Strange is my life, when I glaze off into the distance looking at my willow trees in my childhood garden, in my mind, I know why I do it now so many years later.  This wonderful brain gave me a way to see something beautiful when something fracturing was done to my body, mind, spirit.
This spirit, soul we refer to is what’s responsible for this inner world we create.

This soul and spirit perhaps its both, their purpose for our life is the energetic protector and guider for our inner beings to survive.

I say strange, as it’s the only word that describes my life, I have the ability to read people to a level of great intrigue even to myself. My trauma has guided me to this. Now so much older and wiser, I see the gift, the opportunity in my pain and suffering.

I can look into a person eyes and see their emotions. My brain trained me to read people, that’s what brains do;  they shut down other learning to focus on learning what is required to survive.  I had to it was my survival mechanism its what I needed to be able to do very quickly to see what type of person was going to be near me.  What type of abuse this person or these people were going to subject me too?  How can I adjust my behaviours immediately to either not be the one they pick or to lessen an evitable event of abuse.  It’s how I survived. Its how I was able to function.

Now that I am safe, now that I am free, I can use these skills to read people to help them, to perhaps guide them.  It is why I work with people; I can see those nuanced repetitive behaviours and in what situations these behaviours are activated.  I can see when someone is stressed, or sad, or feeling despondent.  I can read those tiny little micro behaviours in body language to such a fine-tuned level now that I can pre-empt moments in time and diffuse or lesson the negative effects or consequences.

People always ask questions like —- would you ever change anything about your life if you could? …. Most people say No… it made me who I am.  I am going to answer it honestly, yes absolutely if I could go back in time and change things I would, but why do we even waste our time considering these options and hypothetical questions, its nonsensical, it will not happen.

What is going to happen, is you are going to wake up each day being you.  Until one day when you don’t.  That is the human condition, we have every moment of every day we breath; to be us, this we know.

Would I like to not be able to read people so well, probably, maybe I would like people a little more and the paradox here is that I have an intrinsic need to help people, yet I still don’t really like ‘us’ very much, human behaviour is both beautiful and ugly in every way again it’s the paradox of being.

Of being me and of being you and simply how much beautiful and how much ugly your mind, body and soul has seen, been, received, taken from or given to.

So, what opportunity did your suffering give you? Even if like me when you remember why you are good at what you do you feel that shame again, but in time you can see the opportunity in this, you can perhaps begin to understand that there is beauty in how you can choose to live your life as it moves with time , its still something that you will be extremely good at if you can gently remind yourself that the shame will leave,  that’s success just in a way you haven’t thought of before.

You have not failed you have become really good at something, so if you don’t know………………go find it.

 

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.