As a therapist, I often hear about all kinds of things going on in people’s lives that are legitimately hard. For example, the spouse is working long hours and/or traveling a lot. Or there is a serious illness i.e. cancer etc. in the family, or a child is on the spectrum and causing all kinds of havoc for self and other family members. Yes, these things are all real. They required support and validation, and sometimes even an all hands-on deck approach from our family, friends, and the wider community.
If this weren’t bad enough (which it is, by the way), these hard life events often trigger other very hard life events (one could say trauma) from the past. And what’s even worse, we aren’t even aware that this second part is happening. What we are aware of is the anxiety, depression, panic, intrusive thoughts. We are also often aware of the negative judgments we attribute to ourselves when the symptoms of anxiety, panic etc. rear their ugly heads, for instance, “There’s something wrong with me” or “I am losing my mind” or “I am out of control” or “I should be able to deal with this by myself”. Since we’ve often been suffering from these negative past events for a long while, we grown accustomed to the weight of them. We don’t realize how heavy that weight really is. And so we suffer because of the current life happenstance and for the past traumatic event that we’re not even aware we’re carrying. No wonder it feels so hard!
Let me give you an example. (This example is fictional to preserve the confidentiality of my clients.) A young girl (let’s call her Susie) grows up in a home where the parents divorce. Common enough, you say. Yes, it is. But in this family, no one ever talked to Susie about the divorce. She felt the tension between her parents and when they divorced, she dutifully went to see her dad (or mom) on every other weekend and Wednesday evenings. Her non-custodial parent, however, did not dutifully see her. Sometimes s/he showed up for the visits and sometimes she didn’t. He often had a good reason, but reasons matter little to a young girl wanting so desperately to see her daddy or mommy.
It wasn’t the worst divorce in the world (nor marriage for that matter), but since no one ever talked to Susie about it, she grew up believing that if she just had been better, her parents would not have divorced. She knew in her heart, her entire being, that it was her fault that her mommy (or daddy) didn’t always show up for visitations. Now, like any little girl, Susie grew up. She had lots of good things in her life too: friends, vacations, a dog etc. She even got into a top-ranking college and got the job of her dreams after graduation. Many things were going well for this young adult. Between manageable bouts of anxiety and a touch of depression, she often forgot about the heaviness connected to her parents’ divorce for long stretches of time.
But when her first child was born, Susie became anxious, more anxious than she ever imagined was possible. And when it came time to leave her darling daughter at daycare to return to work, she fell apart completely. Now, separation anxiety from baby is normal when a mom goes back to work. But this was different. Susie’s anxiety became paralyzing. She suffered from terrible intrusive thoughts where she or her child died in violent and disturbing ways. Susie thought she was going crazy, but she wasn’t. Susie was suffering from a combination of normal mom anxiety piggybacked on top being triggered by the childhood trauma connected with her parents’ divorce. She was reexperiencing those moments when her mom or dad failed to show up and she felt so alone.
Suzie had heard about postpartum depression, but not postpartum anxiety and certainly had no clue about the driving force behind her intrusive thoughts. She had no idea she was carrying this extra burden. Without any knowledge that her past trauma could so severely affect her current moments, Susie blamed herself for her symptoms and became depressed in addition to anxious. She also felt guilt and shame for reacting the way that she did.
It wasn’t until Susie went to therapy that she started figuring some of this stuff out. She didn’t feel completely better immediately, but even during the first session she realized that intrusive thoughts were a common symptom of mothers experiencing postpartum mood complications. This knowledge definitely helped.
As an outsider reading this vignette, you may think that the connection between Susie’s parents’ divorce and her anxiety post-baby are obvious. And perhaps they are, at least if you aren’t Susie. But it often impossible to understand this dynamic when you are the one in the middle of the storm. Being triggered can feel like being in a trance that you don’t even know that you are in. That’s because the emotions feel very real and you experience being triggered as if the moment from the past was happening all over again. That is the nature of trauma.
Susie was in therapy for about a year and a half. During this time, her intrusive thoughts stopped (and sooner rather than later). She was more easily able to drop the baby off at daycare. While it is extremely challenging to have intrusive thoughts as you make that difficult adjustment to parenthood, Susie was ultimately grateful for her thoughts because she learned so much about herself and was ultimately able to free herself from the history of her past. Susie realized and genuinely moved past the beliefs that it was her fault that her parents divorced and that her mom (or dad) didn’t always show up because she was not worthwhile. When Susie left therapy, her emotional backpack or the things that she carried was considerably lighter. Now if only the laundry and the crumbs in the car would slow down a bit 😊.