Fear hijacks our brains and bodies, flooding our limbs and chest with cortisol and making us feel like there’s fiery heat coursing through our limbs and into our throats.
We panic. Flounder, acting impulsively or taking rash action to do something. Anything.
We freeze. We shake. We may start sobbing.
Fear impacts us all. But sometimes it impacts us disproportionately.
Take, for instance, those sentences at the top of this essay.
Do you feel scared and fearful of just hearing them?
Or do you feel fairly neutral, noticing that they’re not ideal intellectually but also not really feeling anything in your body when you read them?
It’s not uncommon for those who come from relational trauma histories to have disproportionately higher and more severe fear reactions to those sentences (or to actual parallel lived out experiences).
In today’s essay, I talk about why, and also share four helpful tools to cope when fear triggers your own trauma.
Why might fear impact someone from a relational trauma history more?
Relational trauma – the experience of repeated, protracted events or situations that overwhelm an individual’s ability to respond, most usually taking place in a relationship where there’s a large imbalance of power (such as parent and child) – is an experience with impacts that can linger long after the original trauma has ended.
One such example of a lingering impact is the disproportionate response relational trauma survivors might have when threats and fear – be they perceived or actual – take place.
Why?
Because of several reasons.
Often those who come from relational trauma backgrounds may have lived through actual events that threatened (or seemed like they threatened) their survival.
Their nervous system was taxed and taught at an early age to be hypervigilant, leaving them predisposed to overly activated nervous systems and a sensitive “scanning” system for danger, a body and mind quick to race to fear and, in fact, flood with it.
Moreover, for those who come from relational trauma backgrounds, the past may quickly become present.
What do I mean by this?
The boss who asks to speak with you collapses time and suddenly you feel as powerless and helpless as you did at 10 years old when your father dropped you off on a highway and sped off. Leaving you alone. Leaving you vulnerable.
The flaw you find in your paperwork plunges you into catastrophe. You know you’ll end up in jail. And be utterly ruined for accidentally not crossing every T and dotting every I. You feel like your life is over.
These are just a few moments when perceived fear feels like actual fear to our minds and bodies. Time collapses and our past traumatic experiences show up, warping our perception of the present.
