As if I needed any more proof that I can do hard things – I returned to the belly of the beast this weekend.

(I guess a refresher course is okay once in awhile.)

I expend a large amount of mental energy every day, some of it subconsciously and some of it very consciously, on pretending that about fifteen or so years of my life never happened. At least not the way it did, or in the place that it did. I put a lot of effort into pretending the town I was forcefully relocated to at twelve years old, and couldn’t permanently escape until age twenty-seven, doesn’t exist. I get very upset when people who learn about the time I spent there try to tell me it’s where I’m from. It is not. I went to middle and high school there. I lived there off and on in my early-to-mid twenties. I was horrifically traumatized and abused there by people I was expected to consider family and friends. My mother still lives there, having returned from a failed attempt to run away from her problems. (She would definitely not appreciate me calling it that, but I’m way past pulling my punches where her behavior is concerned. I digress.) I haven’t returned to this place I do my very best to ignore since, I think, December 2016, something like that. Until this weekend.

It felt akin to walking back down into the Hell you’d finally managed to escape from, knowing that the Devil still holds court there, and that to return is to risk stepping into fire and brimstone at any turn.

Don’t get me wrong – the reason I went there was a good one. Dear friends of ours got married, and it was a beautiful wedding and a great time catching up with people we haven’t seen in ages.

But I had to think long and hard about whether I could do this. I had to ask my husband for some time to decide if I could handle going back into the belly of the beast in the first place, before we proceeded with the next steps for planning a weekend away (childcare, dog care, RSVP, hotel booking, etc.). I asked some friends for advice, and most of that advice was some variation of how I shouldn’t let my mother, or fear of my mother, rule my life. That wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t right either. I didn’t need to figure out if I would allow my anxiety over running into her in person to rule my decision-making. Honestly, that wasn’t a very big part of it at all.

No. I needed to figure out if I could handle returning to the place where I’d endured so much pain and darkness that I haven’t even parsed out more than a quarter of it in six years of therapy thus far. I needed to consider whether I could endure that trip without shutting down, or breaking down. I needed to know that I could attend a wedding in a place that the bride considers home and I consider the antithesis of that, without completely losing my mind in an utterly public setting.

Long story short – I did it. We went, it was a lovely wedding, and I survived. I am, as always, eternally grateful for my husband who unfailingly respects my feelings and pain and what I’ve been through and what I need to do to cope with it, even when he doesn’t truly understand it. I also am very grateful for the friends we spent time with that day who were similarly so supportive, without questions, without prying. I hope that in writing this post, my friends don’t get upset or think I’m complaining about what an ordeal it was to come to their wedding – because it isn’t anything to do with them, and I love them and am overjoyed for them. I was glad to be there to watch them become Mr. and Mrs. this weekend. On the outside, I hope that it seemed like it was effortless for me to be present there; on the inside, it was anything but.

When we got home at midday on Sunday, I crashed so hard from the concentrated effort it took to hold it all together that I actually napped through the entire afternoon without eating lunch (and I don’t nap, ever – sleep does not come easily to me at all). Quite frankly, I am still recovering from the prolonged strain of holding it together all weekend. It takes an inordinate amount of energy to maintain the brick wall I’ve put between myself and this pain; I just spent two days removing enough bricks to get back through, while still straining to hold up the overall structure of that wall so I could replace the bricks when I returned. Now I’m replacing the bricks. It’s fucking exhausting, and it’s taking some time.

It’s occurred to me that I’m actually pretty fortunate – I have made as clean a break as possible from both my mother and from this physical place where I spent over a third of my life. Well, I’ve worked hard to get it to this point, I suppose. Many other trauma survivors are not so lucky as to be able to enjoy such delineated separation from the sources of their pain. Indeed, many trauma survivors actually are in situations where they need to come face to face with their abusers, or other triggers, rather often. I don’t claim to be an expert in tackling trauma and triggers, but I would say I’m experienced with it, and while I did have to dust off some of the techniques and strategies I used this weekend, they’re tried and true.

I thought it would be helpful to share those tips here, for anyone who might find a need for them. Take them with a grain of salt, not everything works for everybody, but, the following approaches worked for me, more or less:

1. Chewing gum. You know how chainsmokers light up cigarette after cigarette? That was me with chewing gum during the two hour car ride down. Chew a piece of gum until it’s devoid of flavor and structure, deposit the piece into a napkin, pop in a new one. Every fiber of my being was thrumming with an almost painful nervous energy, frayed at the ends. Chewing gum literally gave that energy a physical outlet.
   
2. Holding something squishy. Similar to the chewing gum, having something to squeeze in my hands was a good way to have a physical conduit in which to channel the electrical current of stress. Anything squishy would do, like a stress ball or koosh ball; I used a small squishmallow stuffed toy, because it was both squishy and soft to touch which I found comforting.
   
3. Having ice cold water handy. Drinking cold water is good for self-regulating; it draws your physical attention to a sensation other than the burning buildup of anxiety. My therapist had actually suggested I bring along a big reusable water bottle in which I could have some ice cubes, and if I needed it, I could pull out an ice cube to manipulate in my hand, another sensory stimulant that directs focus to the present, rather than sinking into the swirl of memories and pain I can easily get lost in. I didn’t end up doing that, but I thought it was a noteworthy idea.
   
4. Keeping up distracting conversation about random things. Self-explanatory, and helpful if you’re in a present enough headspace or with someone who can assist with this approach. Not as helpful if you’re by yourself, I realize; you can try to keep up such a narrative inside your head, but that takes a hell of a lot of compartmentalizing. Not impossible – I actually do it constantly – but it can be really hard, especially in the middle of a triggering situation. This approach is particularly useful if you’re there with a support system.
   
5. Bringing distracting or absorbing activities for downtime. I brought a book I’ve been really enjoying reading lately, a card game, and a book of crossword puzzles. Of course, I also had my phone to dissociate with if I really needed it. In the end, the crossword puzzles were perfect for me during the few hours of downtime we had between the wedding ceremony and the reception.
   
6. Avoiding windows and other visual cues to location. I did my best to not look at every highway sign, to not look out the car windows on our drive in – this was tough because I get motion sickness, and generally need to look straight ahead as much as I can in order to avoid getting too nauseous. But, once we were done with the driving, I did my best not to pay attention to local landmarks or other cues that all held memories of some sort. Fortunately for me, the wedding ceremony took place in a church I’d never been to, and even better, the wedding reception was in a hotel – a generic, albeit very nice, hotel. The thing about an indoor wedding reception at a hotel is that, arguably, you could be in any city or town in the entire world – I know people often consider that a downside, but this weekend, it was my saving grace. I made a very deliberate point all night of avoiding facing the windows as much as I possibly could. If I forced myself not to think about it, I could “easily” forget where I was…okay, not easily. Not easily at all. But, it helped.

I want to note that the above tips are similar to, but not the same as, grounding techniques, which could (and probably will eventually) be a whole other post in itself. There’s some overlap in their function, but these ones are a little more specific to being directly in inherently triggering situations. Grounding techniques are more universally useful, whether you’re in the belly of the beast or experiencing a flashback in the middle of your living room. Stay tuned for another post on grounding techniques sometime soon. If anyone has some other strategies that have worked for them, I welcome you to share in the comments! Consider it a pooling of resources, if you will. For the most part, I maintain this blog and its painful honesty in the hope that it will help other people, and this post is absolutely no exception.

I now know that I can return to the belly of the beast, and live to tell the tale. I also know that just because I can, doesn’t mean it’s easy. It is exceptionally hard. The number one coping technique I recommend for things like this?

Allow yourself as much recuperation time afterward as you can manage. You’ll need it.