Just Forget The World

The title I’ve chosen from this piece comes from the middle of a line from my trauma song; I felt the song somehow needed to be included because it was quite momentous but it’s too triggering to do it plain as day (still) so, somehow, i’ve nipped this from a mid line and it somehow contextually makes more sense than a chorus line would have – because trauma really does make you just forget the whole world around you.

With trauma, when we have a flashback, or are simply sounded by traumatic memories, a lot of the time, the rest of the world goes dark; we are so deep in this trauma that we are wholly consumed and it takes over our whole selves… and it’s that taking over our whole selves I want to talk about.

I decided to brave re-watching the musical episode of Grey’s Anatomy with the sound on. You’re all thinking – what relevance does this have? Well… I am known not to be able to make it past the first note or two of Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol without a full blown breakdown and having to completely remove myself from the situation (which is pretty inconvenient given its popularity… the only thing worse would be Mr Brightside). The song is a trigger song to me due to some personal connections I have with it and hearing it, even after 11 years, absolutely destroys me. But, I wanted to brave the musical episode, as long as my wife was literally clinging to me throughout it (my one condition – I had to be swaddled for comfort) and as I heard those first few notes, the way it made me feel really got me thinking.

As I expressed, trauma really does make you forget the world around you, but it wasn’t the thoughts that I had noticed impacted me most; it was the feeling – and in this case, no I don’t mean I feel sad, I feel empty, I feel grief, and God knows I do, but I mean I physically feel it; I don’t know how but my limbs went limp and heavy and I felt like my stomach had been hit by a baseball bat. My chest hurt and my breathing changed. I noticed that I was being physically affected by my trauma. This aligns with research fronted by The Attune Phillidelphia Therapy Group who claim when trauma is stored, your gut muscles are clenched and tight, you have a shallow and rapid breath, held and focused in your chest, your neck, head, shoulders and jaw are tense, scrunched and clenched, your heart is racing with a high BP and a low HRV, your hands and feet are cold and clammy, and your bodily experience is disconnected and numb.

To me, this shows how impactful trauma really is – and this is just talking about in the moment traumas – this isn’t accounting for the the daily flashbacks I experience, for the fact that if a plane flies too low I feel like i’m back there living in the abuse and need to be reminded that my reality is safe; it also doesn’t account for the fact that I am afraid to go to sleep because the nightmares are so severe I don’t want to fall into one of them, and when I do have them, they’re so debilitating that at worst i’ve been known to throw up – mid-dream. It is likely that trauma is so prominent in trauma related dreams since – The Sleep Foundation says – in our dreams, we are more likely to approach threatening situations.

We can feel trauma. We can feel trauma probably more than we can feel anything else; trauma consumes us and we are consumed by trauma. Trauma is so deep in us and we are surrounded by it… and that’s okay. It’s okay to feel your trauma so deep in your bones that it hurts right down to the soul. It’s okay to drown in the songs you avoid because the only thing you can do when you hear them is cry your eyes out, because crying is okay. And in those moments, we release our trauma. We release it, and we can just forget the world.