One of the most common features of trauma survivors is that they lose the ability to sense danger. How ironic is it that trauma can leave you functioning in a state of constant hypervigilance, yet with no cues for when you are actually in danger? Most of us can think of someone that has fallen into horrible situations again and again. Despite having bodies that are constantly on edge, on high alert, and waiting to be hurt…when we are in the face of danger, we have no actual urge to leave or even an awareness of the risk. Understanding that a traumatized nervous system works this way feels alarming and unfair!
My husband has always been frustrated with my lack of cues. This has been a sore point in our relationship since we had children. He’s never trusted me to keep them safe since it is so painfully obvious how much I miss. I often felt defensive with his criticism and I knew he could be a bit paranoid. Yet I also recognized that something felt broken in my abilities. I strived to be an amazing mom, yet lacked the cues to know when my children or I were in danger. This has changed dramatically with somatic and EMDR therapy.
When I first began dating my now-husband we often walked around our romantic little seaside town, bobbing in and out of little shops and sipping our coffees. One morning I was completely absorbed and attentive to this wonderful man at my side when we ran into a man I dated briefly. I awkwardly introduced my new boyfriend. His little daughter was next to him on her bicycle and somehow we all failed to notice the little girl wandering into the street behind us. She and her bicycle tipped over just as a car was quickly approaching. The girl’s dad had his back turned but my boyfriend and I saw the scene happening. My boyfriend sprang into action running into the street with his hands up to stop the car and scooped up the girl and her bicycle in seconds.
My head raced and I felt confused afterward. I was immediately ashamed to realize that nothing in my body sensed the danger despite watching it happen. I felt no urge to rush towards the girl until it was too late, even though I saw it happening. I was ashamed of myself and I prayed no one could see what was so apparently broken to me.
This frustration with my mind and body was nothing new to me. I’ve watched many dangerous scenes play out as if they are happening in a movie, or slow motion. I have an awareness that I SHOULD be reacting, yet my brain doesn’t know what reaction to provide.
Why doesn’t my brain work? Why does nothing register in me to take action? I am angry with my body and ashamed of the many broken pieces inside my mind.
Oblivious to Signals
Why did I repeatedly fall for abusive men? How did my brain not send a high alert as I decided to marry the man who continued to hurt me since we first met? Why did it take me 10 years to see his abuse for what it was? Even once I finally got the courage to leave my marriage, why was I oblivious to the dangerous situations I placed myself into? What about trauma makes someone OK with having sex with a stranger? How did it never occur to me that taking drugs at parties was risky? Why was I oblivious to my surroundings and the many chances I took despite having a little girl waiting at home for me to take care of her?
Many trauma survivors even find freedom in high-risk behavior. I changed my risky behavior once I met my husband, but not because I sensed any danger. I learned to behave differently only because he demanded it and I couldn’t risk losing him. Even years later when my children have been in danger I respond slowly. My mind catches up and I know the right things to do, but it’s without a sense of urgency that I know should exist.
Eight years ago my 18-year-old daughter called me while I was shopping. “Mom! I was in an accident. The car is in bad shape. Can you come?” Of course, I knew how to reassure her on the phone. I knew words to say. I knew to rush to the scene. But I felt nothing. I arrived to find that her car had flipped over 2 or 3 times, landing on the tires with the roof completely caved in and my little girl stood shaking on the sidewalk stunned. I never felt the danger of it. As I got out of my minivan and walked over to her, I told my mind to think of the right things to say. Very little came naturally to me and I was never overcome with horrible worry or even thoughts of what could have happened to her.
Later that night and the next day I was intensely angry with myself. I hated that my body could not react with intense fear…or hardly anything at all! I love my daughter! When would my damn instincts start working? When would I be a normal human!? Why can’t I have the reactions normal people have? I hated myself and was especially ashamed of my abilities as a mother. But to me it was just one of the many weird things about me – not a sign of trauma.
I frequently looked to my husband to know the appropriate emotional reaction to a scary situation. I often watched other moms, trying to learn from them how to have “normal” emotional reactions. I tried hard to match what the right emotions should look like.
Ignoring Danger Cues is a Coping Strategy When Home is Not Safe
When living with abuse, I needed to know how to exist in an unsafe environment on a regular basis. When the person you should trust most can hurt you at any moment, and this becomes your “normal”…and for whatever reason, you don’t feel you can change this “normal”…then it is incredibly useful for your body to tune out cues of danger.
I learned early to dissociate, disconnecting from the conscious world, as a means of coping. My world became “fuzzy”, often like I was living in a movie. I hated my body and certainly did not trust it. It was something that betrayed me often. Why the hell would I attempt to connect with my internal world or find cues within?
Tuning out information like danger cues was valuable to my functioning. I managed to be successful at many things BECAUSE I could constantly tune out the danger signals of living with my ex-husband and thus not react to his constant threatening state.
Decades Later My Cues For Danger Are Beginning To Work
I never went to therapy requesting to have cues for danger, yet by working with my body in counseling, I am learning to sense what is within. As I became attuned to all that I hold inside, I am naturally beginning to pick up signals in my environment and from within myself in a conscious way. This new awareness allows me to appropriately respond to cues and take care of myself and my family.
My work in therapy gave me a sense of safety that allowed me to not only feel emotions of joy and love, but also to tune in to danger again. Initially regaining these danger cues was overwhelming. I began to fear almost everyone. I was afraid of letting my children see the dentist without me in the room. My eyes darted nervously around parking lots in broad daylight and I glared at every man I passed. I was afraid to let my kids visit friends if the dad was home…or visit their male cousins or uncles…. My heart raced if a man followed me into an elevator. As I walked down hotel hallways I rushed to my room imagining each door opening and a large strong arm pulling me inside. The hypervigilance that I had always felt (despite my inability to have cues), was now on overdrive!
Suddenly every time I drove through the intersection of my daughter’s accident (7 YEARS LATER), I was flooded with the fear of losing her and images of what that rollover had been like. How for 7 years after that horrible accident did I never once imagine that scene and yet now I could hardly drive that route my fear was so intense? I couldn’t tell anyone what this was like for me because who could understand why I didn’t feel this for the past 7 years!? Or at least immediately after she almost died. I was still too ashamed.
I am getting to a more balanced place now with these cues…recognizing what danger actually exists…and many times the cues still do not work as they should.
What Having No Cues for Danger Looks Like in Therapy
My lack of danger cues made me believe I could handle anything in therapy. Although I was scared and nervous for each session, once I walked into the room there was a part of me that always took over – ready to push hard and fast. Initially this involved “vomiting out my trauma” as Bessel van der Kolk likes to say. This part of me needed to be in control – it wanted healing and it was never enough. I felt motivated, driven, and I wanted it all to happen NOW! This part of me hated when the therapy work was slow. I felt unproductive, that I was wasting my therapist’s time, and wasting my own money. I wanted to do good work and do it as fast as possible. Bring it on! was my approach to every session.
If I was not knee-deep in one of my painful trauma stories, then I was clearly wasting time and money in therapy. I did not understand that the real work of healing is what happens in the stillness...in the silence...in my relationships...in learning to simply tolerate the sensations inside of me without words. I didn't need to be working so hard. Rather, I needed to STOP working. With the guidance of my therapist and the EMDR process, my body knew how to heal when the protective parts inside of me could find enough safety to relax and let go of control.
Many times this left me sinking back into a deep depression after a hard EMDR, somatic, or Bioenergetics session. I convinced my therapist I could handle far more than my body could take and the depressive episodes that pursued were fierce. It took me well over a year of working with my current therapist before I began to connect with myself and learn my body’s signals.
I am still not great at reading my cues, but fortunately, my therapist is pretty good at attuning to me, recognizing the different parts of me that take over, and moving at a safer pace than what this strong controlling part of me believes I can handle. My therapist notices the little shifts in me that I insisted on ignoring. Not consciously ignoring. She says things like, “What happened just now, it looks like I lost you” or “It looked like some protective part is rising up in you to turn off the emotion, what is that about?” or “I saw something on your face, tell me what’s happening”.
Initially, I would charge forward, insisting “I’m good, let’s keep working!”. Now I know that sometimes I can handle what comes up in sessions and other times it is too much and she knows to leave it alone. By having her catch these shifts and gently point them out to me, I began developing the skills to read my own body. This in turn has let me finally develop cues for danger.
Embodiment
I am not broken. My nervous system learned to ignore danger cues to make my life more manageable. This understanding of my nervous system helps me see why danger must be activated within therapy as we reprocess memories. Part of this work is to learn what danger should feel like and to have enough safety to feel the correct response to the danger I experienced. My mind and body are working in a connected way and I am learning to embody my sensations, emotions, and experiences.
Being an embodied person while experiencing trauma is far too overwhelming. This means that learning to be embodied within trauma therapy comes with huge scary emotions to embrace that never before felt tolerable. This work needs to be done with an anchor of safety, which can be a therapist you fully trust. Much of my healing also happened within my marriage, within my relationship with God, and within a friendship where I felt safe, protected, and supported.
It is beautiful that each of these individuals remains an anchor for me as I keep healing. I am like a boat tied to these anchors of safety, learning to drift off into stormy dark waters because I feel the rope. I can always pull back to the safety these trusted individuals provide. I feel protected by these relationships more than any other feeling. In this, I heal.
