Thread by @ms_elleanderson

A traumatized individual who sees the world through the lens of their traumatized nervous system is often
H Y P E R S E N S I T I V E

(THREAD)

#Trauma #traumainformed #religioustrauma #churchtoo #CPTSD #PTSD #therapy #adversereligiousexpereince #religioustraumainstitute

After getting out of a domestically violent relationship and a fundamentalist, cult-like religion within a few months of each other, I felt a sense of freedom that I had never felt before.

I was under the impression, initially, that leaving these relationships was all that I needed to do in order to embrace a new life. In reality, leaving was obviously important, but only the first step.

I knew that part of living a new and free life was to allow myself to feel again (which, let’s be honest is WAY easier said than done! You don’t just get to turn emotions on and be able to integrate them into your life after shutting them down for decades!)

So when I began experiencing immense amounts of panic and anxiety, shame, guilt, disgust, and fear of judgment in almost every personal interaction I participated in, I initially just chalked it up to this process of feeling.

Through doing my own healing work, however, I realized that this was not healthy expression of emotion. It was, however, recognizing my hypersensitivity stemming from a place of terror because of how traumatized I was from my life experiences.

I felt immense amounts of panic if someone didn’t call or text back right away, if they expressed any confusion or lack of understanding for something I did or said.

If a dating relationship didn’t work out, I felt excruciating amounts of shame (even if I didn’t really care for the person or want the relationship to continue) as I believed I was fundamentally flawed and unloveable.

Any conflict, disagreement or differing of opinions could have me laid out for days. Nearly everyone seemed critical, judgmental, second-guessing and sometimes outright mean. It felt like an excruciating way to live.

Everything seems to feel familiar—everything feels like you are being abused, hurt, abandoned, and betrayed all over again. Each person seems to represent an aspect of your abuser, the person who hurt, abandoned, or betrayed you.

Everyone and everything feels terrifying (and this may not even be a conscious thing—often times it’s a very subconscious process that manifests itself through physical sensations, emotions and behaviors).

This is often how a traumatized nervous system sees the world, however. The job of our nervous system is to detect threat and danger (which is subjective to each individual) and respond accordingly.

A traumatized individual’s nervous system is on constant, high alert which leaves room for the possibility that literally everyone and everything is dangerous and threatening.

So it acts accordingly—swinging between responses of fight, flight, freeze and fawn—never having a down moment to simply rest or believe there is possibility for safety.

It can be difficult to be in a relationship with someone who is operating from a place of hypersensitivity due to trauma.

Know that their confusing or extreme-feeling responses may not be about you and may instead be an attempt for their body and nervous system to keep them alive. Be patient with them, show up for them, seek to understand them, be kind to them, affirm them & be present with them.

If this is you, if this is your experience, sometimes simply knowing what is going on is an important first step in healing.

Being able to consider that how you are seeing the world is colored from your trauma may spark curiosity towards healing in a different way.

Practice grounding yourself in the moment and giving yourself a lot of space to ask “what is going on inside and around me” (versus “why is this happening”…which immediately induces shame and accusatory language and makes things worse!)...

and begin to notice the internal process. Healing the nervous system takes a long time—each step you take in understanding differently so you can do differently is a big deal!