When someone has survived a life-threatening, violent event, the nervous system doesn’t reset once the event is over. It stays on high alert. That’s why walking into a football stadium and seeing the perpetrator or their partner can trigger a full-body reaction…racing heart, instinct to run, a feeling that death is imminent.
This isn’t paranoia. This is trauma memory, the body remembering danger and mobilizing for survival, even years later. Survivors often describe it as being “back there again,” because the brain doesn’t distinguish well between past danger and present reminders.
9/8/17
Huge headache.
My stepdaughter again saying if I didn’t go her mom could and it’s horrible. It’s horrible the triangulation that is happening.
When my stepdaughter said, “if you don’t go, my mom can,” she was echoing the loyalty bind created by her mother. Children in these situations are forced to choose sides even though they love both parents/stepparents. To reduce their own stress, they often align with the abusive parent, because resistance to that parent can feel dangerous.
For the safe parent or step-parent, this feels like betrayal. But what’s really happening is a survival strategy by the child.They are adapting to the manipulative parent’s reality in order to feel secure.
9/11/17
Getting back on the wagon to find an EMDR therapist.
Eye Movement May Be Able To Heal Our Traumas | Tricia Walsh | TEDxUCDavisSF – YouTube
I highly suggest EMDR to resolve trauma. Our whole family has done multiple rounds of it after violence erupted in our home.
September 16,2017
I called my mom what did I say?
Lance and my husband on the phone with Via Bajaj the civil attorney about next steps and all the places that they went wrong.
Trying to get things done at home, I need all the help I can get.
September 22, 2017
Football game, I am sitting in the stands and I look over and I see the stepdad. I immediately grab my husband’s arm and say I think the stepdad and your ex are here. Where?? There?? I see him walk down and start filming their reaction to seeing him and not leaving and then start engaging in why they don’t have to leave. I thought for a second that I should film my husband in case something happened but the instincts to run and call for help were too strong. The tolerance for crap like this is depleted, there is no tolerance for this anymore. The police never came so we ended up leaving, then they called, then we filed a police report. That was a weird experience. There has been a shift in energy that is making my stepdaughter act out and hurt me. It’s when I disengage it hurts her but what else am I suppose to do? Maybe it is possible for someone better greater than I to be able to withstand exposure to this dynamic for this long and live a normal happy life. But I can’t.
When someone who has a restraining order intentionally comes into your presence and does not leave once they realize they are in your presence and you document what is going to happen you suddenly turn into the person that started it.
When a perpetrator is physically near (violating restraining orders, showing up at public places), it doesn’t just retraumatize the survivor. It destabilizes the whole family system.
- The survivor may appear “overreactive” to others because their body is in survival mode.
- The children may act out, lash out, or withdraw, because the loyalty conflict is unbearable.
- The partner may become emotionally distant, depressed, or angry, feeling helpless to protect the people they love.
This creates a cycle where everyone feels disconnected from one another exactly what the abusive ex intended. The abuse continues, even without another physical assault.
September 25, 2017
Every corner I turn it points me to write this story. I could not believe how I felt on Friday night when I saw her and her trying to talk to me. The feeling like someone suddenly on the other end of the 911 call would be able to do something. It was really scary. No way could they have helped me that day the only thing maybe that would have happened was that my getting killed would have been documented on the 911 call.
September 26, 2017
Heal Yourself with Writing
BY CATHERINE ANN JONES
The following is an excerpt from the “Heal Yourself with Writing” on-line course.
We all know the value of psychology in uncovering our deepest feelings and the importance of catharsis in temporarily releasing our pain. Yet while psychological techniques may help prepare us for the journey of healing, they often are not enough to lead us through the deeper way of transformation. Healing without transformation risks re-living negative patterns over and over -sometimes even reinforcing them by repetition, rather than truly putting them behind us.
What psychology does well is help us understand how we feel. What psychology doesn’t always do is provide the way through. Einstein once remarked that significant problems cannot be solved at the same level of the thinking which created them. Only by rising to a higher or deeper level can an ultimate solution to psychological problems be found.
Our lives may be determined less by past events than by the way we remember them. Memory can be either disabling or enabling. Dr. Viktor Frankl, holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning wrote that “…everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms: to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” What we think or imagine in fact is our reality, both individually and collectively. Healing and transformation is possible only through changing one’s perspective from within. It is by making meaning out of memory that true healing and empowerment can occur. What story are you living? How do you choose to remember your story?
Negative Patterns
Negative patterns sometimes evolve for a reason. A child growing up in an alcoholic and/or abusive environment may create a wall around him or her for protection. Such defensive methods may actually ensure surviving emotionally and physically through challenging and threatening times in our lives. Years pass, however, and though now safe, these walls and other defensive mechanisms may sabotage our personal and professional lives. The wall is no longer needed yet it remains. It has become habitual. The first step is to become aware of what we have built around us. What stories we continue to tell ourselves to fortify the wall. Stories from the past live on in us long after the cause or effect is gone.
September 27, 2017
I have decided in my head that as long as my step daughter, son and his girlfriend continue not dealing with their mother. Not holding her accountable for breaking the families apart by letting her continue to act out the way that she does and actively try to poison the dynamic. Then I need to find a path forward without them.
Pathways Forward
- Acknowledge the reality of trauma triggers. My instinct to run wasn’t weakness; it was survival.
- Name triangulation for what it is. When kids repeat the manipulative parent’s words, remind yourself it’s a survival strategy, not the child’s authentic voice.
- Find safe outlets. Whether through EMDR, writing, or community support, your healing depends on spaces where your truth is honored.
- Set boundaries where you can. Disengaging may feel like it hurts your stepdaughter, but it also models healthy limits. Children need to see adults refusing to play the toxic game.
Trauma doesn’t end with the assault. It lingers in the body, in the courts, in the bleachers of a Friday night football game. It lingers in how children are pulled like rope in a tug-of-war.
But healing comes from naming what’s happening. From refusing to call yourself “crazy” when your body screams danger. From seeing triangulation for what it is. From reclaiming your story, one journal entry at a time.
If you’ve lived this too — please know, it isn’t just you. This is how trauma and family systems collide. And there is a way through.
Strangled In La Jolla 