Excerpt from the free Substack article that wraps up our February theme on surviving childhood trauma:
At the heart of a “mistrust of self” is a deep mistrust of our bodies. It’s our body and its nervous system that registers the danger around us. We feel sick to our stomach, our chest is tight, our throat closes, our heart beats fast, our breathing quickens, we get tense and still with caution, and our temperature fluctuates from freezing to burning up depending on how intense the moment is. Our internal alarm bells go off, physical indicators that all is not well.
But what happens when those alarm bells never shut off? If you’ve ever been stuck in a large building while a fire alarm is misfiring, you know what you must do to stay sane. To drown out the repetitive, loud sounds you have to put on noise cancelling headphones so you can go on with life.
That’s what we do as kids. We turn down the inner dial of alarm bell volume so we can go on living with some measure of personal focus and equilibrium with our families.