38. Bash
Bash
I’m rudely woken up this morning by Erik shaking me like he thinks I might be dead or something.
I groan, pushing his hand away. “What?”
I’m still trying to wake up when I hear Erik slap my alarm clock as it goes off. “Dude, you’ve hit snooze like seven times and are still out cold. It’s driving me insane.”
I try to rub the sleep out of my eyes and look at what time it is—It’s almost noon. How did I sleep in so late? I drag a hand over my face, feeling the ache behind my eyes from last night.
It’s not from what you think, though. It’s not from drinking.
I’m sober, yet I still get hangovers. The hangovers just now come from the weight of my own mind.
From the dreams that feel like they’re strangling me.
From the thoughts that keep me up all night.
I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling, listening to the muffled sounds of footsteps in the hallway and the low voices of people talking… and I’m just here. Stuck.
“Sorry, man,” I tell him, trying to pretend like I’m okay so he doesn’t start worrying like he’s known to do when I fall into these moods. “My bad, long night studying and crappy sleep.”
I see Erik standing there, studying me out of the corner of my eyes.
“You’re good, though? Anything bothering you?”
I prop my hands behind my head, taking in a deep breath to steady my heart rate and the way my head feels dizzy. “Yeah, no…I’m good. Promise.”
“Mm, okay. Well, are we still meeting up for lunch today after class?”
Geez, I forgot I have class today. Matter-of-fact—I glance back over to my clock again—I have class in less than an hour. Crap.
“Um, yeah. We’ll all meet up and walk over to the dining hall or something.”
“Okay, cool. I’m heading out. I’ll see you later. Let me know if you need anything.”
I wave him off. “Okay, Mom. You don’t need to worry so much.”
I hear him laugh as he walks out of the room, and I let out a relieved breath once I’m alone.
I lie there a little longer, trying to get my head together.
It takes me a good minute to work up the energy to move, but I eventually pull myself out of bed, put on a clean shirt, grab my bag, and force myself to walk to my Clinical Psychology class.
The class fills with the smell of books and cheap, burnt coffee.
I’m already in my seat when other students start to shuffle in and get comfortable, talking to the people around them, sliding laptops out, typing up quick notes, clicking pens—all sounds and movements my brain is too aware of right now.
Sometimes I can get overwhelmed by the simplest things, especially when there are too many of those simple things happening all at once, making it hard to focus.
I take another breath and drink some water, hoping it will ease some of the tension in my body.
Not much helps though, so I do the only other thing that typically helps.
Please ease whatever triggers I’m dealing with today. Help me to focus on this class and what you want me to take from it. Show me ways to better understand why I’m feeling these things and ways to work through them and not give them power over my mind.
I slip out my laptop just as Dr. Hampton walks to the front of the room, writing on the board in big block letters: Trauma Responses: How the Body Remembers.
Without lifting my head, I look up at the ceiling with an annoyed expression.
Real funny, God. I didn’t mean slap me in the face with my own issues in class, man. I meant like, maybe just take them away without me having to do the work. I was just trying to use all the pretty prayer words, hoping you would take pity on a guy and do the rest.
I sit there, staring at those words on the board like they might as well have been written just for me.
“Today,” Dr. Hampton says, turning toward the class, “we’re going to talk about a topic that doesn’t get enough attention when it comes to psychology—the body as a witness to trauma. What we don’t realize is that the body does the same thing. The body stores the memories that it can’t release.”
My jaw tightens, and I try to rub it as I pull out my notebook for notes. It feels like she’s talking directly to me today.
“That means when someone experiences loss or trauma, it ingrains signals into their brain that it then uses to navigate life with. It completely changes and rewires them. It affects their nervous system and how they react to things in life.
The panic, the guilt, even the nightmares people can experience…they don’t just come from what happened. All of those things occur because the body and brain are trying to protect itself.
The way the body processes things can sometimes be very similar to an autoimmune disease.
The body is trying so hard to fix something that’s wrong with it that it ends up overreacting and mistakenly attacks the wrong parts, causing more problems and new issues you may not even realize are connected to each other. ”
My body knows all of this…too well. I’ve dealt with these feelings since that day four years ago.
I remember Isabel’s face the morning before everything changed.
It wasn’t the last time I saw her…but it was the last time I saw her alive, and some days that thought decides to torture me.
I get stuck thinking about how quiet she was, how I told myself everything was okay, and she was probably just tired, that it was nothing to worry about.
I didn’t ask.
It’s crazy all the things I didn’t realize back then were connected that I remember now.
I remember hearing the way people at school talked about her, the cruel things they started to say, how she started looking smaller and smaller, like the life was draining from her.
I always tried to be there for her, but she shut me out so much near the end.
She was always so angry with me, and I didn’t understand why. I just wanted to help.
She was my best friend. We were only ten months apart in age, and we grew up more like twins, with me being the older brother.
I thought it was all just normal high school drama. Boys teasing girls. Girls being catty with each other over guys they liked. But after finding her that day, after finding her note, after finding out what really happened—I can’t even think about it now; I can’t think about how badly I failed her.
I try to steady my breathing, trying to go back to paying attention to the lecture. Even if my brain is trying to reject all the logical things she’s saying.
“Guilt,” she continues, “is one of the hardest things trauma survivors deal with. Especially when it involves someone they love. We think—I should have done something. I could have saved them in some way. And that guilt eats at our ability to forgive ourselves, and it changes how we move through life. We become overly critical of ourselves and overly cautious of new relationships and situations. Guilt isn’t proof that we failed; it’s proof that we cared, so is the grief and pain.
We have to rewire the brain to understand that’s not a bad thing. It’s not something to fear.”
I’m not taking notes anymore. I can’t. All I can hear is the echo of Isabel’s laugh when we were kids…and the silence when she was gone by sixteen.
I press my thumb against my temple, trying to stay here, in this room, and not back there, but I end up zoning out as she goes through a couple of real-life clinical sessions with study participants.
Then she moves on to talk about how the brain and body can still heal from these damaging patterns that the body holds on to, and I start to listen again.
“Whether you’re a counselor, a researcher, or one day a clinical psychologist, you’ll see this again and again—the nervous system holds onto pain even when the conscious mind thinks it’s fine.
The body doesn’t differentiate between past danger and present safety.
When someone loses someone they love, or they go through something traumatic, their body reacts like the danger is still happening.
Racing heart. Shallow breathing. Hypervigilance.
Anxiety. That’s just the brain doing its job to protect you and keep control, even if it misfires sometimes. ”
She clicks to the next slide, where a graphic shows the brain and nervous system.
“First, we have to acknowledge this with patients. Step one will always be safety. If the body thinks it’s unsafe, nothing else will stick. Therapy starts with re-teaching the body how to feel safe again.
Then we want to bring awareness to what’s actually happening.
We help them learn the signs of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn in themselves.
Naming a reaction can take away some of its power.
Sometimes, the fear of unknown feelings can be the main cause of anxiety in the moment.
We don’t like or understand what we’re feeling, and that fear takes over and feeds the anxiety more.
Then we talk about replacement. People often cope in ways that numb instead of heal—substance use, risky behaviors, self-isolation.
We work with them to find replacements that give them that relief they’re looking for without destroying themselves.
Such as exercise, art, journaling, close community, real connections, any healthier tool.
This is really a trial-and-error phase. Never a one-size-fits-all.
And lastly, integration. That means helping them take their story and make meaning out of it instead of running from it.
When they start to integrate that loss into their life’s narrative, the body can stop bracing for impact.
The more we give the body chances to feel safe around that trauma and any triggers, the more the brain starts to trust safety again. ”
Dr. Hampton’s voice softens a little as she leans against the desk, finishing out her lecture. “Pain can’t be erased. That’s never the goal. We are just here to better learn and understand the tools the brain responds best to.”