Frozen In Time - The Life Long Impact Of Trauma

Image Credit: babkin

Somewhere along the line I lost contact with myself. Trauma froze me in time. This made me withdraw from people.

Connection now scares me. 

Being thus frozen, my way of looking at the world, from a relationship perspective also froze. At the time of the freeze I was young. At that age, socialising is often facilitated by the adults for the child, it’s rarely done directly.

I realise now that I have kept this model, and in doing so I have isolated myself from my family and limited my friendship opportunities. I feel hampered and constrained by a ‘trauma block’ that walled off growth into adulthood.

Here is the mess of my mind, as best as I can introspect on it that is:

• I don’t often initiate connection, I wait to receive/have it put upon me by a parent figure. 

• Yet I am a grown adult, making me want to have as much self efficacy as possible, thus I rebel against others making such connections.

• I get very anxious with people approaching me directly, often not accepting connections/invites.

• Other adults are busy and will get the hint. With little direct initiation on my end, combined with my refusal of offers, they stop offering.

• In response to people reducing offers, I get further triggered into feelings of rejection, thus ascribing all of the feelings of rejection from my father, onto my current feeling of rejection (totally unwarranted of course).

• All this mess combines with life stress (work commitments, parenthood and other life pressures) to me having little social life.

• Furthermore, a part of me enjoys alone time. I feel safer.

I lost my childhood.

I didn’t get to learn how to make connections with people. Didn’t get to grow up learning social etiquette. Didn’t have anyone there to explain me through most of life’s challenges.

I was afraid and felt like I had no one to connect with that would understand. I never felt safe enough to share my story.

I was ashamed, and wasn’t taught how to deal with my shame.

Authors note: This piece was an act of writing therapy, created at the direction of my psychologist. She thought it would be therapeutic to explore the concept of ‘not having a childhood’. This was the result.

The discovery of deep shame wasn’t new to me, but the fact that it resurfaced suggest that it needs to be explored in future sessions.