Overwhelmed

I am not a person who enjoys big feelings. I’ve always been the stable, steady type, not given to wild swings of emotion. Trauma changed that.

This morning I saw a reel on Instagram posted by @healwithbritt that explained something I experienced recently, and it made me stop and pay attention. Sometimes the mind-reading Internet gods come in handy.

Here’s what she said:

Trauma survivors get overwhelmed more easily . . . kind of.

This is absolutely true of me. For the first 56 years of my life, I worked very hard at not getting overwhelmed. I essentially stuffed my feelings down inside where they couldn’t be seen and wouldn’t upset my sense of peace. I perfected the art of denial with a little dissociation thrown in. It worked really well until it didn’t. This strategy is like capping a soda bottle and shaking it hard. Eventually you’re going to blow.

A lot of trauma survivors have the weird experience of being eerily calm under pressure and when really bad stuff is actually happening . . . and then having really big reactions to things that other people don’t really react to . . .

This is also spot-on. When I was hit head-on, I was the picture of calm. I talked myself through getting my seatbelt off, pushing open the stuck car door, and running away from the smoking car. I wound up sitting on the front lawn of some lady’s house where the wreck happened. I did not cry or get hysterical. I just sat there as people came and went, asking me questions while I calmly answered them. Even when my brother got there, I did not fall apart. I remember being surprised that when he hugged me I didn’t cry. It was like I had no emotion. I did not have nearly enough reaction to that traumatic event.

Since then, other “big” things have happened. When my grandson broke his leg, when we had a calf hovering on the brink of dying—any high-pressure situation, I’m able to be calm and rational. I can think clearly and make a good plan.

But ask me to pick out a vanity and I crumble. Try to find the right electrical parts and I cry in Lowe’s. The littlest things set me off and I sit there in my tears wondering for the billionth time, “What is wrong with me?”

So for example, when an actual emergency goes down, a trauma survivor is someone you want on your team . . . But if you lose your keys, if you’re feeling frustrated because of a bad day at work, or you’re feeling kind of sick, a lot of times those can push trauma survivors into a state of overwhelm where they act really big with their anger or they totally shut down.

I’ve done both—the anger and the shutdown. One is over-reaction and the other is under-reaction.

Here’s an example of over-reaction: Hank is my sweet little dog that I love so much. I tell him all the time he’s the best puppy of all the puppies and I (mostly) mean it. He’s my favorite dog ever. (Don’t tell the others.) But when it’s the end of a long day and I’m tired and all I want is to be horizontal in my bed, that is not the time to be picky about which blade of grass you pee on. It’s time for action, buddy. Just make it happen so I can be done for the day.

This obvious bedtime procrastination on Hank’s part sends me into a rage faster than anything else and I want to grab him around the middle and squeeze it out of him. How ridiculous is this? What happened to thinking he’s the best puppy of all the puppies? My patience and adoration are instantly gone.

Here’s an under-reaction: I was in Tennessee for my daughter’s baby shower when Ben called and said we were moving into our house in four days. I’ve known about this move for two years, so it’s not like it was a surprise. Yet I was instantly overwhelmed, stomach churning, mind racing, body shaking. Why was this such a big deal? I have no idea. I spent the next day on my nine-hour drive home in complete denial, not thinking about it, refusing to admit it was very stressful. This is way more than I can handle, thanks. I’ll just listen to a podcast and pretend it’s not happening. I bought myself nine hours of peace that wasn’t really peace, and eventually I had to deal with the stress of actually moving without having a decent plan.

One of the results of trauma is that the prefrontal cortex—the seat of rational thinking and planning—often goes offline, while the amygdala—the part of the brain associated with emotional processes—becomes hyperactive. The prefrontal cortex has too little power and the amygdala has too much. There’s not enough rational thought and too much big emotion.

So we can’t think clearly, and it’s almost impossible to regulate ourselves. Because of this imbalance of power, we struggle to manage our reactions in socially acceptable ways. We may have an angry outburst or fall apart crying at a very small provocation, like finding an electrical part or waiting for the dog to pee. We over-perceive or under-perceive danger (this is the story of my driving life right now). Our anxiety stays high and we have trouble calming down, so we use unhealthy coping mechanisms to manage. My favorites are still denial and dissociation.

Things that should not be overwhelming, are, and we wind up like I did, wondering, “What is wrong with me?” Sometimes I still hear myself asking this question.

But here’s what I’ve learned: there is nothing wrong with me. My brain is doing exactly what it was created to do. Trauma has caused it to be stuck in fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode and it thinks it is keeping me safe.

For a long time this whole idea was distressing to me. I felt like I was never going to be “normal” again, always broken in some way.

But I’m learning that healing doesn’t mean going back to the way I was before trauma. That will never be possible, because the trauma did, in fact, happen. It can’t be erased and my brain and body won’t ever forget it.

Healing means learning new, healthy ways to cope with the dysregulation that sometimes occurs. It means not feeling shame over it. It means accepting the lemons in life and learning how to make lemonade, even if that’s not what I wanted. It’s a new recipe for being.

I’m not thankful for the trauma or the overwhelm, but I can be thankful in it.

In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. (1 Thessalonians 5:18)