How To Deal With Trauma
A man with a machete. A nine-year-old girl with knitting needles.
When I was 9, a man tried to kill me. Or, at least, that’s what I thought was happening.
My family and I were all out at church, but I had to go home and get a guitar for the service. It was a long walk home. When I unlocked the door and walked in, I came face-to-face with a man standing inside our home, holding a machete in one hand and, in the other hand, bags of our things. We were being robbed.
He ran at me with the machete. I miraculously sidestepped. He half-fell out the door. I slammed and locked the door behind him — all of this within seconds — ran upstairs, and locked myself inside a bedroom.
I stayed inside that bedroom for hours. I could see him walking around and around the house with a spear bigger than me — I remember, when I saw it, screaming so loud that birds flew away in the distance. I could hear him scratching at the windows. I thought he was trying to get in, to silence me so I wouldn’t tell my family. It was someone we knew.
I had a pair of knitting needles that I planned to stab his eyes with — but I truly knew, in my little nine-year-old brain, that I wasn’t going to survive. That man was going to burst in and kill me. I watched the clock — hours went by like minutes. I remember that I felt sad that I would never get married. I listened to him scratch at the windows.
He didn’t get in.
Eventually, my family came to get me, and by then, he was either hiding or far away.
For years afterwards, I had a habit of sleeping under the bed, in case anyone came to kill me. I slept with heaps of stuffed animals which I lumped together to look like a person — a red herring so I wouldn’t get stabbed. I couldn’t walk through the house in the dark. I was truly awakened to a sense of my own mortality.
Despite this trauma, I was able to process and deal with the experience. I don’t worry about getting murdered anymore or deal with intrusive thoughts. The only thing left over is my priority of checking that the door is locked every night.
I got married early last year and that trauma doesn’t affect my daily life or my marriage. I have a happy life.
Here are seven key things I would recommend for people dealing with trauma:
- Concrete vs abstract processing — When you go through something traumatic, you ask yourself different questions to try and make sense of it all. There are usually two categories of questions that people ask. There are abstract questions, like “Why did this happen?” and concrete questions like “How did this happen?”. Abstract questions are unanswerable and cannot be resolved. Concrete questions are the ones that are answerable, such as: “Who was involved?”, “Where did this happen?”, “What happened?”. Concrete processing is much better for mental health and can be trained.
- Humour — Humour is a skill and can be learned. Research suggests that humour — especially dark humour — can be really helpful for processing and dealing with trauma. You would be surprised how much comedy gold lies in a childhood story about a man threatening your life at knifepoint.
- Finding meaning and purpose in the event and in life — When you have a spare minute, sit and write down all the good things about your trauma. You may have to really dig. There will be something, even if it’s just “I know I can survive difficult things,” or “This formed who I am today and I wouldn’t change myself for anything.” Think about how it might play into your purpose for your life. People can thrive in the face of trauma if they are able to identify and work towards their life purpose.
- Confronting and avoiding grief — People think that you need to think about what happened to truly process it. This isn’t true. Working through grief and trauma needs both active thinking and active avoidance. At times, you should think about what you went through and process it. At other times, you should forget about it, do fun things. It’s the oscillation between confronting and avoiding that eventually helps you to work through trauma.
- Journaling — journaling is good for the soul for so many reasons. This will help you to do all the other things — processing, finding meaning, learning concrete questions, etc. But it also gives you a record of the growth you’ve made. I can look over a decade of entries and watch my anxieties fizzle away over years of entries.
- Love and friendships — prioritise your relationships with other people, and — this is crucial — never, ever, ever, beat yourself up about those relationships. Said something embarrassing? Don’t worry about it. Have your own back. Have enough validation from your own self that you don’t need anyone else’s. And make deep friendships your absolute highest priority. Brainstorm ways to meet more people, get closer to your current friends and resolve any issues with your family. Your social connections will improve every single area of your life.
- Therapy!! — I’m not a professional. I’m just some chick on the internet. Therapy is one of the best things that’s helped with trauma and also with anxiety and depression. It has the potential to completely change your brain. Go to the experts.
You’re a strong person — remember that. Cut yourself some slack, and don’t ever feel bad about feeling bad. You’re doing the best you can.
