I’ve had a few Corrective Emotional Experiences in my trauma recovery journey. This one is from February, 2019. I like to post stuff like this on my social media pages (along with other, lighter, more fun things) because they get organized into memories that remind me how far how I’ve come in this journey.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about corrective emotional experiences. That sounds really fancy, but it is not. This is basically when triggers happen and are used to help heal the trauma memories in your brain. A cleaner, more purposeful version of PTSD triggers.

I haven’t written a whole lot because I’m in the middle of many transitions – the divorce is almost final, I started a new job, I’m considering moving soon, my kids are (amazing) teenagers, I’ve been traveling a lot and having new and fun experiences. For the last year and a half, there hasn’t been a “normal” – and by “normal,” I mean a routine that I can point to and say, “This is what I do on this day or at this time of year.”

You may be thinking, “What’s normal anyway?” or “Normal is overrated” or “Why do you want things to be normal?” And I get that. There is an adventurous comfort and a sense of invigorating hope to my life being uprooted completely. Every day is New Year’s Day, full of potential and opportunities and clean slates.

Also, this is exhausting. The last year and a half – and especially the last 8 months – has kicked my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder into high gear. I used to know exactly where my life was headed, for decades into the future. Supreme security. Also complete pretending and debilitating depression and apathy. Repression of PTSD triggers, which means stagnation and repeated patterns and no healing and very little growth. Just a hamster wheel of depression and anxiety and repetitive triggers.

The uprooting has taken care of that. But PTSD triggers abound. I’ve been averaging two to three a week. Some minor, a few major. Tack on top of that the fact that I’m not good at identifying triggers as they happen, much less being able to verbalize what it going on, also much less knowing what I need in that moment.

I have been feeling lost. Profoundly tired, to my core. Powerless, which I try to remember is the center of my power. Rumbling and rocky, like I am living on the side of a volcano that hasn’t popped its top for years, but I feel the vibrations under my feet, even as I am grounded; the reminder that this volcano can become active at any moment.

On the last day of my Boston trip – a week ago today – I had a huge trigger. It doesn’t matter what it was about – some triggers are surprising in their lack of ability to connect with any of my conscious experiences. The trigger hit. It was massive, but the kind of volcanic explosion where the lava leaks out and runs down the sides of the mountain. Fast and slow and quiet and white hot.

I talked about it with the people I was with. I even felt better. Then I went to bed.

I was up all night. My brain and body on high alert but in no danger. Adrenaline pumping. Heart racing. Palms sweaty. Exhausted but staring into the darkness. Emotions numb. Thoughts in my brain churned in cotton and then bounced away before I could catch them.

I must have dozed off around 5 a.m., and I woke up a few hours later in order to check out of the room and head to the airport. The people I was with were (understandably) confused about my insomnia. I mean, I had talked it through, right? Nobody was more confused than me.

As I walked to the bus, I started to cry. Intermittently, as I also still felt numb and enraged and confused and exhausted. What the hell was happening to me?

I sat on the bus and leaned my head against the suitcase propped on the seat next to me. The trigger from the night before hit again and I sobbed. One of my friends handed me a microfiber towel, which was soaked by the end of the bus ride (I was impressed by my ability to soak a towel that was so strong, lol).

I sobbed and clutched my backpack to my chest. I grounded myself to that bus seat – I felt every bump and curve and turn and teeth-clattering stop. The seats were royal blue hard plastic with jewel-toned upholstery – flecked with yellow and red and green – on the backs and seats. My feet didn’t quite touch the ground, and I balanced the toes of my hiking shoes onto the grated silver floor.

I clutched my backpack, feeling the stiff canvas under my fingers, the color of the fabric that matched the hard plastic seats. I had a vision – for lack of a better word – of the 10-year-old girl I was so long ago.

The 10-year-old girl who had experienced so much trauma around this one thing that was the root of the trigger I had been trying to process for about 18 hours.

At 10, she had had no voice. No power. No way out.

At 44, I had a strong, sure voice. Power in my powerlessness. Many choices of where to go and with whom to be and the determination to remain safe.

The numbness, the strength and subject of the trigger, the sleeplessness. It all made sense. This trigger was a corrective emotional experience. An opportunity to heal.

I grabbed onto it. With everything I had. I could keep going if there was healing. I felt it, the stitching up of that wound. The pain and the itching that accompanies healing.

I hugged that girl. That’s the only way I can describe it. I hugged her and I sobbed and I said to her, “I’ve got you.” I felt her melt into me and I kept repeating, “I’ve got you.” Over and over again, clutching that backpack to my chest, I hugged her and wiped tears from her face and brushed her hair out of her eyes.

I was her. She was me. Ages 10 and 44.

Healing together.

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