Chapter 3: Living Smart or Still Living Scared?

"Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.” Otto Von Bismarck

I remember living life under the threat of what’s to come. To continually believe that I'll face threats or danger during times of change and uncertainty. Life had to be safe, free from the threat of what could happen. I would live in a state of risk-assessing each scenario and each outcome. I would evaluate new people and new places with only ever one goal - to be safe. And I would call this ‘living smart’.

Living with the continuous threat of what could happen, uncertainty wasn’t met with curiosity or excitement but met with the unending question “what if” circulating in my head. I considered myself smart for risk assessing my environment but in all honesty, I was STILL terrified.

I was living life surviving it from one day to the next. Fighting or avoiding a continuous threat that I needed to overcome. I’d see this threat in everything and everyone that was unfamiliar to me. I would see it in a new environment, a body posture, eye contact, a strange sound, what someone would say, and even when following news stories. My body would tense up, I’d hold my breath, and be consumed by thoughts to either fight or avoid. Upon instinct, I wouldn’t trust myself or my environment to feel safe.

I would convince myself that I am at the mercy of a life-threatening risk.

Now, this is completely understandable if in reality there was a threat that I needed to overcome. However, my perceived threat of life risked my ‘smart life’ ways in other areas.

I have missed out on fun experiences, distanced myself from people, and avoided friends in order to ‘live smart’. Life became set on routine and familiarity. And I’ve even been described as rigid, distant, and controlling - none of which I wanted to be.

I began to question whether living smart was just living scared. Was I living under the continuous threat of re-experiencing trauma? Was I really living smart? Or was I only ever just surviving my childhood experience through learned behaviour rather than actually living?

The difficult challenge for me was understanding what a real threat was but also, what’s life without feeling threatened?

As a child, my guard was up. It was clear to everyone around me if my guard was up. I was quiet and I had a frown on my face. I developed a stare (some say I inherited it) which extended to people not to come closer or interact with me for too long. I didn’t want to be touched and hold eye contact with others at all.

Trust disappeared. This was how I survived. This became smart. I was defending myself from the possibility of bad things happening. It felt smart but actually, I was terrified.

A few years back, I decided to go on holiday to Egypt to relax, enjoy myself, and have fun. Sadly for me, I barely did any of those things. I remember vividly on the day of this trip being terrified of everything.

Before the plane journey - “What if the plane goes down?” and “What if I don’t make it on the plane in time?”.

I would think of the destination - “What if there’s something wrong with the hotel?”, “What if something happens to me while I’m there? I don’t speak the language, what if they take advantage of me?”, and “What if I run out of money?”

I couldn't allow myself to be excited and if for a second I afforded the opportunity to be excited, it meant I had lowered my guard and taken my eye off the threat that was due to come. Being excited, I believed, would mean I was in more danger.

For me to be continually aware of threats is the absolute necessity and smartest thing to ensure my survival. Anything outside of that would end my life and I feared this even while I was on holiday. I was tense almost every day.

In reality, there was very little chance of any of these things happening and even less chance I could do anything even if it did. The opportunity to experience a nice holiday in its entirety was there, but for me, I was stressed as the threat was very real. Relaxing, enjoying myself, and having fun was unrealistic. In fact, it wasn’t safe so I didn’t allow myself to.

I have come to realise this way of living was trauma. I was surviving all over again. Defending myself from threat continuously and calling it living. Giving myself compassion now, this all made sense. I learned lessons from childhood that safety was more important than joy, more important than happiness, and more important than freedom.

I recently read the book Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl which helped me to understand survival and liberation/freedom through the words of a prisoner during the Holocaust.

I believe that freedom exists in two forms - External and Internal.

External freedom is liberation from an external condition. This could be limiting living conditions or at the mercy of a continuous and direct threat caused by another or the surrounding environment. The end of childhood trauma for instance exists as external freedom.

Internal freedom is the liberation of a continuous perceived threat to self-expansion. Symptoms of trauma such as shame, flashbacks, depression, and inner criticising can deny us our internal freedom.

Both of these types of freedoms don’t often happen at the same time and not for childhood trauma survivors. I’ll expand on this in a future post but sadly often one cannot happen without the other.

To be a childhood trauma survivor often means we have gained our external freedom. But there’s more to freedom than this. To live life understanding that any threat is appropriate to present circumstances where very little exists, and not based on history or fantasy, is also freedom.

Internal freedom is the removal of these types of threats to begin living life for what it is and not what it was. To be able to sit comfortably in the absence of threat and enjoy the moment. To do as much as you can and be as much of who you are in the process. This is what I now understand ‘living’ to be.

I still have moments when my guard goes up or I question uncertainty. We have experienced a year of helplessness and reason to feel afraid of what may come our way and I’m not beyond this.

I could listen to my inner voice telling me “You are a fraud! Clearly you haven’t healed from your trauma”, but compassion exists in my curiosity as to what’s currently bringing up these fears. And then feel OK about feeling them. I can then choose whether or not to act like the child I once was or even to feel afraid at all.

It can also mean having a life to be able to enjoy, relax, and have fun in. Because trust me, if you’ve experienced a lot in your childhood that you remained guarded from you’re owed this and even more so, you truly deserve this!

Please feel free to comment underneath or get in touch through the details on my website if you want to share anything about what I’ve written. Find out more about me here. If you’d like to but in the meantime, look after yourself!