On Monday night I pushed through a difficult Pilates class, my heart racing from the exertion of my workout and fear of drawing my instructor’s attention if my form was off. This particular teacher challenged us in a way that often intimidated me. But to be fair, most people intimidate me.

“Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.” ― William Faulkner, Light in August

My endurance and search for perfect form were equally fueled by a desire for strength and a desire to not hear my name called out for mistakes. Toward the end of class, she instructed all eight of us to move into hip flexor strengthening exercises. After thoroughly exhausting these muscles, she demanded we hold an isometric position in a rigid V shape for what felt like eternity.

It was not a good kind of pain where you know you are building muscle. It was the kind of pain that lit up alarms in my brain saying: Injury ahead! Yet it never occurred to me to put my legs down; that’s now how I’m wired. I felt dramatic when tears began to appear on my face as my straight legs ignored my determination and steadily dropped towards the floor.

Flashback

While holding the position and feeling sharp pangs in my hips, I was suddenly transported to my past. In pain. Broken. My mind and emotions were hijacked by something that lived in my aching hips and I was in a part of life that I did not want to remember.

The teacher yelled my name, insisting I keep my legs higher. I pushed against the pain but heard her stern voice calling my name again. Tears switched to intense anger burning inside me that I could not understand.

some memories never leave your bones. like salt in the sea; they become part of you and you carry them. —April Green

Endure

I was hurting badly and wanted to get out of the pose. One part of me wanted to cry out angrily, but another part clamped my jaws tightly instead. Keep your mouth shut. Endure! was always the message in my brain. Overpower your body! I could not risk any further attention, which, to my system, always felt like humiliation.

With no conscious choice, I fought the pain and endured. I learned long ago that life may get worse when you don’t endure pain.

Trauma Has No Time

Trauma lives in the body and has no concept of time. In moments like this, my brain is back in a time of abuse. My nervous system picked up on the cues of danger in my hips and moved into unconscious patterns (like freezing, enduring, and silence) because it did not know that a Pilates class is vastly different and not dangerous.

We don’t survive trauma as a result of conscious decision-making. At the moment of life threat, humans automatically rely upon survival instincts. Our five senses pick up the signs of imminent danger, causing the brain to turn on the adrenaline stress response system. As we prepare to fight or flee, heart rate and respiration speed oxygen to muscle tissue, and the thinking brain, our frontal cortex, is inhibited to increase response time. We are in survival mode, in our animal brains.  — Janina Fisher

Rage and Shame

The class ended, and I kept my eyes down, fighting tears and the burning rage inside. I cleaned my equipment and rushed out without my usual goodbyes or friendly chats with the other women. I shut my car door and cried hard. When my instructor walked out of the building, I burned with rage toward her, insisting I would never return.

I remembered the times my body froze during sexual abuse and I did nothing but lie there. Despite now understanding that a traumatized body may freeze as a survival response instead of fleeing or fighting during trauma, I burned with hatred for this truth about me. Yet I also hated that I had ignored my body again today. My freeze pattern is still in my system. I now have all the knowledge and healing to respect my triggered body and speak up for my needs, yet I froze in that class. The shame felt heavier.

Shutdown and Collapsed

The next few days I felt severely drained and everything in me felt collapsed, struggling against darkness that was too familiar.

I Need Co-Regulation

Years of trauma therapy taught me that feeling triggered and dysregulated means I need to reach out for support. Co-regulation. I cannot always pull out of these moments alone and I need to be open with someone I trust. Yet parts of me still fear this approach I am learning. It feels too vulnerable, dangerous even. Thus I avoided time with my friends and family. I stopped doing the things I love. I withdrew.

Sometimes I felt a part of me aching to reach out – to talk to a friend or ask my husband to hold me. But other parts of me quickly shut down such ideas through new waves of shame and self-hatred. Don’t be dramatic! You’re so childish! This does not have to be so complicated! My brain plays out various ways of explaining to someone why I’m struggling, but they all sound stupid to me.

How the hell do I convince someone that holding a yoga or pilates pose, pushing past the pain of it, can cause me to spiral into racing thoughts, overwhelming memories, and feeling worthless!?! And all within seconds. I don’t try.

Dysregulated But Not Depressed

I’ve done enough work in therapy to have the ability to observe these internal processes from a safer distance. What once pushed me straight into weeks of deep depression now I recognize as my triggered state.

Physically and emotionally it feels similar to depression, but there is now an underlying awareness that I will not stay here long. I find hope in this truth even amidst dark emotions. I have felt the freedom of moving out of depression cycles enough times to know I will return to that safe harbor again.

Triggered sucks but it no longer carries the same heavy hopelessness that decades of my depression carried. Once I lean into the wisdom of my body I can find self-compassion. And often I need to return to my therapist or open up to a friend – allowing my body the co-regulation it needs.

It is far from hopeless. What I have learned is that I will never be able to think myself into feeling safe or grounded again. Being seen, heard, and held by those I trust …and by me… returns me to feeling whole. I return to the present. I feel like me again.