A snippet of my story (trigger warning, I discuss trauma and DV)

This weekend I spent all my free time studying for my upcoming yoga for trauma 50hr YTT course. I had some serious insight about my own trauma, and why my body does what it does when I’m not in logical danger.

Today I was learning about how in complex trauma (in relation to my situation), that because of my trauma DV, and the ongoing trauma from keeping in contact with my abuser to co-parent, that my brain is so wired to be scared, and worried for my life, even when I am not in ‘logical’ danger.

Today when I was driving to collect the girls, with my dad in the car, I was explaining my physical symptoms to him, and how I related them to what I had learned in my course studies over the weekend.

I told him that even though I knew that with him in the car and with changeover being with my ex’s wife that I was in no imminent or logical danger. However, this time there was some new, added tension over me bringing family members along with me for changeovers.

This time was tense, because his wife had told me via text that my ex was uncomfortable with me bringing family members along.

I wanted to know why he was so uncomfortable. The answer was, he was uncomfortable with me being in the position where I felt like I would need protection or have to apply for an FVO. This made me question, why wasn’t he uncomfortable with being abusive? Why was I the one who would have to change to accomodate abusive behaviour? Why does society accomodate abusive behaviour?

I was not caving in to my body’s normal ‘submit’ trauma response (where I just do what he says and say yes because I just want to escape the situation). Even though I was actually doing nothing wrong, nothing outside of my rights, nothing unusual (its common for people to bring someone neutral along for a changeover in DV situations), this was making my heart pump even harder, because by bringing my father along, for my own safety, that I was doing the opposite of his demand. And I was scared.

It’s the endless cycle of coercive control. Trying to gaslight me into making decisions that weren’t right for me, making the demands on me tighter, adding pressure and more and more ‘reasons’ why we had to change things … when in actual fact, he should just not be abusive.

My physical symptoms were: raised heart rate, I could feel my heart pumping in my chest, my throat felt tight, and my stomach was in knots, and I felt nauseous.

Because of my repeated exposure to trauma, my brain is now hardwired to be fearful.

In actual fact, the changeover today was really pleasant, my exes wife came out with the girls, and she was lovely. She told me about the girls weekend, a few quirky kid incidents and how she got around them, one had a minor injury on her foot, the girls were happy, wanted extra hugs with her, it was a lovely, and pleasant experience.

When doing my studies I learned that after being exposed to trauma over and over, our brains wire for Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Submit responses. How I think of it in regards to my situation is, my brain has experienced my ex in a threatening way so many times that any situation with him becomes threatening, and I jump right into freeze and/or submit response.

Before this most recent scenario, things had chilled out a bit, since I asked his wife to be the communicator (she said yes, legend) and I was then able to block his number so I wasn’t receiving abusive texts out of nowhere for no apparent reason, and living with the threat of that.

Before I asked his wife to be the communicator, I told him the detrimental emotional impact that his communication style was having on me. I asked if we could do mediation to come up with an effective way to communicate. I said if we can’t come up with a way to communicate, that I will have to apply for an FVO. Because the texts from him were threatening, abusive, intimidating, and put down me, my career, my spiritual beliefs, and my parenting.

This was my way of letting him know how serious it was, and honestly, not a drama that I wanted. But I had to change something. So blocking his number seemed like the logical way to go, to avoid police involvement.

After 7 years of abuse from him I was having multiple panic attacks a day, and waking up crying every morning.

I would wake my partner up to hold me while I sobbed.

I was unable to perform my usual daily tasks, unable to work on several occasions, and he worst part was I was crying in front of our children. When they asked me what was wrong, I told them someone had been mean to me. They responded in the way that only a 6 and 7 year old would, with cuddles, telling me they are so mad at this person, this person needed to grow up.

Knowing that they were made up with 50% of his DNA for these moments is really hard. I was not going to ‘badmouth’ him (which to be fair, isn’t actually badmouthing because its true), but a bit inside of me was wondering why was I protecting him? Why do I have to deal with the abuse and the resulting trauma, and then ‘protect’ my abuser? Or is sugar coating abuse protecting my kids?

Again, why does society accomodate abusive behaviour?

I have worked so hard to make sure they have a stable relationship with their father, despite the abuse, and despite a child protection order (put in by a GP!) making me keep them out of his care until a situation resolved. I think this adds to my trauma and emotional load, the fact that he has done so much that has caused hurt, and all I have ever done is act in the girls best interests in maintaining a positive relationship with their father once their physical safety was assured.

I find the unfairness of the situation so hard to deal with.

And I know I’m not alone, this is more common than you think. Because our society accommodates abusive behaviour.

Sarah ♥︎