Some "helpful" mantra's should just stop already.

I saw this online a while ago. I don’t know who said it, but I felt this on a level that is so raw that I cried when I read it.

“Your trauma made you stronger” no, my trauma made me traumatized, it made me weak, gave me sleepless nights and memory loss. Gave me feelings I never wanted. I made myself stronger by dragging myself out of a dark place and dealing with consequences that weren’t my fault” (unknown source; just took a screenshot, and never thought I’d write about it)

With this, I finally understood why the phrase my trauma made me stronger never sat well

with me. I understand now that the phrase “Your trauma made you stronger” actually minimizes trauma and minimizes what happened to me.

It took away my right to feel what happened to me, to acknowledge it for what it did to me, and to understand how it still affects me to this day.

Before a person becomes a survivor of something, they are a victim and that’s a fact, and there’s nothing wrong with that stage in a process or that word.

I use the example of when a person loses a loved they are presented with the different stages of grief. Which are shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance/hope, and processing grief.

Each stage has no timetable associated with it, nor is there an expectation of one in general because different phases can and do periodically resurface throughout the grief process.

So why should we expect trauma to be any different than grief? Both involve the same elements and cycle.

Why do people go beyond encouragement and force the process, and even at times force victims of trauma to take on the badge of “survivor” before they are ready?

It doesn’t help, instead, people feel an urgency to “heal” either very quickly and get through the consequences of trauma or worse learn to bury the trauma and what they haven’t yet processed so that the people around them don’t get tired, frustrated or annoyed with them.

Because that is in reality what happens a majority of the time. A timetable is placed on victims of trauma.

I say all of this because this is what happened to me. I went from victim to survivor almost immediately because the people around me wanted me to get over what happened to me quickly.

And guess what? Years later, it threw up in my face.

I am thankful that I have true support now, tools, and knowledge that I didn’t have before. But let me tell you…. It sucked. It was exhausting, scary, actually terrifying at times, and frustrating.

Not only did I get to relive emotions and thoughts, but I also had years of the wrong mindset written into me that got packed in there because I was forced into survivor hood way too fast for the sake of others’ comfort.

I do know, though, that not everything I did and learned was wrong. From it I did choose to pull myself out of many dark places, and I did choose to fight my way forward. I become stronger and can now confidently state that the mental and physical consequences of my trauma were done to me; none of it was ever my choice.

Something I think medical professionals can take a little time to remember.

Trauma is done to a person. The person didn’t ask for it, or the consequences that came with it, but that is better left for a different day.

Now, I choose to let myself truly acknowledge and accept what happened in my own time frame and begin to heal all over again, but the right way this time. I truly didn’t want to relive any of that all over again, and it would have been easy for me to just pretend like I did before that I get over it, but that’s a them problem, not a me problem.

There’s always going to be a small part of me that wishes I had seen this quote all those years ago, but I didn’t; maybe I didn’t for a reason. Only God knows that reason, and I trust Him for his reasoning and timing.

What I’ve learned is that I know so much more than I did all those years ago. I also know that this time, I am not alone on any front. I have been provided with more support, tools, knowledge, and wisdom.

I do have the right to go through everything again when my mind needs to and to recover and heal on my own terms, the terms I was denied before.

I am strangely neither just a victim nor fully a survivor just yet while I process and recover. I am simply both at the same time, and that’s ok, I don’t need to define that yet.

typing.

I am ok with flowing through this recovery process and getting to “survivor” on my own terms.

© Jane Isley

(Written 4–5 years ago)