The Path to Healing is Often Locked Behind Someone Else's Paywall

Why it's so hard to heal from trauma, even when you know you need to

The following is a TSF free post. If you want access to our comment box & community, subscribers-only posts, The Friday Roundup, and the full post archives including this one, you can grab all of that for just $5 a month (or even less on an annual plan) by subscribing right here:

Writing is how I make my living, so if you like what you see here, please support my work by subscribing!

If you’ve already subscribed but would like to buy me a coffee to help keep me fueled up for writing, you can do that here:

---

When I was growing up, psychology was a dirty word. It was a pseudo-science, a Freudian distortion of the religious answer to whatever ails you (sacraments, prayer, penance, embracing suffering).

I’ll never forget one day when I was about 10 years old, and having an emotional meltdown (because this was the behavior I was subjected to and had modeled for me every day of my life), and my mother threatened me with taking me to get psychological help.

She said it in the same way one threatens to send their kid off to military school.

I came to believe in that moment, though I didn’t realize it at the time, that psychology was a rightfully stigmatized profession, and one I should steer clear of.

It’s one of the worst beliefs I could have come to, as it drastically prolonged my healing process.

I grew up with a lot of emotional abuse. Lots of yelling and screaming and general terror. I got more than my share of corporal punishment, and there were moments of more significant physical abuse. I’m not here to air all the dirty laundry, or even to dwell on it. But I do feel the need to explain. I was a highly intelligent, highly emotionally sensitive child. The way I was treated destroyed me interiorly, and set me up for a lifetime of self-loathing, feelings of worthlessness, self-destructive and self-defeating behaviors, and emotional volatility.

If I knew how to let go of the maladaptive behaviors my childhood abuse caused, it would be much easier to forgive and move on. But all too often, I act out of my hijacked limbic system, and not my rational brain, and that has real-world, present-day consequences.

It’s not just some artifact of my past.

I have recently come to understand some things about how the human brain works that helps me understand why I always said, “I don’t mean to get so angry. I just react faster than I can think, and by the time I realize I’m doing it, it’s already too late.”

The first part of the brain that develops, in utero, is the brain stem. Then the limbic system. These are primitive, pre-rational parts of the brain. Only then does the neural cortex — the thinking part of the brain — develop. And it doesn’t stop until we’re in our twenties.

We process stimuli in the same order as the brain develops: brain stem, limbic system, cortex. Our brains are structurally designed to process input and begin reacting even before we’ve had time to rationally think. The brain stem and the limbic system also have no sense of time. If something happening in a particular moment reminds you of a traumatic event — whether that’s through the senses, or through emotional memory — you will begin to react as though you are back in that traumatizing event, because those parts of your brain can’t tell the difference. By the time you’re aware that you’re conflating a present-moment experience with a past-moment trauma, you’re already upset and reacting. And in many cases, you will react like the person you were when the trauma left its imprint. If you were 6 years old when it happened, you may act bizarrely like a 6 year old right now, as an adult, until your cortex kicks in and you get things under control — which, by the way, is incredibly difficult when you’ve already got Cortisol, which is very similar to adrenaline, coursing through your veins because you’re having a stress reaction.

This is how you wind up with the phenomenon of seemingly intelligent, grown adults who revert to child tantrum behavior when provoked by the right triggers.

It’s essentially the same neurological phenomenon as a combat veteran having flashbacks during a fireworks display, or the like. Your primitive brain makes no distinctions. Its only role is to act faster than you can think in order to keep you safe.

And when it malfunctions, it does anything but keep you — or the people around you — safe.

If you want to understand how the science behind this works in more depth, this talk (and pretty much every talk by Tim Fletcher) is a great way to dig in:

With all of this in mind, I came across a post today that describes me more accurately than I am proud to admit. This is what it said:

A man that has held on to his pain of not feeling good enough as a boy will continue to treat his woman like this if he doesn’t heal his inner child wounds:

1)      He will make her feel isolated and unseen as he is always in his head with different stories he is telling himself around his pain. He doesn’t have the capacity to connect and be present with his love.

2)      He gets annoyed with her if she expresses her emotions to him. She represents a part of him that he’s been avoiding and will often get judgmental and cold when he feels her open up. This is in Direct Line with how he feels about himself.

3)      He doesn’t have the capacity to lead because he doesn’t trust himself enough to make decisions, because all he’s done is convince himself that he’s unreliable as he spent so much time running from the things he knows he needs to address internally. This makes his partner feel uneasy in the partnership and she often struggles to not take control out of fear of being hurt.

4)      He doesn’t have the ability to hold himself in the heavy emotions that come up for him, so he will lash out and blame his partner, the world, his parents, or the people that hurt him. This is his inner child trying to be seen, but he has abandoned him so many times that he goes zero to 100 acting like a man throwing a tantrum.

5)      He disrespects his partner by entertaining attention from other women to feed his ego. This lack within him amplifies the need for him to be validated by external things, and it is a hunger that is never satisfied. No matter how much attention, status, money and success he acquires, he still feels empty. His partner will be collateral damage in his pursuit for meaning outside of himself.

This man needs to heal the little boy within by:

1)      Identify the pain

2)      Feel into experience that caused the pain

3)      Discover the truth in it

4)      Live from that place of truth

The identifying symptoms all check out. But the section on how to heal is vague and unhelpful.

And then, I got to this line:

If you feel that you’re at that point then comment the word, “HEAL” to get started with me.

Ah yes. It’s time to trigger the Manychat bot, to deliver a lead magnet, that gets my email into the system and prompts a series of emails that will try to upsell me into some kind of course or coaching or what-the-freak-ever.

I get it. People who do this work need to pay their bills too, but why are these supposed secrets to healing always locked behind a paywall?

Over the past 8 years, I’ve tried therapy three different times with three different therapists. None of it was fruitful. All of it felt like a waste of time and money. The one thing that came from it that was truly beneficial was the assessment that I was dealing with CPTSD. (I’ve written about this before.)

I thought I was there for anger issues. Or marital difficulties. Or chronic anxiety. I wasn’t really sure what was wrong with me, or where to begin. I had hoped that the mental health professionals would figure that out for me, and recommend an appropriate course of treatment. But there was precious little in the way of a diagnostic approach, and I just felt like a cash cow.

People with trauma and mental illness tend to have a lot of disruption in their lives and careers. They frequently struggle, even when they are otherwise intelligent and capable, to make ends meet. They spend so much time in a war with their brain and their emotions that they can’t get off the rollercoaster long enough to be truly successful.

Which means that they are often the people least able to get the help they need.

It took me over a decade to shed the stigma I held against psychology as an anti-Catholic “pseudo-science” and be willing to consider therapy. It took me another five years to feel like I was in a position where I could afford it. And then my life imploded and I went right back to “I need this, but I can’t pay for it right now, so it’s going to have to wait.”

That whole time, I was not getting better. It was only a year or two ago that I figured out that all the issues I was looking to fix in therapy were just maladaptive behaviors downstream from childhood trauma. It took that long for me to zero in on what the problem was so I could look for the appropriate help.

The people around me have had to live with a volatile, unpredictable, emotionally unsafe version of me for all this time. I am living proof of the adage that ‘hurt people hurt people.’ I didn’t want to do that. Most of the time I didn’t even realize how abnormal my behavior was. How easily I was being triggered back into childhood trauma states, then defending myself with a ferocity that was wholly disproportionate to the stimulus.

I want to get better, but I am more than half way through my life and only taking the first baby steps on this road. Maybe I can break this generational cycle, but I can already tell you that the hour is very late, and there is much that likely cannot be repaired.

If you are struggling with unconscious behaviors that are destructive, if you lash out or easily become defensive or are dealing with feelings of worthlessness and self-hatred; if you sabotage your relationships without meaning to, or hurt the people you love without wanting to do that, you are very likely dealing with the effects of childhood trauma.

When I was first told by a therapist that I had PTSD, I bristled. I thought it was tantamount to “stolen valor” to say that I was suffering from the same thing as some soldier who has dealt with the horrors of war and cannot forget them. It took me years to fully accept this diagnosis and to stop feeling guilty about it, or embarrassed to say it.

But here’s the thing: you cannot heal what you won’t face.

This morning, I sent an inquiry to RE/ACT — Tim Fletcher’s organization that focuses on Recovery Education for Addictions and Complex Trauma.

I don’t know if it will work. I don’t know if I can afford it. The pricing on the website looks to be very expensive. But I know I can’t afford not to try. I’ve made a lot of progress on my own, but I still get triggered into limbic responses I don’t know how to control, and then I stay dysregulated for days afterwards, falling into patterns of deeply negative self-talk and depressive and destructive behaviors that aren’t healthy for anyone.

I wish I had found the right help sooner. So much trial and error. So many paywalls. So few resources of substance that can be freely accessed so you can figure out how to know what you don’t know about yourself, so you can begin to fix it.

I urge you, if you’re suffering from any of the things I’ve written about today: don’t wait to seek help. You’re hurting yourself and those around you, and you owe it to yourself and to those you love to do everything you can to get better.

Maybe you don’t have insurance. Maybe your insurance doesn’t cover it. Maybe you’re intimidated and overwhelmed and don’t know where to begin — I often find myself here. Overwhelm is a big part of trauma dysregulation.

If you can’t afford help right now, do yourself a favor and DIY what you can. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past year seeking online resources that can help me to understand myself. Tim Fletcher’s LIFT is expensive, but his series of online talks are deep, and thorough, and educational, and they cost nothing. They have helped me the most. The Crappy Childhood Fairy is another good resource, although I find her presentation to be a lot less focused and scientific — though that style might be better for some folks. If you’re struggling with OCD — which is sometimes, but not always, also a trauma behavior — Nathan Peterson’s channel is excellent. He’s helped me with this more than anyone ever has. Still looking for good resources on ADHD and attachment issues, both of which have its own connection to trauma.

I encourage others who have found resources that can help to share them in the comments.

The important thing is not to wait. I spent too long waiting, thinking the things I was experiencing were either normal, or awful, but were “just how life is,” and that given time and effort would more or less get better on their own. They don’t.

For your sake, and the sake of those you love, I hope you’ll start your healing journey today. You can get a good start without paying to cross the paywall.