In the trauma game, there are no winners, but there is a scorekeeper: The body.
The body absorbs fear, oppression, violation, abandonment, and every significant breech of its sense of safety and well-being.
For most of my life, I suppressed my own trauma, preferring to shove it down rather than deal with it. It’s much more convenient to ignore the bumps and groans coming from under the bed than it is to face the monster.
The problem is that ignorance comes with a price.
My trauma first manifested itself as nicotine addiction, depression, chronic stomach issues, and more recently, a severely compromised posture.
In other words, I’m crooked.
I started working out seriously when my boys were small. After my divorce, I really poured it on. I drove myself constantly and without mercy. I don’t know if I was releasing my anger over what was happening to me, or punishing myself for dismantling the status quo by refusing to be complicit in my ongoing oppression. Probably a bit of both.
Exercise became its own addiction. Kind of ingenious when you think about it. Self-flagellation and rage all dressed up like health and fitness. And people praised me for this, so it was easy to keep it going. I even competed in a worldwide physique transformation competition and finished in the top 2%—all fueled by my suppressed fury.
Then there were the foot races, the 100-mile bike rides, the fasting, and the yoga marathons. Each feat demanded more of me than the last, and like a good little girl, my poor body always obeyed. Until it couldn’t.
There were minor set-backs along the way—a bout with idiopathic gut pain that landed me in the hospital, and a hip that finally succumbed to years of pounding abuse by refusing to take me anywhere.
But I always got better. Until I didn’t.
Sometime during 2020, I developed such back pain that even walking was agonizing. At the same time, a chronic cough had me choking and gagging, which aggravated my back further, locking me into a cycle of debilitation. The doctors couldn’t find any source for the cough. So I did what I always do; I pushed through it. Until I couldn’t. Until my body completely broke down and my mind and emotions did a crash-and-burn.
I stopped even trying to work out. I took Gabapentin at night and slept for 9 or 10 hours at a stretch. I could barely walk down the stairs in the morning. I woke to coffee and drank it until it was time to switch to wine, which I began drinking every afternoon at 5:00 and stood watching with detached curiosity as the volume crept ever higher. I stopped seeing friends, and visiting with my sisters. I knew I was depressed but I was too sick and in too much pain to care. I couldn’t talk about it with anyone. Not even God.
One of the things that kept me going were my weekly visits with my grandbabies. The remembrance of precious giggles and kisses from each visit were like tiny Chinese lanterns strung across my week, lighting my life up enough so I could see a glimmering reminder of something worth living for.
I knew I couldn’t go on as I was, but I needed a way to address my situation without going back to the doctor. I didn’t want to talk to her about my depression and I didn’t want to be prescribed more expensive tests or dangerous painkillers.
I managed to do some research and discovered a clinic that offered posture therapy boasting a 94% success rate. Rather than address the pain, they said they would address the root cause, which could be found in the structures of my body. My therapist asked me to send her photos of me standing up. Then she laid a grid over my image to determine whether I had any misalignment.
In the photo below, the red line is supposed to run down the center of my face. Oops.
I didn’t notice this crookedness in myself and I never felt it happening, but one day, there it was. Years of misuse, abuse, lack of rest, day after day, year after year, bent me over like a tree growing on a windswept plain.
Just as improper balance and overuse of certain mechanisms in the body cause physical imbalance, the current of the repeated and continued emotional burdens of regret, bitterness, sorrow, and thoughts and ideas initiated by trauma lead to twisted views of self and of the world.
Trauma shows up everywhere. It might start in your mind and emotions in small signs and warnings. Irrational fears, or a persistent nagging feeling of unease you can’t pinpoint. And when it shows up in your body, maybe it seems like a tension headache, or a little heartburn. If you don’t pay attention to the small signs, trauma will find a better way to get your attention. As my husband likes to tell me, “You wouldn’t pay attention to the small signs, so God had to knee-cap you.”
In whatever ways trauma shows up for you, I can guarantee you that it won’t be pretty if you don’t take heed. And I hate to tell you, but it won’t get better on its own.
I’ve been in posture therapy for about 2 months now, doing prescribed exercises daily. As you can see in the before and after photos below, I’m getting straighter. It’s been a lot of work, and has required a lot of patience on my part.
Before (December 2021)
During (February 2022)
Treating my back has taught me so much about my psycho-spiritual life and the healing I seek. I’m working on identifying the ways in which I am reinforcing the skewed beliefs and ideas that got my mind and emotions all bent out of shape.
This will also take patience and time and a commitment to doing small things every day that make a big difference in the long game.
Chipping away, bit by bit, at the deformities created by the winds of my life.
🕊 & ❤️
Julie
Julie Scipioni is the co-author of the bestselling novel series for women, "Iris & Lily," and author of "Taking the Stairs: My Journal of Healing and Self-Discovery.” Julie’s debut solo novel, “downward facing dogs” is also now available on Amazon. For more information and to order, see Julie’s Amazon Author page.