Will the startle reflex - trauma response ever go away?
PTSD leaves it scars
“Our bodies don’t lie when it comes to trauma.”
~Jay Reid
I am immensely calm these days, compared to many years in the past.
Being sober and having done somatic healing work to address my complex trauma has helped.
I feel at peace and aligned and at-ease so much of the time.
I guess that that was is why it throws me off so much when my dramatic startle reflex rears its embarrassing head.
Today I was delivering some peach cobbler that I had made to my older neighbor friends. One of them has this big baby of a doberman pincher, Haus. He isn’t vicious at all, but his bark is.
Someone came to her door while I was visiting. And he let out his deep and reverberating woof woof - and I must have jumped a foot. And my glass of water nearly went flying.
Sigh.
My dear neighor friend laughed.
I did too.
Because I didn’t want to/know how to share with her -
That it’s a trauma response.
I can’t help it.
I wish I could.
It often seems so over the top when it happens.
There have been points recently where I don’t react like this.
I think that that’s why it always throws me a bit to know that I can still be startled into that space of oh-my-god-duck reaction, that I often show to others.
These are the moments where I wonder -
Is it a nervous system dysregulation thing - if so, I can work to heal it.
Is this part of the altered brain/brain damage that comes with PTSD and cPTSD? If so, maybe I can’t.
Maybe it’ll never go away.
The internet tells me it’s emotional reaction because of a fear response due to hypervigilance; that’s what calls forth this outwardly appearing exaggerated response.
And, oh Lord - it is exaggerated.
I am glad that people laugh about it, mostly.
Because it is so over the top, it’s nearly downright farcical.
It used to make sense to me - this over-the-top reaction, when my body was still in hypervigilance and my cortisol levels through the roof. My drinking - of course - didn’t help.
But again, because I feel joyful and calm so much of the time now, and not anxious or in a heightened state of alarm or posed for threat - I don’t feel that way -
Moments like these still startle me.
Hah- my startle response startles me.
Oh - that’s ridiculous.
Lord, help me.