What if I am Damaged for Good?

 What if I will never heal from trauma?

What if my nervous system is so damaged from childhood trauma that no amount of therapy and practice will reteach it a sense of safety in places and situations that trigger me?

Is it possible for a nervous system to be so severely damaged by trauma that no amount of therapeutic techniques help 100 percent? 

These are questions spinning around in my brain regularly, and I’m now speaking them because I can’t push them down anymore.

I was suppressing these thoughts because I wanted to keep up hope that I could “fix” my nervous system and repair damage done by trauma. I want to have faith in the power of neuroplasticity. None of this is to say that nothing has helped me. I have seen progress in building up some resilience.

However, there is so much more progress to be made, that I grow frustrated at the rate healing takes. Being in an intensive outpatient program (IOP) has shown me how much work I need to do on myself, and quite frankly, it’s overwhelming. The amount of work is dizzying, and I can’t always seem to get a grip on myself when I think about all the therapy and practice I need to do.

 There are so many techniques and modalities for trauma, and through the IOP I have received a taste of a couple that seem really helpful, such as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and somatic exercises.  DBT and somatic work are modalities that I have been wanting to do for a while, but it’s so hard to find therapists who take insurance for somatic therapy.

I’m cracking down on practicing my meditation, somatic movement, breath work, and emotional regulation skills. It becomes overwhelming, and I want to cave under it all at times. There are so many facets of my trauma and mental health in general that need to be addressed, it almost feels as though I need a specialized therapist for each one.  

For instance, I noticed the other day that while doing a body scan, I struggle with body scans, because I struggle to be in my body. I don’t love my body. In fact, I don’t even feel neutral about my body. I have so much dislike for my body that goes way back to my childhood and conditioning, that I don’t even know where to begin. When I talk to therapists about this, they don’t seem to have the best of answers or to be the most comfortable talking about the topic.

It’s very weird, and it makes me feel like I have to do the work all on my own. I have to do my own research into how to even feel neutral about my body and then how to feel positive about my body. The frustration grows.

 Dental and medical phobia are other mental health conditions I have that seem to need their own therapists. All therapists I’ve had have recommended exposure therapy, but they don’t seem to go into detail about practical ways that I can expose myself to the dentist and the doctor. One therapist once recommended that I practice just entering and leaving a doctor’s office without doing anything. I imagine myself entering the building to my primary care provider’s office, standing there for a minute and then leaving.

If I did this frequently enough, wouldn’t they notice and question what I was doing? It might just draw too much attention and would be really weird. No one seems to have good exposure techniques that I can try. Maybe there aren’t any. Maybe that’s just the pessimism speaking.

There’s also the entire childhood trauma I experienced. I had to live in a near-constant state of unbearable anxiety as I walked on eggshells around my mother and former stepdad. The abuse from teachers and incessant bullying created a deep wound within me that I am carrying with me as an adult. This trauma makes living and functioning in important ways very difficult for me. I struggle with severe anxiety at work due to my fear of authority figures and of punishment if I make mistakes. That’s because I was screamed at and hit on multiple occasions for making mistakes as a child. The list goes on. 

I’m not really sure how to end this. I guess I really want to have hope, but I need to acknowledge that realistically, I can’t always be hopeful in my treatment.

There will be bumps along the way.  I need to forgive myself, show myself compassion, and know that it’s okay for me not to heal “perfectly”. 

Photo Credit: Unsplash

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