Waking from Nightmares

I jerk out of sleep as if from a dream of falling. My heart is pounding faster than seems possible, an automatic machine gun inside my chest. I cross my palms over my heart and feel it pulsing against my ribcage.

Night after night, I have been waking this way, stuttering also the sleep of my cat companion, Caramel Sundae Bear. He speaks his annoyance, shifts and re-settles, grumbling, and then blesses me with the forgiveness of his steady, rhythmic purr. My heart slows….

Why? Why am I waking, in every night’s most wee hour, as if from a nightmare? The question becomes a prayer and is instantly answered. The still, small voice tells me that I know this midnight manifestation for what it is:  the physical echo of an emotional allegory that is currently stomping around my life. I am not waking from a literal nightmare each night but, metaphorically, in the light of day, I’m waking from a nightmare that I’ve been dreaming for decades.

For those of you who have lived the experience of sexual assault, especially in childhood, well…first, know that I am sad for you and with you. For those who have lived that experience and then done the work of recovery, I am about to speak some of our shared language. For others, I will strive to be clear for you without disturbing your equilibrium too much.

The 7 Childhood Treasures revealed themselves to me in what I would call the middle of my recovery. The early work with a great therapist included learning and practicing some coping tools to manage my “triggers.” There are moments…. Sometimes, a little byte of life’s continuous stream of sensory input invokes the memory of assault or perpetrator. Part of recovery for all of us, in those moments, is finding the boundary that reminds us of this truth:  “that was then, and this is now.” Part of recovery is learning how not to react, from the emotional navel, to every scent, sound, facial expression, or shadow that finds an echo in the agony of memory.

In fact, it’s often a point of pride for survivors that we no longer hunker down at home to avoid the thousands of triggers that saunter by us on any given day. We are so glowingly glad to no longer dissolve unpredictably into tears or shudder into catatonic fear. We learn to recognize triggers objectively and—if not hold them at bay—at least hold in abeyance our knee-jerk returns to the past that they summon.

“Triggers” are the sirens’ calls of memory and we learn to block our ears to those songs; to bind ourselves to any handy mast to resist their enthralling lure. Triggers that once made us twitch, the ends of our puppet strings in their hands, now send no tremor down those threads. We effort at resisting those twitches every day. All. Damn. Day. Long. Aren’t we good little survivors?

For the most part, continuing recovery work allows triggers to again fade from overt consciousness. They slip back to the subconscious mind, and our awareness of the management of them slides right alongside. Just as our pre-recovery reactivity to these triggers occurred below the level of conscious awareness, the process of coping with triggers—choosing a restrained response or no response, rather than twitching out a reaction—becomes largely subconscious, as automatic as breathing…and yet remains exhausting. I lost awareness of my own exhaustion, as it became a continuous state. Sufficient numbers of days after days, after weeks, after months quietly evolved into my personal “new normal.”

Now I suddenly find myself hideously re-tuned-in to every single trigger, all day long…and also acutely conscious of the enormous amount of physical, emotional, psychological, and cognitive power required for management of triggers. The whole process has been invisible to me for a couple of decades now, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been grinding away, a silent little engine of coping. I estimate that at least 30% of my energy in any given situation is dedicated to holding steady the boundaries between current reality and that past of which the present reminds me. Gee. Aren’t I a good little survivor?

I say no. I say no to this life of devoting 30% of the glorious resource that I am to…what? Curating memories in the Museum of Carol’s Trauma? There is good on this current path of awareness, of course. The consciousness of this trigger-management pattern floods me with an ocean of new learning about the Childhood Treasure of Acceptance, in its aspect as a complete release of the past. After all, if I’m spending this much energy managing it, history is clearly not history. I just think I’m the one who has history in a choke-hold of control. In fact, management of my past still holds 30% of my life by the throat.

I say no more!! This level, or this form, of recovery was a great place to start (and many thanks to my excellent therapists for getting me past the stage of barely being able to leave the house). But this is no longer enough for me; I want more.

I think that whole little girl, that unharmed child within who I found a few weeks ago (read the blog post titled Today I Met a Miracle)…that little girl has shaken me awake so she can shine a new light on recovery. (Yes, of course I know she’s the face of Divinity!) This beautiful little goddess-self presents me with the opportunity to devote 130% of my resources to Now. She invites me to live in the present as the present, rather than as a trigger-indexed library of clickety-clacking, jumpy, Sense-O-Vision films reeling out of the past.

She’s very convincing and, frankly, I’m not that hard a sell. I’m ready, and I’m going for it. I’m choosing this evolution.

I’m waking myself from a nightmare of limitation:  self-imposed limitation of my life, unconscious limitation of the divine gift I am to the world. I release this “accomplishment” of self-management, about which I’ve been ridiculously proud for so long! I choose a life without trigger management… because I choose a life without triggers. Heart open wide, I release it all!

One part of me is waking all of me from the nightmare right now. My heart is pounding, yes, but not in fear…in excitement!!