Trauma
Self-Sabotage and the Internal Traumatic Environment
Sometimes it takes a deep breath, stepping out over a cliff’s edge, hoping God or some invisible hand will catch me and carry me safely down.
Indiana Jones did this perfectly in The Last Crusade. The chasm is wide and deep, with no visible path across. He steps out, and only as his foot comes down is the path is revealed.
My mind can be just as precarious as Indie’s route in search of the True Grail. A hostile void stretches out in front of me, and I’ve just got to man up and take that step of faith.
Anxiety, fear, isolation, these were the modus operandi for most of my life. There’s a certain joy in defying them. Every step over the chasm is a chink in the armor of my own negativity.
The first time I walked into a gym was one of those steps. The first time I reached across the center console to hold Brandy’s hand. Hell, even my first diet.
Step after step of faith.
But often, whatever progress I made was marred by shame in the quiet hours, the downtime, the moments before sleep. As my breathing slowed, I’d be startled awake by a familiar whisper: It’s not enough. You don’t deserve it. You’ll never make it.
So many times I threw away real progress because it wasn’t perfect.
Today I know something I haven’t known since I was very small: I am worth all of it. Even the slightest progress is worth the effort, worth celebrating.
I belong in all spaces I find myself in. They are all for me. I have and know self-worth.
That didn’t happen all at once. It started with something small: a realization I’d been avoiding for years.
I never went to war. Never cradled a dying friend in my arms, blood soaking through my hands while violence erupted around me. I was never beaten as a child, never showed up for school embarrassed about the bruises I wore. And so I’ve run from this omnipresent word, trauma, it makes my skin crawl like mindfulness and diet. Words that are supposed to help, but feel like accusations.
But I can vividly recall an internal schism in my youth, and I never treated myself the same. From that point on the internal dialogue was certainly traumatic. If my father, or mother had been talking to me that way, treating me with such disdain, they’d be as bad as the worst cinematic villains in film history.
Prior to this fracture I can remember seeing the world only through my eyes, no sense of myself yet within the scene. All of my attention was external. Even my memories from back then are entirely lacking something, me. When I picture them in my head, I’m just seeing what was out there, any feelings I have or had at the time are externally directed.
I’m on the beach at four years old, and I see my family, the water, sand, towels and other beach paraphernalia. What’s lacking in this memory is me. Like a first person shooter video game, my attention is entirely external.
I don’t have too many memories from back then, but of those I do have, they’re all really nice, and they all lack me in a profound way.
Then at five, everything changes. I’m in every memory, not just present, but center stage. It’s as if some part of me had been wrenched out so I could observe myself with scrutiny. The ones that linger hurt the most, because I’m always both star and foil.
From that point on, every thought, every memory includes my body as a focal point. My grandparents put me on a diet when I was five, it was my first brush with self-awareness. Before that it was as though I existed without a self. Then suddenly, I could see myself clearly, but only as a problem.
Trauma is what happens to the kid who is beaten daily at school. Dumped in a trashcan. Told they’re worthless. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I did have a traumatic childhood. The problem is, I was the bully. And there was only one victim: me.
I ran from the idea of trauma, because it felt unearned. No fists, no bruises, no broken bones. My parents never had to pick me up from school because I’d been injured on the playground.
Just the slow grinding cruelty of self-loathing, relentless, inventive, and so deeply personal. My bully knew all my secrets and used them against me every chance he got. He poured battery acid into every wound and every slight I suffered, real or imagined, and called it truth.
There was no reprieve from my tormentor. No solace alone in my bedroom, the bathroom, sitting alone at lunch. He always knew where to find me, and exactly when to strike, turning every triumph into tragedy.
For years I tried to punish myself well. I didn’t think I could improve without lasting pain, without total depletion. So the cycle continued.
Even self-care got tangled in that same broken logic. In either direction I found only self-harm. Whether through indulgence in food, substances, escape, or the belief that progress required a self-inflicted, sadomasochistic control.
Any objective results were quickly washed away by that voice in my head who was still running the show. Not enough, never enough.
When I look back at that first time I could see myself, all that darkness and dread, I try and reframe it as best I can. I try and reimagine it as an experience that doesn’t shape the way I’d view the world from then on. Just a moment, not a life sentence.
And when the ugliness within me tries to lash out and seize control, I try and ground myself in this simple truth: I don’t like cruel people, I don’t like bullies. So how dare I sit idly by and let that same cruelty drown the wonder of someone my friends and family love.
My strides of progress haven’t come from punishment or perfection. They’ve come because, slowly but surely, I’ve learned to trust and care for myself.
Self-care isn’t comfort or indulgence. It’s the power and the will to stand up for myself.
Especially when the person I’m standing up to… is me.
Dude… I am 52 and have been fighting this same stuff since I was a child. You are truly in my head. There is both comfort and relief in knowing - while still unique - I am not alone in the dark. Powerful, powerful words here. Most of the experiences of my life, as you described when you were young, as well as the absence of any feeling of true love or happiness.
Ethan, You're such an honest and thoughtful speaker and writer. When's the book coming?