Frozen Emotions and Trauma, Including Head Injury
Written by Julie Taylor
Frozen Emotions and Trauma, Including My Own Head Injury
...and how I became emotionally free of my past.
In this article I share how I became emotionally free of my past - and how you can do the same. In the event of trauma - both physical and emotional - our emotiona and feelings are often frozen. I believe this is the brain's way of maximizing our chances of survival.
This story is about my own trauma and may sound emotionless (certainly at the beginning, but please read on)... Any emotions - feelings - I had at the time (and I can barely remember much of what happened) were frozen or suspended and I 'allow' that same - blessed - detachment when I talk about that time still. The difference now is that I have learned how to be able to speak and think about those times as an observer now - like a fly on the wall. Sometimes I let myself remember deeply and feel the deep sadness - which will never change: this will always be a very sad event. However, I know that when I feel the extreme sadness, it's very tiring - exhausting. Which is why I choose not to summon the emotions when I talk about what happened (most of the time) but just look at the 'cold' facts. I don't want to spend any more energy on this event and I've learned how to do that.
The difference is that now I can 'go there' and stay for a while and feel deeply saddened and remember the pain if I wish to. I can then take a deep breath and come back to 'now'. Today I can 'control' when I allow myself to feel emotional about what happened to me - and when I do, I feel a deep sadness and a sort of 'peace', not the whirl of overwhelming emotion that I felt before.
The first few times that I allowed myself to 'go there' were rough and messy. Instinctively I knew it would be traumatic to allow myself to remember those hours - but I knew I needed to go there. The 'overwhelming emotions' I referred to above were spilling over into my life and I'd tried everything else to heal. I searched - without finding an answer - in books for wisdom and a guide. I couldn't find out how to stop the nightmares and messy emotions and heal.
For years I tried to carry on despite what was happening 'inside' me. I functioned pretty well but it saddens me to realize how much better I could have felt - and more importantly (to me) how much more successful I could have been in my life had I dealt with this emotion earlier. And it really saddens me when I think of the emotional wounds I would have spared my kids had there been someone to show me how to heal...
I thought I needed to 'move on' and 'forget' what had happened. That was the 'wisdom' - aka advice - I was receiving. Not true! I had to go back there and 'be with' the pain until I found myself 'wandering away' because I no longer needed to 'be there'. Sometimes in their anxiety to help you and in their wish to move on with their lives, friends and family actually make it harder for us to truly do that... Staying for a while - emotionally - is as important as the physical changes we need to make. Staying for as long as we need. And really it wasn't so hard to do...
Yes, it was an awful thing that had happened to me and no-one that loved me wanted me to revisit it even for a moment... But it was reality. I couldn't change the past by trying to ignore it. I had to take the time and go there... Unfortunately, like everything else in my recovery, I had no 'guide'. No-one telling me what I needed to do and I was very confused, especially as what I needed was so opposite to the advice and urging I was getting from loved ones.
I needed a therapist who was willing to allow me to go and sit with the pain while they stayed with me and kept me safe every moment that I was there. I needed a therapist who wouldn't hurry me or feel uncomfortable and who would allow me to take my time. I needed to be be able 'to go there' and explore it and then to come back to the present. I needed to demystify those hours and the changes they had wrought in me. I need to be allowed to 'wallow' and stay in that sad place, for as long as I needed, so that I could move on.
It was a very necessary step in order to be able to embrace and enjoy my life - in fact, for years I tried everything else I could think of and everything that was recommended to me, and nothing else had worked. I would urge anyone to find the right time, in relative safety and with someone you trust, to revisit their trauma. For me, that was the way to freedom.
Counselling that provides this kind of work and presence is Trust Oriented Therapy, which includes all of the following (any one of which might help somewhat): Person Centered Therapy, Milton Erickson's work, certain elements of Group Process, Focusing Oriented Therapy, NVC based therapies, Mindfulnesss work, EFT (Emotionally Focused Therapy). Trust Oriented Therapy offers is based on all of these therapies, glued together in it's own unique way.
My injury was a shotgun blast to the head - attempted murder. This photograph was taken by the police after the original surgery, performed by top British surgeon Mr Gortvai, who gained his experience with gunshot wounds to the head from the second world war.
It's the only photograph I have of my injuries and was taken before my head swelled to about 3 times it's size (apparently?) when I got meningitis from the dirty shot. My head being able to swell as it needed to do - along with the oil-rig employee who administered first aid on the street, the ambulance crew and Mr Gortvai - saved my life.
'Luckily' my skull had cracked when it was shot (rather like when you score an orange) which allowed my head to swell safely. When someone has meningitis without a cracked skull (the usual way), the meninges and fluid swells and exerts a lethal pressure on the brain. In fact the meningitis seemed to be as serious as the injury itself and I was treated with a cocktail of IV antibiotics and given daily spinal taps until all the infection was gone. The swelling/infected fluid drained openly into my pillow - to the tune of several pillows totally soaked each day... Which is a lot of fluid.
Strangely enough I didn't experience any pain or discomfort - not a single headache. At one point though the doctors were concerned that the skin around the wound was not healing - the first 4 or 5" of scar from my ear - and so they put a tight, stretchy net on my head, rather like the oven-proof nets that are often used on roasts to hold the meat together. The pain that this pressure caused was terrible and seemed to last for several days. Eventually I had a skin graft from my arm. I don't have a metal plate replacing the skull where it's missing because the doctors thought it would interfere with natural bone growth and movement?
I couldn't have pain killlers (apparently) for fear of the effect on my brain, which was fine for most of the time (except for the 'net' incident). The doctors were concerned that I would seize (have an epileptic seizure). Occasionally (ranging from once a week in 1985 to about once every six months now) I get excruciating pain actually in the scar itself (and below) but it only lasts for about 30 seconds. Other than that - and continued itchyness - I have no discomfort at all.
My memory of the entire incident is not really one of pain. Not for me... I was unconscious for several weeks and I did not suffer much at all when I awoke - other than with the odd bit of frustration at not being able to do what I wanted immediately.
The people who really suffered - really suffered - were my mother and my children. And my good friend whom I later married. For them it was incredibly difficult. To this day - 24 years later - my mother can't talk about 'the incident' without her eyes filling with tears.
For my oldest son was 8 and I was able to talk with him later and answer all of his questions. It was wonderful therapy for both of us to want and to be able to talk about it for hours. My 5 year old and my 2 year old were unable to verbalize what happened and the sheer trauma of it all - police, news reporters, horror of seeing it on TV, grandmother and friends crying - had a lasting effect on them for many years.
My family doctor recommended that we not go into trauma counselling together and that turned out to be the worst advice. In order to gradually come back to a place of 'normal', all of those who are directly effected by trauma shock - in my case my kids, new partner, mother and I - need counselling. There is an absolute need to go over - and over and over - all that happened. There's a good reason that armies 'debrief' their men...
During my training as a counsellor, I was able to go over (and over) - and come through - what happened. This seems the very opposite of what your intuition may be telling you: to try and put this unpleasantness out of your mind. I believe that when we have a traumatic event happen in our lives, we absolutely have to debrief and revisit and desensitize ourselves to it. This would also apply to those indirectly affected by the trauma. For example, my oldest son was also able to talk at length (naturally) about what happened and later expressed a lot of what was happening in his own life in his competitive cycling. My younger two children had very difficult teenages which we eventually overcame just recently and I believe that part of the reason at least is that all of this emotion for them was locked up inside their heads, needing expression and freedom. My mother is still unable to talk about it all, I think for the same reason. And my partner tried heriocally to help for years before he finally gave up and physically moved away from all of us (his whole family) and again I think that partly to blame is his inability and unwillingness to express both this and his own early life.
Trauma shock will devastate everyone in its path unless we meet it head on and deal with it... Talk. Express all of our emotion - every little bit. Sometimes you won't feel any emotion for a while... Years even. It is there and one day, with help, it will come out. Meanwhile be patient and respect your brain's need for some time. Cry, if you feel like it. Punch a punching bag. Run or Cycle till you throw up - over and over... Play ice hockey till you drop. Anything... Just please don't ignore it.
