UNITED STATES—There is a wide spectrum out there who just doesn’t believe the talking cure. To be honest, I used to be the same way, but sometimes when you endure trauma, you might be surprised, just how much therapy can help you deal with life. I say that sparingly because life is weird sometimes. You can endure something so tragic, so traumatic and the world might sympathize with you for a moment, but then everyone else goes back to their life.
Life moves on rather you want it to or not. I know that all too well because when you deal with something traumatic like having your life threatened during an armed robbery your mind goes to a dark place. Probably the scariest thing I can ever recall. Life flashed before me, where in a quick moment everything that happened in my life came to me like a speeding bullet.
I was trembling with fear, imagine having a gun, larger than you can imagine pointed directly at your head and a person just mere seconds from pulling the trigger and blowing your head off. My body was riddled with fear, tears and I just wanted to survive. More than anything, if I got shot, I wanted to ensure it didn’t hurt. In addition, I was more fearful of not being able to accomplish things in life if my life had been taken at that moment.
You start to wonder why me? What is this incident trying to say to me? What does the universe want from me? Is there a lesson here that I have to understand? All those questions and so much more unfolded, after the gunman stole like $60 from my wallet and my cell phone. Stunned to this day they didn’t take my ID or the credit cards I had in my wallet. I fled home, tried to my best of my ability compose myself before ultimately going to the police department and filing a police report.
Did the police report do much? Not really. I don’t think the culprits were every caught, this was probably just one of many robberies that the police department took that day. It is amazing how crime can run rampant and it’s like it never took place. It wasn’t on the news, it was not televised and it just makes you wonder how many more crimes transpire that go unreported on a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis.
Long story short, my anxiety heightened as a result of this incident. So much to the point that I needed to try to make sense of what happened to me. I saw a therapist and had a conversation about always being the anchor for everyone. Constantly doing for everyone and never taking a moment to focus on myself. In other words, I do have a serious case of anxiety where I always worry about when the other foot is going to drop.
If there was anything that came out of that incident is my ultra-awareness of my surroundings. I have always been aware and vigilant, but today not a single person can approach me from behind without my guard being super sensitive. It is as I react before I can even react, and I’m always on the defensive and ready to attack. Even if I don’t have to.
It did put some perspective into my mind, so much too the point that the realization hit me that I sometimes just have to live life and not worry so much. Yes, that is so much easier said than done, but it was something I need to do. I need to talk to someone, I needed to get some things off my chest, which so many of us rarely do. We bottle things up and when things explode it hits us in a debilitating way. Stop bottling it up America. Talk to someone; it is healthy. You may think by drumming up that trauma again, all those emotions may come back to you, and to be honest that is likely the case, but it is a emotional release that I cannot describe with words.
You might scream, you might yell, you might cry. Trust me I did it a lot, and I survived, but it was therapeutic and I never cry. However, I realize I need to cry more as silly as that sounds. It is me not just being vulnerable but not bottling things up and finding a way to unleash the trauma that may be controlling your life more than you imagine.
