The Body Keeps the Score

“The Body Keeps the Score”:  Intro

Hello all.  I have been gone for a while but am now back.   I took some time away from my blog for a couple of reasons.  One, someone close to me shamed me about my postings.  Because of that I felt that I had to take a look at my motivation for my blog to ensure it was not in some way to get some anger out and place blame and judgement on others.  For those of you in a 12-step recovery program you will understand that this is Step-10 work, taking a look at yourself and quickly making amends.  Once I realized my motives were pure and that I write only to help those in need (and I understand that my writings may not be for everybody) I was able to process and understand their motivation, after all, “A lion cannot concern itself with the opinion of sheep.”  Secondly, in my recovery process I find remarkably interesting readings to help me continue my path of recovery.  Some readings I can get through very quickly, others it takes time as I read, reflect and internalize when I need to.  My current reading, “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D. is one of those readings.  My current topic will be about this book and provide you with some insight to the book and how it may help you.  Thank you all for reading the blog and I hope this series of blog entries will be just as enlightening as my previous blog posts have been.

Have you or someone you know ever been bothered by sounds and lights and/or blow up or withdraw in response to the slightest provocation?  I know I have.  In fact, about four years ago (2016) after having blown up on my spouse, somehow I was in a space to reflect on what just happened and I thought to myself, “I just acted like a 10 year old having a tantrum.”  But I had no idea what to do with this realization.  What I now know is that whatever the engagement was, it touched something inside me that released energy that I had no clue was there.  This is how the body keeps the score.  You see,  whatever traumatic experience you have had, and did not have the opportunity to properly process, talk about, release, etc., have been remembered by some area of your body along with the feelings associated with these memories.  You may have been afraid, ashamed, frustrated, angry, etc.  In those moments you developed a trait to deal with that particular situation or feeling.  You may be like me that in order to deal with what I had deemed socially unacceptable behaviors lest I would get taken advantage of or additional pain would befall me, I developed the mask of rage.  In that I found that I could get people to leave me alone and no longer inflict pain upon me.  This trait served me quite well in my survival of childhood.  I realized four years ago that this behavior no longer served me and frankly, in retrospect, it stopped serving me well quite a few years prior. 

But what to do with this information?  If you were raised in an environment of children should be seen but not heard, basically discouraging you from speaking, this leads a person to internalize everything and try to figure out the world for themselves.  Now for me, being a child of above average intelligence, I was able to figure everything out.  However, the figuring out was through the glasses of my limited view of the world.  So, it is quite likely that my view was not the best view and definitely not the only view.  This led to additional frustrations down the road as the belief that my views were universal did not serve me well.  Ultimately, I developed anger/rage to ensure that challenges to my views were few and far between.

Once I realized and accepted that I was “broken” I decided to seek help.  It is funny how the universe works.  I was watching television one evening and something came on that talked about childhood trauma.  They spoke of traits that childhood trauma brings out in adults, and in fact tied the behavior to those people who are children of alcoholics.  I remember thinking  “that sounds like me!”  Since I have long acknowledged that my father was an alcoholic, I was able to easily make the leap that perhaps some investigation into my behavior was needed.  I immediately got on my laptop and looked for all the books I could about being an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.  I ordered most of them but downloaded one immediately.  I quickly identified with what they were saying and the traits they were describing.  All the books seemed to have similar themes and discussed resources available.  One of those resources, and seemingly the most important of those resources, were meetings.  I remember thinking to myself, I will read as many books that are available on the topic, I will take a look at everything I can find on the internet, but I will not attend any meetings.  I will not sit next to some sad sap, pouring their heart out in some meeting.  As I continued to study these materials there was an ever-increasing push to attend meetings.  They kept intimating that in order to get the most benefit and to recover from this childhood trauma, you must seek out a meeting so you can clearly see you are not alone, this did not only happen to you, and you can share what you are feeling with likeminded people who will offer no judgement.   I kept reading and reading and this theme was universal in everything that I read.  So, I finally caved.  I tried to find a meeting.  I looked up the “Adult Children of Alcoholics” website to find meetings in my area and realized there was a meeting at a local medical clinic, and it was right after work.  Reluctantly I decided to attend.  This building was huge with many rooms.  I can honestly say I looked all over for this meeting but did not find it and that brought me great relief.  I rationalized that “I wasn’t supposed to go to a meeting anyway.”  Weeks went by and I kept studying but the theme of attending meetings just would not go away.  So, I decided to find another meeting, and off I went.  What I found that night is something I never thought existed.  When I walked into the room, people smiled and introduced themselves.  I have never walked into a room full of strangers and felt universally welcomed.  It put me in a very weird space.  In the past if I walked into a room and someone that I did not know, or did not know my people, showed some compassion or acceptance, I would immediately be on the defensive and think to myself, what does this person want from me.  However, I did not feel this way and by not feeling this way brought me a different kind of discomfort.  Could I trust that I was feeling something other than suspicion?  As the meeting started and people started to talk, I watched as people told some of their stories.  Some folks cried and some folks provided humor and laughter in their stories.  This was so strange to me, but I felt some comfort.  I realized that most of these folks, on some level, where telling parts of my story.  How could they be telling my story?  They don’t know me.  I quickly realized, they lived parts of my story, they suffered what I suffered, I was not the only one.  Knowing that I was not the only one to go through a childhood like mine brought on a strange sense of calmness.  It was blowing my mind and I was off kilter.  I couldn’t really understand what was happening.  But I knew that coming to this meeting was a good idea.  As the meeting ended, the wildest thing happened and it shook me to my core.  People came up and gave me hugs.  Not those superficial hugs that we have given to people in the past, but a real body to body, pull you in hug for 30 seconds or so.  Again, in the past I would have thought these folks wanted something from me, but after 2 or three of those, I had to hurry up and leave.  The reason I had to leave is because I needed to cry, and I was not in a place yet to cry in front of these folks.  I went to my car and bawled like a baby.  I could not believe these folks were hugging me like they loved me.  Not in some sexual way, but in a way that showed they genuinely cared about me.  But why?  I came to find out that when I walked into the room I was one of them and they genuinely wanted me to know I was welcome.  They provided me with what we affectionately call, “an ACA hug.”  

Those that may be reading this and rationalizing to themselves that my parents were not alcoholics.  While this may be true, there may be alcoholism in your genealogy somewhere and it would serve you well to understand that the traits developed to survive their respective childhoods got passed from generation to generation.  Additionally, although we typically say Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA), the correct title is really, “Adult Children of Alcoholics and other Dysfunctional Families.  So you may not yet identify with the alcoholism in your family (and it is possible that none ever existed), you may be able to identify with parents raging, physically beating, mentally harsh, physical or mental abandonment, oversexualized environment, sexual abuse, etc.  If you have experienced any of these, it is probably worth exploring the effects these things have on you.