Old thread
https://mlcforum.theherosspouse.com/index.php?topic=10624.0;all#lastPostNot sure why but I think my last couple of threads have closed on big shift moments. Like an internal soap opera lol.
Perhaps my legacy as part of this group is to raise some discussion about trauma.
Losing someone you love who no longer loves you or a marriage you valued or dealing with enforced changes in your lifestyle or the life you wanted for your kids...these are all hard painful things.
But they are not the kind of life-altering trauma I have been talking about.
Which is not to dismiss the pain of them one jot.
But I think it does explain why the trajectory for some LBS is different than for others.
Milly asked at the end of my last thread if part of my trauma response was linked to old issues for me.
And tbh, it wasn't. That wasn't part of my life experience for the first 50 years. The closest I can get to it is a time as a teenager when my mother had cancer and our family life was uprooted by it. I think that wired in some coping skills around stepping up and being 'strong', some of which have served me well and sometimes less so.
Actually the real issue for me is that my life was a 'yellow roses' one and I simply had no template for this at all. None. I was like a toddler with it. The bad thing about that was that I had to learn from scratch; the good thing about it was that it never felt normal or as if it was my fault. Well, some of my toddler incompetence in how I responded was my fault...but not most of the events or the rather dark stuff behind them.
When I read posts here, I can sometimes sniff the ones that are not just about pain and loss, but feel like PTSD bc I know what it smells like. That feeling of disconnection from One's own reality. And how the struggle with it lasts much longer than any issues related to a marriage.
I think for some of us the gaslighting effect of our spouses' behaviour, or the trickle truth of multiple BDs with shocking information or the simultaneous impact of other events like illnesses or violence or bereavement creates a profound wound. When we simply struggle, sometimes for years, to know what is really Real. When we lose faith with our own ability to even know that.
And sometimes the GAL/pave the way/lighthouse mantras not only don't help, but can feed that sense of unreality.
Recovering from deep spirit-rending trauma - whatever it was caused by - is a different game altogether it seems to me. About much more than a marriage or divorce or finances or ow/om. Most LBS come here in shock...but not everyone stays in trauma like that for quite so long.
But some of us do.
And being honest about that with yourself is not about being a victim, it is about being a fighter and a reclaimer.
Finding our own sense of Real again is at the heart of that battle, I believe, and it isn't an easy one to either see or fight.
So I hope my posts will help others who recognise that, for whatever reasons, they have deep PTSD like wounds to address and that doing so matters much much more than an MLC spouse or taking up jogging.