Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters.

When I told my husband that I was raped while serving in the military, I felt like I would be relieved immediately of so many painful feelings and fears built up over the seven years I lived in the secrecy of my assault.

What actually happened though, was quite opposite. My body began feeling more unsafe. It wasn’t until later down the road that I could formulate what it was that was missing. Empathy is one of the most beautiful felt human experiences. When we suffer and it’s not seen or felt we often internalize many self beliefs about our self worth. We pick up a sense of internal shame that our suffering isn’t even worth acknowledging.

I lived further in shame after having told him, due to believing in my mind that my husband deserved someone unbroken.

These are the lies of trauma that need to get unraveled as we heal; and only those selfless enough to stick around and help unravel it deserve you when you do heal.

Self sabotaging my self worth at that point was the constant norm. By me assuming my suffering wasn’t worth the acknowledgement, I felt I was capable of doing it alone, seeing as that I had been for years and no one truly knew. At that point, feeling like I was no longer the woman he married weighed heavy on me. I was ready for change, yet he wasn’t.

I was told later, I betrayed the marriage because I didn’t tell him about the rape before getting married; I then felt more shame and guilt; which simultaneously created a repetitive circle of feeling unsafe at all times within the walls of my own marriage.

Trauma

Psychologists, therapists and physicians have discovered that helping victims of trauma to find the words to describe what has happened to them is profoundly meaningful; but usually not enough.

Because heres what people don’t realize. The act of telling the story doesn’t necessarily alter the automatic physical and hormonal response of bodies that remain hyper vigilant. Bodies that are prepared to be assaulted or violated. Bodies that subconsciously react physically without sometimes even knowing, due to the mind being conditioned to defend the abuse. For change to take place, the body needs to learn the danger has passed and to live in the reality of the present.

Well, my reality was I married a doctor. Taking the steps to tell my husband what happened to me was accepting change; yet my body had not yet felt like the danger had passed and I felt judged no matter which way I turned.

Victims of trauma, diagnosed or not, may have seen medical professionals who refused to take the emotional and mental components of our chronic pain/illness associated into account in sessions or treatment plans. This may mean a practitioner not using our information as we make a connection between our chronic pain/illness with our trauma history, to validate our experience. This may feel to a victim that a medical professional is pushing a certain agenda when we them what we feel; that this is a pre-existing condition. That this is part of who we are. That this is something that can be “fixed” with mindset or emotional work, but it’s likely in your head, that you have to be ok. Yet someone who endured a life altering event in their life speaking to a medical professional, really only needs when to be heard and believed for what we know is true about our experience. It can feel incredibly supportive to be validated in our experiences of trauma as we are told by society to do the emotional, psychological, or mindset work “to clear” our symptoms/conditions as our condition is all in our head. When we tell a medical professional about it sometimes the advice, lack of advice or response we get feels invalidating.

What we simply are searching for is...Yes I honor that this is true for you.

Trauma and Relationships

When studying trauma we see how much of a double edge sword relationships can be. Trauma stems from them. Recovery depends on them. The most harrowing trauma happens in close relationships, but recovery can’t happen in isolation.

“Relationships are both the poison and the antidote”

Our relationships sustain us, they help us endure, they can bring heavy pain and they challenge us. How we navigate them forms character. The feelings they stir dot the ups and downs of experience. They remind us of who we are. They dominant memory; when they hurt, they consume us. When they don’t, we take them for granted. They inform our coupling, our parenting. They chapter the stories that make up our lives.

So let me ask you all this? How does this all work when your marriage is undergoing the aftermath of a PTSD diagnosis, yet your married to a doctor? It can be the most healing thing in the world or it becomes a triple and quadruple edged sword.

It has become one of the hardest chapters in my life.

“Change means change. Stark honesty, however painful it’s needed on this journey towards the self; the unconsciousness will not tolerate anything less. We must be willing to face many cruel truths: those we keep hidden from people and those we keep hidden from ourselves. There comes a time when “if only” rings false and “why me” is boring. Until we accept that change is up to us, we are stuck in infantile judge-blame games. If we are to be freed of our life-denying our (self) destructive behaviors, we must renounce our unconscious methods of getting our own way and take responsibility for ourselves by facing life more directly.” - Marion Woodman (2015) Understanding & Healing Emotional Trauma

Once I realized my trauma began spilling into my marriage, I not only felt I was capable of change, I was ready to and moved forward in trusted in my husband to tell him what was real to me. Yet he wasn’t capable of change. Just as I previously described above, medical professionals have a way of pushing a certain agenda when we tell them what’s our reality. It was no different in our marriage.

Yet, I went full in. Made the changes, attended the therapy. Did the work. In the end, it’s being told to me by the medical professional in him, that that this is a pre-existing condition. While simultaneousl being told by the husband In him, that this is just who I am; instead of validating that it’s real to me.

Well he was wrong to do so.

Healing is a goal.

I was in the brunt of it all with my husband. I spent the past six years of my life revolving my world around medical school, his residency, his clinical, his boards, his trips out of town for training, his research projects, his overnight schedule and his entire career. I continued to fight to stay married. I further stayed home with our son for 16 months and when returning to work obtained a career with hours that would be beneficial to our son; My one request following him finally getting into his residency was to go through trauma therapy and heal from something that was real and damaged a big part of my inner critic. Something that created animosity and resentment that I projected onto not only him but so many of the people I loved. I acknowledge that for all it is and I can’t imagine how hard it was to be on the receiving end of behaviors and truths that were being brought to light then. I can only apologize and tell say, the woman I was between Feb 2019 to Feb 2020 was a scared woman trying to sort through a mess of unresolved pain from being hurt in ways that words couldn’t begin to explain. It was a woman full of fear, full of frustration, full of judgement and confusion. She she trusted in everyone that she would be safe in talking about what happened, yet no one realized she needed to be accepted as well. Yet even through out the struggle, I continued to support my husbands goals. In the meantime, it felt like my husband expected the results of my process to be immediate. Despite the trials, he chose to embark on my process in his own way, which ultimately made me feel unsafe and in the end left me during the part I needed him the absolute most. After having a divorce filed on me began what felt like punishment for being everything real and raw in healing. It was a total loss of faith and blind trust given to someone who promised me he'd stay through sickness and in health. It may be viewed differently in his eyes; but that’s my truth.

If you have ever gone through some sort of traumatic life altering event and are in a relationship or married, know no matter what anyone tries to tell you about your truth...

• It can be common not to remember traumatic experiences.

• It can be protective not to remember traumatic experiences.

• It can be frustrating not to remember traumatic experiences.

• It can be confusing not to remember traumatic experiences.

• It can be lonely not to remember traumatic experiences.

You deserve a relationship with someone who accepts these truths. Who validates it. Who doesn’t gaslight you, who doesn’t judge your character off of the affects trauma has on you.

“Trauma is a fact of life. It does not however have to be a life sentence.” - Peter A. Levine PHD