A couple of months ago, we celebrated my husband's 45th birthday at a bacon festival at a winery, and boy, did it live up to its name!
Lines of food trucks, delicious (uh-mazing) wine, live music, and, most importantly, lots of family.
All 19 of us on my husband's side are laughing, joking, eating, and enjoying catching up; it was our first get-together in a couple of years.
But it wasn't all laughing.
When we arrived (late as usual because of Muah), my husband was very hungry, and a hungry Bartos is an angry Bartos.
He got a little snippy with me at the beginning of our festivities, but it was only a small bleep, and we had a great time.
I saw how much I had grown emotionally. I was upset at how the beginning of the day began, but I was able to put it aside until I had time to sit with it and, if necessary, talk to my husband about how I felt.
See, when I used to get hurt or insulted, it would ruin my entire day. I would feel like a helpless victim who then became a predator and tried to make my husband feel as lousy as I possibly could.
I had no idea how I felt, so I would react without concern about how he felt.
Healing is Learning How to Think
“We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present. Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way mind and brain manage perceptions.
It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think.”(Emphasis mine)
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Over the past two years of somatic therapy, I've learned how to deal with anxiety attacks. I tap, pinch, and do all sorts of movements to help myself through, but the most important thing I learned on this journey is how to think.
See, we have to know what the real problem is before we can fix it.
And when we are living out of trauma, we're not thinking. We're reacting.
Triggers reveal what still needs to be healed.
When my husband hurt my feelings, it wasn't just him that I was upset with. I felt rejected by a string of events that started long before we were even married.
But by handling it the right way (mostly- I was spiteful and threw his belt in the hamper, knowing he would go crazy looking for it- it's called healing, not healed), I was able to feel the pain I wasn't able to process in the past.
If I had snapped back at him and made it my goal to make his birthday celebration miserable, I would've missed one of the greatest opportunities to work through what I felt and let that healing go deeper.
Because most of the time, when he gets a little attitude, I just let it roll off my back (the same courtesy he shows me), but I noticed that since his response triggered such strong response (the feeling of rejection) I knew there was more to it than just a simple tiff.
It was between me and my past, not so much me and my husband.
You need to heal the pause between the event and the reaction.
When I first started working with an anxiety coach he had me fill out a thought catalog. It's a simple spreadsheet with a column for the event, my feelings, and how I reacted to that event.
It helped bring awareness to what I was experiencing and helped me keep track of my triggers and responses.
When we are living out of trauma/unhealed past experiences, we react based on our feelings, not the truth of what is happening at the moment.
We think that our husband telling us to get our own glass of wine is what made us so angry, but when we consider our feelings, we realize we're feeling rejected by someone from 30 years ago.
This is also why we panic when we know we should be calm; we snap at the people we love the most when we know it's not a big deal, and we feel like we lose control of ourselves.
Quickly recognizing that we're having an emotional experience and knowing what we're truly feeling helps us choose the proper reaction for the current situation instead of lashing out at people we care about only later to be riddled with guilt.
So how do we do this?
I recommend all four but pick what works best for you. 🖤
- Get a somatic coach who can walk you through the healing process. Ryan of Beatanxiety.me is the best out there. Anyone who's known me for years knows that he's the only one who's made this kind of impact in my life. He's not only a great coach but a good human being.
- Learn what your anxiety, depression, anger etc... REALLY is by reading great books like this.
- Look through this Free Anxiety Cheat Sheet for information and tools about how to heal anxiety.
- Reply to my email and reach out anytime with questions or comments. I love sharing everything I've learned so that you can heal.
Thank you for being here,
🖤Donna
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