us and our lives did not entirely.
We have survived. We are still here.
I find it so affirming, validating, empowering for survivors, for someone who has experienced PTSD, to remember:
Even during the trauma, there were moments of okayness. Even now, with PTSD, there are moment of okayness. (These moments of not being okay are hard, yes, and they take more attention and energy, yes. They are scarring.) But still, there are moments of okayness.
And if we do the work, and/or maybe if we are fortunate, these okayness moments only grow more frequent. But even if that is a journey for some of us that seem too far off to grasp right now—
Still.
There are moments when we were okay.
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