How I found my Heart’s song through CPTSD

I have Complex PTSD. It’s taken me a long time to understand this about myself and name it as such. Labels can be both helpful and hindering, but in this case, I find it helpful.

CPTSD manifests in many ways. Frequently, but not always, during the last two weeks of my menstrual cycle I see a fist coming from the right side of my visual field, hitting me in the head whenever I perceive myself as doing something wrong. This morning during meditation, the fist of shame appeared again, trying to correct me when I slouched and scratched my nose. I’ve confronted this fist, told it ‘No, this is not how we handle this!’ And ‘STOP!’ similarly to standing up to an abuser. I’ve tried loving it and having compassion, writing about it and just observing it. But it still persists. What I know is most needed is to move it SOMATICALLY. This is my current work.

I understand this fist as generational trauma passed down through my family. My father hit my mother and my brother, I was spanked, and he threatened to hit me. My boundaries were constantly violated. I was emotionally abandoned many times, hyperventilating or crying alone when my family was home and could hear. I slept with a knife under my pillow at age 11. My father was hit by his father, and my grandfather was hit by his father in the head. This generational trauma goes back nine generations on my father’s side, to the French Revolution, where my ancestors fled horrific war and famine. 

I do extensive work to manage CPTSD. I read about it, listen to podcasts, practice jiu-jitsu, and engage in bodywork. Skilled practitioners have helped me move trauma out of my body and work with my psyche. I journal, practice breath work, have undergone therapy, deeply engaged with my dreams, and worked with plant medicines in ceremonial spaces. I have also participated in Vipassana meditation and have had incredible coaches, teachers, and friends to support me. I was given an expert level childhood to learn from, and expert level symptoms to work though in my adult life-in order to help others through their journey through my work as the Director of Hypha Humboldt Community.

Even with this knowledge, I have a deep belief that I won’t be loved if I have CPTSD.

I still navigate between the trauma body and my heart’s song (my true self). I still fear that someone close to me will get hurt, and my trauma will spill over, causing more harm.

This fear keeps me from the true and deep intimacy I desire.

I also believe CPTSD shows up from my inner perfectionist, (a relentless inner critic) trying to bend, twist, change ourselves in order to receive the love we never received. If I am smart enough, athletic enough, pretty enough, meditate good enough etc.-then I will be loved and won’t experience the profound abandonment I experienced when I was a child. 

The truth is that I twitch a lot. Sometimes it unfolds as what some doctors would call, ‘Tourette's/tic disorder’ where I experience repetitive twitching. But my current understanding of tics after watching this video, are actually unprocessed trauma wanting to express itself. I still experience nightmares, panic attacks and emotional flashbacks. This is unprocessed trauma. Trauma is when the body and psyche try to act out what should have happened in the moment for safety or escape. Like this polar bear that still makes running motions after being tranquilized, we have to re-inact the fight, flight, freeze response we never got to do when the initial trauma happened. If the action is never repeated, it’s stored in the body and comes out as CPTSD/Trauma responses. I have trauma responses in jiu-jitsu, in close relationships, and in the safety of my home with my calm roommate. My body is trying to release generations of trauma, and this happens in layers. I’m working through the layers, one by one.

I want to tell you a story about releasing a layer of generational trauma. I am the director of a psilocybin non-profit, and we run beautiful retreats with tight containers where we work with psilocybin. I usually do not take medicine during the retreats because I want to be present for the participants and not deal with my own issues. During the last morning on the retreat in May I felt the old wound again, one that has come up in all my relationships, jobs, lovers, family—this feeling of not being enough, not being loved, that everyone will abandon me if I start twitching.

We were seated outside, in a circle and I started twitching, and a good friend came over to hold me. It got intense, and I started convulsing. More people gathered around me. I felt like self-injuring and told them to hold my hands down. The twitching was out of control. I was having the most intense emotional flashback of my life. In the flashback, I truly thought someone was going to hit me and I put my hands up, shouting, ‘Don’t hit me! Don’t hit me! Don’t hit me!’. The energy was so strong, and I couldn’t hold it myself.  A friend held my arms tightly, looking into my eyes as if she knew what I was going through. I couldn’t stop shaking. I told them I understood what was happening. Another friend said, ‘we do too.’ I had not taken any psychedelics at this point.

I felt like I had to spit, and weird noises came out—hacking and demonic noises, things needing to leave my body. One woman was grounding my energy to the earth, and another woman took a chalice to a tree to transmute whatever needed to be released. Some people stayed back, unsure of what to do. During the experience, I understood my grandmother’s energy releasing. She feared being put in a mental institution. She was held down as a woman living with bi-polar disorder and schizophrenia, receiving shock treatments. My great-grandfather, grandfather and my father were all hit (by hammers, with fists-on the top of their heads…) Everyone there understood it was unprocessed trauma and there was no other place for it to come out. In my own retreat was where I felt safe enough to let it move. I felt my ancestors there with me.

I started singing, and someone said, ‘yes, your heart song,’ and I sang it. They knew. They knew about heart songs. I tried centering my energy with my hand, pointing. Doing what my body needed to do to settle. I sang, and I also kept twitching every time I had a thought of shame. Eventually, a friend asked if I wanted a bath. I thought water element would be too much, but the earth element felt right. So we laid on the grass together. She told me to fill those open spaces with love and to give my shame to the earth. I told her I was afraid to die, and she said, ‘we’re all gonna die, babe.’ I felt like a gross, disgusting mess next to her, but also brave for letting it come through. I understood it was my ancestors' trauma, my father’s, my mother’s, my grandmother’s—all needing to complete the loop by expressing it and being told, ‘you are loved, we love you, you are okay, you are part of the group.’ You are part of this human family, we love you. We understand. It’s not your fault. My father, my mother, grandfathers, grandmothers, never had the tools, the support the container to release in. They never had the tribe, or the family. These women that held me, they are my family. That is what family does—holds you down, sees you, loves you, rotates in taking care, while each person takes a turn. I felt safe enough to release it there. Everyone understood what was happening. I sang my heart song. My family heartd ❤️ it for the first time.

*I am so grateful to each woman that held me during this experience. Thank you-beyond time and space-Thank you from my ancestors, thank you from future generations 🙏 .

As we were laying on the ground, a wise friend told me to release the shame of that experience. But I still felt shameful. Did I traumatize others? Did I take away from their needs? Here I was, having a full trauma response, and all I could think about was others rather than myself.

Many intact cultures have rituals for trauma, like the indigenous group that dances for 48 hours after their men return from war. Path of Love does this too. They recreate traumatic experiences so the body can move through them, allowing witnesses so it doesn’t live internally, somatically any longer.

How do we allow these movements to happen if we don’t have the spaces? To get big, but also ensure no one gets hurt. How do we make space for more somatic release? If I need this, many others do too. People need to understand trauma. The collective trauma body is immense. This is why psychedelics are so important now and the work that Hypha Humboldt Community is doing must continue. It’s the most sacred work I could do with my life. Thank you Great Spirit for sending an earth angel to remind me to keep going with this. I probably would have given it up unless she came to remind me, but that’s another story for another time.

I felt like I want to move on from this experience, but it needs a lot of tending and integrating. I took a yin yoga class 2 days after and cried and made noises and as I moved. I did jiu jitsu-slowly. I journaled and spoke with friends, I went to therapy with my mother and shared the experience, I spent time in nature and ate good food and drank a lot of water. It all helped, yet it’s June and I’m have CPTSD symptoms come up-naturally, (especially in the luteal phase of my menstrual cycle.) I am still resilient and am finding ways to meet these experiences with radical acceptance and compassion. 

Trauma is necessary and helps the animal (somatic body) learn to adapt. Most animals complete this process and move on. Humans, however, store it in their bodies and pass it on to their offspring. My hope is to live in a body where fear and trauma/CPTSD do not run the show, but regulation, trust, and love do. I have so much compassion for the unmet needs of people living with trauma. To some extent, most of us do. We’re not meant to heal alone.

I’m here to support you through your healing journey, and help you find your heart’s song. ❤️

Amen,

And a little woman.

Chelsea 

Citation:
Godsey, Erik. “What Is Trauma?” Erick Godsey, www.erickgodsey.com/blog/what-is-trauma. Accessed 12 June 2024.