The Wound Makes the Medicine by Pixie Lighthorse

Author:Pixie Lighthorse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Row House Publishing
Published: 2023-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

I belong with others and I belong in my loneliness—I belong in all ways.

STILLING OUR SYSTEM

TRAUMA IS DESCRIBED AS TOO much happening too fast for the nervous system to metabolize. Each of us has different levels of tolerance for events, differences in how we perceive adverse experiences, and varying levels of emotional confusion based on our early development. When we do not feel safe, especially when we should feel safe, violations cause bewilderment.

When my traumas are triggered—especially when I’m navigating heartbreak—I experience brain fog and adrenaline surges wherein my whole body feels activated. Motor skills start to sputter. A torrent of unexpected emotions and sensations overcomes an activated body, which makes unconscious and sometimes rapid decisions to freeze, appease, flee, or fight. Hopelessness is a disheartening effect of experiencing frequent triggers within relationships.

If we think of our emotions as bodies of water—smooth and glassy when things are going well, and choppy and stormy when agitated—hopelessness might be a small, stagnant pond in which sorrows sit untended. Creating movement from this place is difficult. When the gloom of heartbreak is compounded by activated traumas, we can find ourselves in desperate states.

What has helped me most is not judging my hopelessness. When we can accept that emotional states are transient, this can create conditions for surrender and eventual mobilization. Lingering in small, dank ponds is not where we feel we can afford to hang out for too long.

I have a child who experiences frequent hopelessness. This child expects so much of the self, and this creates pressure to do something at a time when there is little energy for doing. Trusting the process is part of what helps. Explaining this to an angsty teenager—or the angsty teenager within—is often a losing battle. However, I think of the quiet, still-pond state as necessary for healing. If we do not know hopelessness, how will we know hope?

Being still requires patience with our humanness, which we are still figuring out how to allow. Fear of sinking too low beyond the point of no return is real. If I imagine my body as a cool, still, immobilized pool, can I gently look around from that state and let my vision take in the landscape? I’m asking my mind, which is scared, to connect with my heart, which is sad. I can attune to how my own sadness scares me. We are frightened of how sad we can sometimes feel. When we aren’t able to distract from or control how sad we feel, the only option is to be with it. We can bear more water than we believe we can. We can still our systems by allowing and giving grace to how afraid we are of how we feel.

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