My Story - Part 1 Trauma

19th July Written by Dvonne Loring

I’d always had relentless anxiety. It was only in my early twenties, after doing a google search that I was able to match that word with how I’d felt much of life.

A relationship break up in 2011 saw me ravaged by unresolved trauma. It was spilling at the seams and wreaking havoc in my life.

I was unbearably lost, navigating blindly with a non-existent sense of self. I was convinced life got it wrong with me. I believed that with every cell of my body. I hated myself. I hated how I felt and I blamed myself for all the pain I was in, not understanding why it was there or where it came from.

This is how insidious trauma can be. The shattering effect it can have on a person’s reason for being here is extraordinary.

The definition of trauma back then was limited, it never spoke to my experience. I didn’t have trauma informed language to describe what was going on for me so it was left grossly unaddressed.

In the shadows of silence, torment filled my very existence. I had more excruciating pain than I knew what on earth to do with. So I did what any other person would - attempt to make it go away. Unfortunately back then, the choices to soothe the pain weren’t what I describe as constructive or meaningfully healing. My choices helped me temporarily get by but I was slowly self-destructing in desperate attempts to numb the internal turmoil that I just simply couldn’t get a handle on.

What’s striking about my story is nothing at all. I didn’t experience chronic and/or heinous abuse. In fact, I had loving parents, who worked hard, provided a roof over our heads, delicious food on the table and put us in school.

“Trauma can happen in families where there is no abuse” - Dr Gabor Mate

What we don’t see is how my mother - a first generation Filipina immigrant who came to Australia in 1980 from a history of extreme poverty, physical and emotional abuse and my father - a man from a tiny coastal village on the west coast of Tasmania, low socioeconomic background, his father struggled with alcohol and his mother struggled with depression - how this informed our family life.

My parents came from a generation where digging deep to ensure basic needs were met was front and centre. They worked hard and they achieved this with undeniable success. However the pressures of parenting without any social network, no family or friends nearby to support them in Melbourne, my mum working two jobs while culturally displaced came at a toll. Chronic conflict penetrated the walls of our home growing up as a result of overwhelming stress, cultural differences and unattended trauma that lives within my parents and expressed itself through their beliefs and behaviours.

Consequently, not only did I feel unsafe, I was filled with terror. I remember feeling constant alarm, afraid that an argument would ensue, that a misstep would cause an eruption, that a whisper would set off a chain of events that would end in disaster.

From this, the birth of my hyper-vigilance came. I didn’t have an adult that had the capacity to attune to my needs. I was trapped in a volatile household and left with an emotional burden that was far too great for my age. The war that was going on in the very place that was supposed to be my safe place - my family home imprinted itself onto my nervous system and I have carried that within me ever since.

Some incredibly damaging beliefs were born out of the lack of needed safety and not having someone to support me to process the fear and anxiety that riddled my young body with enough trusted consistency.

“When pain is unbearable for a child to endure, they have to disconnect from themselves…This protective response is the trauma, not the event.” - Dr Gabor Mate

A child will do what they have to to survive. This isn’t a conscious decision made, it’s an incredibly intelligent survival mechanism but also a devastatingly heartbreaking one. Shame became central to my identity. I couldn’t trust anything, including myself or my internal emotional landscape and so self-doubt seeped into the crux of who I was.

Fast forward three years - at the end of 2014, I was at work when I suddenly felt like my skin was infested with what felt like millions of fire ants running underneath the surface. I immediately left work knowing something wasn't right. My vision went blurry as I was driving, I started to gag and dry reach. In pure panic, I spotted a police van, pulled over and sought help to call an ambulance. Turns out I experienced a sudden outbreak of ‘the worst hives’ the paramedic had ever seen.

Only a few weeks later I caught a virus that attacked my eyes, the insides of my nose, my gums, mouth and throat. I went to a GP, presented to the emergency department, then sought a third opinion from another doctor who I finally got the treatment I needed.

At that point, I was delirious from extreme fevers and I could hardly open my eyes even in a dimly lit room because my eyes had become so sensitive to light. I had scabs all around my eyes and scattered around my face. Safe to say, I had become terribly ill.

After many years of unbearable anxiety and stress, my soul had enough and I crashed into a bleak depression in 2015. I remember the depths of that apathy being so empty that I wished for anxiety to return so I could feel something. I felt nothing. I felt dead inside and starkly empty.

The lack of safety I felt robbed me of my ability to be with myself. There was no safety or trust to be with what was happening internally so I was trying to completely avoid myself. As a result, I wasn’t taking care of myself, I was gravely out of tune with myself and my needs. And I was suffering because of it.

To be continued in Part 2

Does any of this speak to you?

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