Things That Go Bump In the Day
Traumatic stress, of the kind many of us male survivors suffer, has the effect of distorting or rupturing our boundaries. This creates a loss of our sense of safety in relation to the world.
Another peculiar effect resulting from loss of accurate sense of bundaries is actual physical clumsiness and the tendency to hurt ourselves.
We often bump into objects even in familiar places
especially on the side of the body where somatic dissociation can be documented by
"nonphysiological signs;" ie near where a particular trama/abuse occured or a place we somehow dissociate with a traumatic event.
Man I do this a lot. I can even be looking at something and thinking about avoiding it and still
smack right into it!
"This increased risk in traffic probably is related to distraction resulting from dissociation
as well as suppression of attention and visual perception in regions of boundary rupture...often
identifiable as developing in the perceptual region where the [previous traumatic] threat was first identified."
No wonder I've had so many car accidents, even tho not my fault. While I was not really hurt in any except the last one (back sprain), every time I did as I look back at the ones I remember clearly have an increase in my various aches & pains, centered mostly in the back & neck.
This is where most of my pain still is or is referred from. Not surprisingly, my neck & back are the source of some of my earliest physical traumas, which involved being roughly shaken back & forth until my back would bend & my head snap back, when I was still a baby.
It was after that last accident in 1993 that I began to develop the constant often severe pain I now know to be fibromyalgia, and a worsening of my depression that only recently has been dx'd as Complex PTSD due to abuse trauma.
I've always been a kinda clumsy awkward kid, but even more so in recent years.
However I find that as I continue in recovery, therapy & support, putting pieces of my life's puzzle like these together, I become less klutzy,
have stronger boundaries, and am much healthier.
But sometimes I'm still one of those things that goes bump in the day...
The above is excerpts along with some of my thots
& experiences on a book by Dr. Robert C. Scaer called "The Body Bears the Burden: Trauma, Dissociation, and Disease", Haworth Medical Press,
2001.
Highly recommended if you have any physical problems along with your abuse trauma. Even if you don't. Good stuff on sources & effects of trauma, and on dissociation.
Victor
Another peculiar effect resulting from loss of accurate sense of bundaries is actual physical clumsiness and the tendency to hurt ourselves.
We often bump into objects even in familiar places
especially on the side of the body where somatic dissociation can be documented by
"nonphysiological signs;" ie near where a particular trama/abuse occured or a place we somehow dissociate with a traumatic event.
Man I do this a lot. I can even be looking at something and thinking about avoiding it and still
smack right into it!
"This increased risk in traffic probably is related to distraction resulting from dissociation
as well as suppression of attention and visual perception in regions of boundary rupture...often
identifiable as developing in the perceptual region where the [previous traumatic] threat was first identified."
No wonder I've had so many car accidents, even tho not my fault. While I was not really hurt in any except the last one (back sprain), every time I did as I look back at the ones I remember clearly have an increase in my various aches & pains, centered mostly in the back & neck.
This is where most of my pain still is or is referred from. Not surprisingly, my neck & back are the source of some of my earliest physical traumas, which involved being roughly shaken back & forth until my back would bend & my head snap back, when I was still a baby.
It was after that last accident in 1993 that I began to develop the constant often severe pain I now know to be fibromyalgia, and a worsening of my depression that only recently has been dx'd as Complex PTSD due to abuse trauma.
I've always been a kinda clumsy awkward kid, but even more so in recent years.
However I find that as I continue in recovery, therapy & support, putting pieces of my life's puzzle like these together, I become less klutzy,
have stronger boundaries, and am much healthier.
But sometimes I'm still one of those things that goes bump in the day...
The above is excerpts along with some of my thots
& experiences on a book by Dr. Robert C. Scaer called "The Body Bears the Burden: Trauma, Dissociation, and Disease", Haworth Medical Press,
2001.
Highly recommended if you have any physical problems along with your abuse trauma. Even if you don't. Good stuff on sources & effects of trauma, and on dissociation.
Victor
