How Trauma Has Impacted My Brain and Body
I’m not a scientist, psychologist, psychiatrist or neurologist so let’s just set that straight from the top. But I want to share the real, tangible ways that my own trauma, and in particular grief, has impacted my brain and body. As I’ve shared before, I was diagnosed with PTSD in 2013 after experiencing compounding grief after a number of back-to-back losses of people I really care about. I remember sitting in my therapist’s office while she was asking me questions about my loss, my grief, and the symptoms I was experiencing. She asked me to share things about how my brain was working, how my memory was working, how I was feeling, etc. At the time, I was really struggling to be able to focus and I was having trouble recalling memories from my entire life. To be honest, it scared me a lot. I thought I was just someone who had a bad memory, but soon realized that until I had experienced those particular traumas, my memory was working just fine.
In College, I struggled a bit academically while I worked to figure the memory thing out. I couldn’t recall information from the previous class just two days ago, I couldn’t remember many specifics about my childhood or life really at all. It was scary and it’s still something I struggle with today. It’s very common for me to read something, watch a movie or listen to a podcast and struggle to recall any of it a few hours later. I can certainly recall how I felt about it, whether I liked it or not, and remember the general summary of what it was, but it is challenging to recall any specifics. Prior to 2013, this was not the case. So, for the last ten years, I’ve had to learn how to live with a brain that has symptoms of PTSD. That means that I write absolutely everything down. It means I live and die by what is in my Google calendar. I use my Apple watch to keep me on track during the day. I joke around that if you tell me something and I don’t capture it in some way, it basically immediately leaves my brain.
On a daily basis, I don’t feel like my trauma is having a huge impact on me anymore. But it is something that is very real and can significantly impact someone’s ability to live a “normal” life after experiencing trauma. It might not be obvious in big ways, but people feel it in the subtle, small things that they have to carry with them every day. I see it in students I work with on a daily basis who have experienced significant trauma in their lives. Just getting out of bed and going to class can be an extreme challenge. Our brains are impacted by trauma and it impacts everything about our lives. On the surface, it may seem like I have it all together or am super organized or whatever, but the truth is, I have to work really hard at it. And it can be exhausting. Responses to trauma can seem small and insignificant, but they take up a lot of brain capacity.
Beyond my brain, I see the ways that my grief has impacted my body too. I feel the weight of loss in my body, in my gut, and in my bones on a daily basis. It can be difficult to carry around. Over time, I’ve had to get really intentional about finding ways to work that stuff out of my cells. It means making time for movement, meditation, singing, dancing, laughing, and playing. I get massages on a monthly basis because I have to find intentional ways to connect with my body. I love hugs and need more of them in my life. I have to use my body to move the trauma out of it. I have to pay attention to what the cells of my body are telling me. They’ve been screaming at me for a long time now and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to put them in a box and ignore those signals.
So many amazing friends, teachers, pastors, mentors, therapists, etc. have helped me understand the positive impact that movement can have when processing grief. It took me a really long time to learn this but it has been incredibly healing. I wish I had known sooner how important movement and connecting back to my body was. I used to try to analyze or intellectualize my trauma. I’d try to rationalize or talk myself out of what I was feeling. I’ve learned that my body has extremely useful information for me that I just cannot ignore. What I’m feeling in my heart, in my gut, in my muscles, in my back, in my spine, etc. really matters. I’ve been forced to face it and stop ignoring it. My body has been through all kinds of sh*t over the last ten years and it has been trying to communicate something to me. I needed to finally pay attention to what I needed. My guess is that it’s going to take another ten (or more) years to get back in touch with the body that I ignored for so long. Trauma has long-term impacts and this is not overnight work. It’s a work in progress, but I’m not going to give up on myself.
I hope this can serve as a reminder that we are all carrying stuff with us that might be invisible on the surface - the many ways that our own pain, trauma, and grief have impacted our brains and our bodies, and our hearts. Let’s be kind. You never know the weight someone might be carrying around with them.
