recovering lindsay

I told a therapist once that I wished I could fix my broken brain and stop all the self-destructive noise, and she told me that my brain is literally reacting exactly as it should be given my trauma history. And of course, I started crying because for so long I had thought that there was something wrong with me. I was the sick, diseased child. I was the one who couldn't stop self-destructing. I was the one who was broken.

She told me that while it is incredibly frustrating to deal with panic attacks or dissociation or flashbacks, and it gets incredibly tiring having to tell myself that yes, we are going to eat today, my brain is actually responding in a really healthy manner. It's simply trying to protect me post-trauma. My brain has always been trying to protect me, and that helps, somehow, on the hard days. It helps to know that despite my brain going to maladaptive ways of survival, it is simply because it doesn't know that we're not in original circumstances anymore. It is desperately trying to get me through the hard stuff. 

I'm learning how to orient myself to the present, to send signals to my system that we are safe now, and to teach my brain that it doesn't need to protect me in that same way anymore. But I'm grateful, nonetheless, for how cool it is that my brain is that wired to survive. It's beautiful, actually, in the moments when my head is above water.