Walking along a dark road, it starts to rain, your phone barely has life, when out of nowhere it begins to pour down. The thin jacket you put on when you walked to your friend’s home on this pleasant evening becomes drenched in a heartbeat.
You quicken your pace. The 20-minute walk home now feels like an interminable uncertain journey, as you find yourself beginning to shiver, even cough a little. You wonder if this is the start of the flu.
Unexpected extreme thoughts creep in, taking over as the pace quickens. “After all this is simply a short walk home after a pleasant evening,” you remind yourself, but the positivity falls on deaf ears. A repressed panic emerges.
Suddenly the rain abates, flowing lightly now. A flickering of lights along the street where you live show signs of life, the promise of a warmth, even a hot shower. Who would have expected the skies to open with such relish on this familiar walk? Yet here you are, mind wandering from gathering extreme hopelessness to grateful hope, all within the space of 20 minutes.
* * * * *
How and why does this sort of thing happen?
Remnants of a lost child, incapable in the moment of mustering self-soothing abilities in the face of life’s changing tides. At times triggering extreme thoughts, even wide emotional swings; the nervous systems floods with flight/fight dissociative responses, causing cloudy thinking, moments of imbalance even in the face of rational safety and options for support. These are the experiences of a lost, abandoned, emotionally misattuned child. Yet she is not all that exists on this night.
Maintaining a calm mind when you are triggered by past feelings of loneliness or neglect can be difficult, yet there are ways to bring soothing stability and clarity of thought — even under duress.
A useful bit of self-encouragement is to breathe, a slow steady reminder that you are alive and well. Breathing regulates the autonomic nervous system, aiding clear thinking and providing flexibility of thoughts and movements.
Another tip: Remember you have more skills that you realize. You are creative, self-preserving. Simple measures ensure your sense of well-being in that moment. Even a low battery on a phone means there is the ability to make a call. Just like driving a car when gas is on the E, it doesn’t mean you have to motor on to the end of the line just to see how much more is left in the tank.
Making a call to a friend in order to get help is a vulnerable yet essential option. For some the biggest hurdle to overcome may be in admitting you are freaked out or scared, that you are being triggered and need help.
Remembering that this moment is simply that, a moment, and that in general you are not alone. That this lost child now is not so lost, with flexibility in life and choices and options.
When extreme trauma states are triggered from the historical past, it’s hard for the child within to remember their causes or to connect with what is going on. Remind that child that you — the adult — are here now. You are going to get the both of you to safety. That’s a key reminder that your world is bigger, kinder and more efficacious than you realized in that moment on that 20-minute walk in the rain on that dark road that led you into the light.
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