I am not alone: understanding trauma for the first time

The skin feels numb. The surface between the world and my inner broiling cannot express anything.

Day 9 or 21 - sharing drawings from my book, I AM ALIVE: Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma.

I remember sitting in a taxi in traffic. As I looked through the window, and saw people walking on the footpath, I was so aware that there was a world out there that I was not able to be a part of. My emotions were boiling inside. My skin felt numb. I could not express myself. My body was stuck in very unfamiliar territory.

To feel completely separate from the world is not an unusual experience but since I was a child, one thing I did feel pretty consistently was the oneness with my world. But that was no longer the case.

In the following days after this moment in the taxi, a friend suggested I read Peter Levine’s Waking the Tiger. This is where I began to learn about the process of trauma. The words I read, spoke to me. This is the first time that I understoo

d the radiation is a traumatic event and I am still stuck (frozen) in that energy.

Here is the drawing after I have read the first few pages of WAKING THE TIGER:

Text from above image:

In trauma, the mind becomes profoundly altered.

For example in a car crash, a person is protected initially from emotional reaction and even from a clear memory or sense that it really happened.

THIS speaks to ME.

These remarkable mechanisms allow us to navigate through those critical periods hopefully waiting for a safe time and place for these ALTERED states TO “WEAR OFF”

YES YES

The altered state was my experience of radiation

I feel I am beginning to understand the trauma inside of me. I am not alone in the experience.