The 3 Lies Trauma Told Me

Trauma Is a Convincing Liar 👑🌹💀

One of the hardest things about trauma is how easily it can change the way you see yourself. Things happen to you, sometimes things you wouldn’t wish on anyone, and somewhere along the way you start believing that what you’ve been through says something about who you are. You stop seeing it as something that happened to you and start treating it as proof that there’s something wrong with you.

I’ve believed some of those things for years. Some of them are still bloody difficult to shake, even when the sensible part of my brain knows better. That’s the thing about trauma. Knowing something isn’t true and actually believing it aren’t always the same thing.

There are three lies I’ve struggled with more than most, and I suspect I’m not the only one.

Lie number one: I’m too damaged to be loved.

This one has been lodged in my head for a long time, and I’m only recently starting to question how much power I’ve given it.

Being with me isn’t always straightforward. I’ve got health problems, PTSD, grief, and a past that includes losing my ex-husband to alcoholism, along with other experiences I’ve spoken about through SBQ. These things don’t disappear just because I want to move forward. They affect how I feel, how I react and sometimes how safe I feel letting another person get close to me.

When you’ve been through a lot, it’s easy to start looking at yourself through the eyes of someone who might not understand. You imagine explaining everything you’ve lived through and wonder whether they’ll think it’s too much. You worry they’ll see your scars, your triggers and the things you struggle with and decide you’re more trouble than you’re worth.

I’ve caught myself thinking that someone would be better off with a woman who doesn’t come with so much history. Someone whose life is easier, whose health doesn’t get in the way and who doesn’t sometimes need to work through feelings that seem to come out of nowhere. It’s a horrible way to look at yourself, but it’s difficult not to when you’ve spent so long feeling as though you’re the complicated one.

I’m trying to understand that surviving difficult things doesn’t make me damaged goods. It has affected me, of course it has, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But it has also shaped the way I see other people. I’m curious about what makes us behave the way we do, why we protect ourselves, why we react to certain things and why sometimes we hurt the very people we care about.

I’m still learning about my own triggers and behaviour, and I get things wrong. Sometimes I can understand somebody else’s pain so well that I end up carrying it alongside my own, as if I haven’t already got enough to deal with. I’ve had to learn that having compassion for someone doesn’t mean taking responsibility for their problems or putting my own needs at the bottom of the pile.

I don’t need somebody to understand every part of my past perfectly, and I don’t expect anyone to fix me. What I do need is the chance to be seen as a whole person rather than a list of things I’ve been through. I have flaws, baggage and difficult days, but I also have a sense of humour, opinions, interests, hopes and plenty of things about me that have absolutely nothing to do with trauma.

I’m learning that I don’t have to decide I’m unlovable on somebody else’s behalf before they’ve even had the chance to know me.

Lie number two: I should be over it by now.

This one gets under my skin because people don’t always understand how healing works. Sometimes they say it outright, and sometimes it’s the look on their face when something affects you that they think you should have moved past years ago. You can almost hear the unspoken advice to pull yourself together and get on with it.

If only it were that simple.

Trauma and grief don’t always announce themselves before they turn up. Sometimes it’s a song that takes you straight back to a person or a time you’d rather not revisit. Sometimes it’s a familiar aftershave or perfume that catches you off guard. You can be going about your day, thinking you’re doing alright, and suddenly something small has brought a whole load of feelings to the surface.

And sometimes it’s kindness that catches me out, which still confuses me. You’d think kindness would be the easiest thing in the world to accept, but when you’ve spent a long time on guard, being treated gently can feel unfamiliar. You can find yourself questioning it, waiting for the catch or wondering what somebody wants from you. It’s not that you don’t want kindness. It’s that learning to trust it can take time when your experiences have taught you to be cautious.

Some days I manage everything reasonably well. I get on with things, have a laugh, make jokes and probably look fine to anyone who sees me. Then something reminds me of someone I’ve lost, or a memory hits harder than I expected, and suddenly I’m not quite where I thought I was. Sometimes I hide it because I don’t want to explain myself, and sometimes I just need a bit of time to let the feeling pass.

Grief is particularly difficult because time moves on whether you’re ready or not. The world keeps going, people get on with their lives, and you’re expected to do the same. You do learn to live with loss, but that doesn’t mean you stop missing people. There are things you can accept without ever being happy about them, and there are losses that will always matter.

There’s also the grief you feel watching other people go through their own losses, especially children who lose a parent far too young. You can’t take that hurt away from them, and you can’t make life fair simply because you wish it were. You can care, support them and be there for them, but sometimes that’s all you can do.

That’s part of the reason the wings feature in the SBQ design matters to me. They mean something personal, connected to the people we carry with us even when they’re no longer here in the way we want them to be. There’s more to that story, and I’ll share it pr