Journey Through Trauma

I’m sitting here reading a book about paranoia and terrorism. I wanted to share a quote from the book that really struck me.

“At this point [after 9/11], for many Americans, a fire alarm in a public place… can access “stuck” memories established in a time of great fear, in a way similar to what the backfiring of a car, or holiday fireworks… can do to the brain of a shell-shocked veteran…We feel and behave in ways that are somewhat more anxious and suspicious than our usual reactions… To varying degrees, the emotional systems of our brains were overwhelmed, and our minds became more cluttered than we knew with unprocessed fragments of emotion, image and fear-laden sensation. These chaotic shards of memory soon started to be triggered , and to ambush us at unpredictable times, altering our feelings, our moods, and our behaviors.”

-Martha Stout, The Paranoia Switch

This is one of the best explanations of flashbacks that I have come across.

I have been dealing with nightmares and flashbacks since I was 13 years old, possibly earlier. I bought this book because I thought it might be interesting to learn more about paranoia, since I’ve been dealing with it for a few months.

Traumatic experiences alter our behaviors. They cause us to become anxious. My experiences have caused me to be paranoid.

When I was abused for 7 years, I was overwhelmed with fear and terror. That’s why I have 10-20 flashbacks a day.

Martha Stout talked earlier in the book about the fact that people have flashbacks because of unprocessed memories. I think that’s why I’m still dealing with complex PTSD. Many years later, I still haven’t been able to fully process my memories of the abuse. It's too confusing. Broken pieces.

I often wish my paranoia, psychosis, flashbacks and nightmares would just go away. Just like that. A wave of a wand and woosh! Everything goes away.

But life is not that easy.

It’s a journey.

And journeys mean that we have some ups and downs. All stories have to have conflict, or else it’s not a story. And some of us have more conflict than others. That’s just life.

No matter how much conflict you encounter in your life, you can always have hope because we have a God who loves us very deeply.

When I was abused for many years, I often thought that God was not listening to my prayers. I often felt desperate and unheard.  But God listens. My pastor said in a sermon a few weeks ago something that really helped me. She said “God journeys with us in the seeming answered and seeming unanswered prayers.”

No matter what, we are not on this journey alone.