Healing, Trauma, and Making the Common Uncommon
- Santee B.
- Jan 2, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Jan 16, 2024
I’ve never really discussed in detail my story on my site. So I’ve put together a piece that is kind of spicy, a little in your face, but also very honest. Full disclosure I do talk about trauma and substance use, so here goes. I don’t do this to be sensationalist, but to be relatable and to connect with others who have gone through or are going through similar things. Sometimes healing can feel very isolating, I just want you to know you’re not alone.
The realness...
I am an alcoholic and a person with bipolar disorder. I use the labels as empowerment. I used to say that I had a healthy childhood. I DID NOT. I experienced sexual abuse at an early age and dysfunctional family dynamics that taught me perfection was the goal, seek approval wherever you go to survive, and don’t tell anybody you’re hurting because they can't help anyway.
This cost me a great deal. I’ve nearly lost my life and my sanity to believing these things and living my life by this ethos. My story is also NOT unique. I have worked in the mental health field as a caseworker for only a year and the reality is that the beginning paragraph could have been any number of my client’s beginning paragraphs.
That’s the part that I hope sinks in. That first paragraph is common.
But back to my story. So I’m learning day by day that it’s not good trying to be perfect or seek approval or not telling others you’re hurting because it causes you to make to very poor decisions regarding your survival or being able to thrive in the world. In my case I drank like a fish until my body rejected booze, smoked weed until I couldn’t take the panic attacks anymore, and smoked enough cigarettes to turn my finger tips brown. All in an effort to emotionally run from the truth of that first paragraph.
I’ve been hurting for many years. I’ve been hurt by family that said they loved me, but showed me twisted versions of it. I’ve been hurting because perpetrators of sexual misconduct in my life did what they did and left me with the pieces. Those pieces being shame, low self worth, low self esteem; basically low everything. When someone crosses your boundaries, takes away your agency, and then points at you and essentially says, “I got what I want, carry on,” it makes you feel weak, used, deserving of poor treatment, hurt, angry, but shock that you could treated that way.
Your mind goes through leaps of mental gymnastics to make sense of it, especially as a child, but also as an adult too. So I drank to numb the pain, to stop the mental gymnastics, to find something that felt like peace. But drinking, weed, and other substances did not dull my pain for long and eventually stopped working all together.
I needed something to help. I needed healing.
The beginning of that journey getting some sober time, then getting some “smober” time (stopped smoking nicotine cigarettes), then trauma acknowledgment, and then trauma processing…
I’m still at trauma processing. I’m not fully healed, nor would I claim that if I did it for a 100 years. But I am processing, looking at my memories and realizing that I was not to blame. That I did not ask for those close to me to take away my agency, force themselves into my physical space, and make it damn hard for me to say no.
This is what no one tells you about the “no” you’re supposed to yell out. How do you say it if all you want to do is get someone’s love? Their approval? Their affection? Their attention and loyalty?
It can be easy to think just say “no.” “Just run away.” “Just fight back.” “Just tell someone.”
But you’re scared. Scared of what other’s will think. Afraid your family just won’t care. Afraid that you will see yourself as dirty and unlovable. So you say “yes.” You take it. You don’t tell anyone. You don’t yell. You don’t scream. You don’t tell anyone that someone you thought loved and cared for you hurt you deeply. You just don’t do it.
You can’t, the words won’t come. You don’t have the vocabulary or the ability to string a simple sentence together. “I was touched somewhere I didn’t want.” Imagine being a child or even a teen and expected to tell someone the above happened to you. I’ve heard people have a hard time telling the waiter the wrong food was served at their table! Our societal expectations for victim vulnerability is wrong, antiquated, and unhelpful.
Right now though, I’m sober 5 years. I’m smober 18 months. And life is sometimes good and sometimes not so good. Having trauma at a young age means it’s hard to control my emotions. I never learned how. As a 38 year old woman, I got shamed a lot in my youth and the best choice of my child self was - be perfect to cope with the demands of life and the encroaching adulthood. But I didn’t learn how to sit with fear. To express anger. To feel my grief. To cope with normal everyday insecurities like “does my hair look good?”
I masked. I hid. I turned to everyone else for approval. It almost killed me, literally. From alcoholism, but also from my first bipolar episode where I was hospitalized for being a danger to myself. They say in psychology that mental health illnesses often have root causes in trauma. I am a walking testament to that fact.
But even more; I didn’t know where to get help. I didn’t know who I could talk to. I didn’t know if I would believed. I didn’t know if I’d be safe. In addition to bipolar I also suffer from anxiety. People freak me out. Walking down the street sometimes feels like a nightmare.
But I am sober, I am clean, and life - believe it or not - has gotten better. I wrote this piece. I attend a regular support group for my drinking, my addictions. I engage in self care. I write, I journal, I pray, I read uplifting content, I smile, I laugh, I talk to friends, I see my therapists (2), I take my medication, I exercise, I watch sunrises, and I take bike rides and love going down hills. I decided I am worth my own love. I am worth my own pleasure and joy. I am worth it so much, that what others did to me and did not take responsibility for; will not steal my ability to live this life. This experience. To find meaning in the chaos. To have purpose. To experience the righteousness of my joy.
For I struggle with my emotions, my body tenses whenever someone asks for ideas about something at work. I struggle with healthy relationships because building healthy boundaries after so many violations of my own body feels foreign and weird. I grew up believing boundary crossing was normal and for my own good. Learning in adulthood to say “no,” to say “I’m leaving,” to believe “I’m worthy of my own love” has been a miraculous journey. And I thank my Higher Power for it.
What could I tell my 17 year old self who just didn’t understand all her own pain? Maybe not a whole lot about what the journey of healing will look like because that could be overwhelming, but more that it’s possible to heal, fun to heal, and so very necessary. That the burning insecurity has root and cause and there’s help out there, to definitely seek therapy sooner for sure. But I can also say some of it she was not ready to see, denial is common in survival. My values, what I hold dear, has changed drastically from my teen and young adult self to who I am today. So I’d also talk to her about values, what’s important for her to foster in herself and her friend community. Even as I write this, I realize I’d like to share a whole bunch about what I know now because why wouldn’t I want to reduce her pain and have her love herself a whole lot sooner, right?
But I am sharing this piece now because it bears repeating; in my field work I discovered the first paragraph isn’t uncommon, it’s common. Which means there are kids, women, men, teenagers, gender non-conforming individuals who are hurting because no one told them: (1) they didn’t deserve the poor treatment (2) that their body is their own and they have a right to protect it (3) that you do need to find safe spaces to tell your vulnerabilities, but that they do exist and don’t ever stop searching, even when you feel exhausted. Your tribe awaits you.
And I’m also sharing this piece because folks...we need to talk about sex. Consensual and non-consensual. The statistics don’t lie. But shame does. Shame will tell you “don’t believe her, she’s a whore.” “Don’t believe him, he’s weak.” “How could it be sexual assault, they were married?” Lots of comments that victim blame and say nothing about how such an egregious situation happened in the first place.
We have deep shame in our culture surrounding sex. The hurts, the perversions, the pleasures, the kinks, the abuse, the violations. That first paragraph won’t become uncommon until we put light on the darkness of that shame. Until we bring it out in the open. Until we learn individually and collectively to sit with that fear, that hurt, that shame; because only then can we really usher in the light. My family was not only dysfunctional, but folks can’t teach or model what they don’t understand or haven’t wrestled with in themselves. Self reflect and discuss these things. Our future generations depend on it.
And for anyone who identifies with any of this, you are not alone and you matter.
Resources that could help:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
1-800-273-TALK(8255)
Survivors of Incest Anonymous
National Sexual Assault Hotline
800.656.HOPE (4673)
Phenomenal Resource for Learning About Mental Health
Therapist Directory
Healthy Sexuality Conversations
Santee Blakey is a Life Coach and Licensed Massage Therapist at Soul Growth Wellness. When she's not biking, reading, or biking, or reading (she needs new hobbies, suggest her some:-), she'll be writing and enjoying a caramel frappacino in her favorite. Follow her on Youtube for her series --> Self Acceptance: What It's Really Like (A Journey).
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