Luke getting his leg casts on
Our son Luke was born with a condition that required two surgeries on his feet, leg casts, and special immobilizing shoes all before he was four years old.
When we went for his second surgery we didn’t realize that we would have to choose whether they would give him calming medication or for us to stay with him as they put him to sleep.
So we chose the calming medicine thinking that would be better for him.
As they wheeled him back into the surgical suite Brad and I tried so hard to keep it together. It was the hardest thing to see our little 2 year old leaving us for such a big thing.
There’s always this little place in your mind that wonders if he’ll wake up from anesthesia. You’re pretty sure he will….but will he?
Luke and I traveled via plane to Saint Louis once a week for a few months to get new leg casts. He couldn’t choose between blue and green this time.
Thankfully he did wake up. He screamed and thrashed about as he woke up which we thought was strange. (More on that later)
But overall he seemed to be okay.
Fast forward to last week…
Our son is 6 years old now (2 years past all of his medical treatments). He is very bright, independent, and friendly.
But at night, right before it’s time to go to sleep, he becomes afraid.
He cries and panics when I don’t come fast enough to read him and his sister a bedtime story.
This has actually been the case for a while but this night he was finally able to articulate what made him so afraid.
He said, “I’m afraid you will leave me when I’m sleeping”. The act of going to sleep and being separated from his mom and dad triggers the same feelings he felt two years before when he had his surgery.
His behavior may not even seem to be unusual. But we have to ask ourselves where do these fears and emotions come from?
People are so accustomed to pushing away and minimizing feelings. We shrug them off and tell ourselves to be strong or stop being so weak or dramatic.
But our feelings are telling us something important. They’re giving us an indication of what’s happening at a deeper level.
If we ignore them or worse punish ourselves or others for expressing these difficult emotions then that creates so much more of a problem.
So how does trauma work? Where did these fears come from?
Answer: The body remembers what the mind suppresses.
Remember how our son screamed and trashed about when he was waking from surgery?
When we are in a potentially traumatizing situation we move into fight or flight to help us escape danger.
If we can’t defend ourselves and find closure and safety from the danger then the trauma can’t be released and it’s stored in our memory and in our body.
If it’s never dealt with and we don’t find healing then we repeat patterns that keep us stuck. We stay stuck in a place of anger, criticism, defensiveness, fear, depression, and anxiety.
It becomes very hard to have intimate relationships because we’re always trying to protect ourselves from a potential hurt.
The good news is that if you deal with the trauma effectively you can change your whole life.
Healing is possible. You MUST deal with your problems. Ignoring it won’t make it better. It WILL make it worse.
