What Does A Trauma Survivor Look Like?

I need to broaden my understanding about what people who survived trauma look like or are capable of.

I came to this conclusion after expressing to my therapist that I do not understand how I endured what I endured, and also have a fairly ordinary life. I assumed that for one to be true, the other couldn’t be.

I don’t want trauma to be my identity, but it also is my identity. It is my daily experience without it being visible. Trauma runs my life, and it also doesn’t. From the moment I wake up in the morning to going to bed at night my trauma is what I have to navigate. At the same time, I go about life like everyone else. I get dressed like everyone else. I watch tv series that make me happy. I enjoy creating playlists. I get excited when I reunite with someone I haven’t seen in too long. I even have become so present that I forget I have trauma.

Sometimes I question my own reality. If these bad things really happened to me, and here I am working a full-time job, living alone, in a healthy relationship…does this even make sense? Does it make sense that someone with the trauma that I have had can do these things? So I realize, I still believe trauma has a “look”, and that it isn’t me.

As a child if I was hurt by someone at school my mom would say, “maybe they have a hard home life.” Ok maybe they did, but does this mean that only bullies have trauma? Does this mean I would have to be on my worst behavior for it to mean I went through something? The same way that every child, every adult, every person can experience trauma differently, we can also cope with trauma differently.

I know trauma is more common than we think. I know that so many more than me are carrying a difficult story. I also know that one of the effects of trauma, which greatly impacts me, is the fear of not being believed.

I fear others not believing me, and I fear not believing myself. I’m still trying to grasp that just because something is unimaginable, doesn’t mean it did not happen.

Living with C-PTSD, I experience steps forward and steps back. As hard as they are, those steps back help me to recharge and move forward again. At some point in each year I will reach a low point, and sometimes more than once. I am able to bring myself out of it, but I am starting to accept that I will eventually crash after living my life like everyone else. My body catches up with me. In the times of these lows, I surrender to my pain. My emotions are heavy and intense. I isolate, or I lash out. This is my unconscious way of saying, “See me. Believe me. See the pain I carry.” In a complicated way it is healing to believe that in these times my trauma has a look. My trauma can be seen without having to share what happened to me.

Dear Me,

Is it possible that you are able to do what you do, because people with trauma are still capable of living a full life? Is it possible that while living a full life comes with work, it is doable? Is it possible that it is not weird that you are able to do these things, but that it is a strength? Is it possible that it is a strength, because people who have experienced trauma are strong? Lastly, is it possible that they are strong not just because they had to be, but because they are? Because you are?

Just because people do not know, does not make it any less real for me. Just because people would be surprised, does not mean I am living my life wrong as someone who experienced trauma.

Trauma does not have a look, and that is the point. It is something that happens to a person. Even though I can go to work, a store, drive, etc, doesn’t mean it is always easy for me. I can live with trauma, and still laugh at funny videos in bed at night. All of these things can be true.

My story is real. Trauma’s appearance comes in many forms. I am not a fraud. I may not always believe this, but I guess this is a start.

I am not writing this because I had a massive epiphany. I need some self-talk from time to time to remind myself what I know to be true. It may be that someone else needs to hear this too.

No matter my abilities, inabilities, successes, failures, choices, emotions, or behaviors-

I am a trauma survivor. I wouldn’t have chosen it, but I would choose to have others believe me, and for me to believe myself.