Part 3: Trauma & Awareness

Triggers, CPTSD, nervous system realizations, and the patterns I couldn’t see until I became healthy

Part 1 of my healing was silence.

Not the cold kind of silence—more like solitude. Space. Safety.

Part 2 was the mindset shift that changed everything:

There are only two states in this world—healthy and unhealthy.

That applies to physical health.

And it applies to mental health.

And once I understood that, I stopped trying to “fix what happened to me” and started learning what trauma was actually doing inside my body and mind.

This is Part 3: Trauma & Awareness—the stage where things finally started to make sense.

Trauma isn’t always one moment

For some people, trauma is one devastating event.

For others, trauma is repetition—harm that happens over and over without repair, accountability, or safety.

That’s where PTSD and complex PTSD (CPTSD) can look different.

PTSD (for me) came from devastating events

I experienced PTSD from two separate, life-altering events.

One was my parents’ divorce—anything but civil.

I wasn’t protected from the devastation. I was in it. And I found out the truth in a way no child should.

I found notes and sticky notes from another woman to my dad—

not by snooping, not by trying to “catch” anyone—

but doing what I always did: going with my mom to the office while she volunteered and made copies for school projects.

My mom found out soon after. She confronted him. He didn’t deny it… he just left. And never returned.

And when evidence showed up later—items from her in his new apartment—he still didn’t come clean. He lied and said it must have been from the previous tenant.

That kind of betrayal doesn’t just hurt the adults involved.

It changes the child’s nervous system.

It changes what “safety” feels like.

The other PTSD event was death—before I was even in sixth grade.

My sister was in third.

I ran home excited one day because I thought stickers I ordered might be in the mail. I wanted to put them in my sticker book.

My sister came home later screaming words I’ll never forget:

“He killed the baby too.”

Her friend had been murdered by her own father. He killed the family, then himself.

I wasn’t allowed to talk about it.

Even when counselors were available at school, I asked my mom if I could see one, and she said they were too busy helping people who “knew her more than I did.”

But that wasn’t the point.

It wasn’t about knowing her “better.”

It was about the fear I felt.

The terror.

The shock.

The fact that no one helped my nervous system make sense of what I had just learned about the world.

CPTSD came from repetition without repair

CPTSD, for me, came from all the other unhealthy patterns that were normal in my family and in my life.

And I want to be clear about something:

Trauma is not being told “no.”

Being disciplined, corrected, or taught right from wrong is part of being raised.

The trauma I’m talking about is different.

It’s the kind that happens when a child is emotionally shut down over and over—

and there is no repair afterward.

Here’s what I mean

It’s running into the house after school, excited to show your parent a paper you didn’t think you’d pass—but you did.

You’re proud. You’re lit up.

And you get brushed off:

“Quit interrupting.”

“I’m busy.”

“I don’t have time.”

So you walk away hurt.

And here’s the part that matters:

In a healthy environment, a parent comes back later and says:

“I’m sorry I snapped. I didn’t mean to take my stress out on you. I should have handled that differently. Now show me your paper.”

That moment repairs the wound.

It teaches the child both:

• boundaries (don’t interrupt), and
• safety (you’re still loved, seen, and important)

But when the repair never comes… the child learns something else:

Even good things are unsafe.

Even excitement is unsafe.

Even being proud is unsafe.

And when that happens repeatedly, the brain adapts.

Not into confidence.

Into survival mode.

Triggers are not choices

Once I became healthier, I stopped trying to “control” triggers and started learning from them.

A trigger is not something you choose.

It’s your nervous system reacting before your mind can catch up.

For me, triggers often show up as anger.

That anger doesn’t come out of nowhere for no reason—

it’s my nervous system saying:

“This feels like something that hurt you before. This isn’t safe.”

And when you’ve lived through repeated unhealthy dynamics—especially with authority figures—your body learns to recognize tone, energy, dismissal, condescension, passive aggression… instantly.

Even before you can explain it.

The damage wasn’t only what happened — it was what never happened afterward

This is one of the clearest realizations of my healing:

I wasn’t only hurt by what was said or done.

I was hurt by what never came afterward.

No calming down.

No apology.

No accountability.

No repair.

If a child only ever sees “wrong,” but never sees “right,” they don’t learn growth.

They learn confusion.

They learn self-blame.

They learn that relationships are unsafe… even when nothing “big” is happening.

And that kind of programming rewires the brain over time.

When I became healthy, I could finally see what was unhealthy

This is what trauma awareness did for me:

It helped me understand why I reacted the way I did.

Why I carried anger.

Why I overthought everything.

Why I stayed on edge.

Because when you’ve lived in patterns where things explode and never get repaired, your nervous system learns to expect harm.

You don’t rest.

You don’t sleep well.

You wake up exhausted.

And eventually trauma stops living only in the mind.

It moves into the body.

Sweeping it under the rug is not resolution

In my family, conflict was never resolved in a healthy way.

We’d fight.

It would get ugly.

Then everyone would separate, cool off, and later act like nothing happened.

That isn’t healing. That’s avoidance.

And avoidance doesn’t erase trauma.

It stores it.

So the pain stays, unprocessed, until something small ignites it—

and then it comes pouring out.

That’s where trauma dumping can happen.

Not because someone wants to be chaotic—

but because they’ve been carrying too much for too long with nowhere safe to put it.

The truth I had to accept

This is hard, but it’s honest:

You cannot heal while staying in unhealthy environments.

Unhealthy patterns don’t support healing—they sabotage it.

Because unhealthy people deny.

They deflect.

They blame.

They minimize.

They attack when confronted.

And if you keep trying to heal while staying in those dynamics, your nervous system never gets the one thing it needs most:

safety.

shared from lived experience, not professional advice