Invisible Walls

Our experiences shape how we experience the world around us and our relationships.

For about the first 10 years of my life, my family did not live in a great neighborhood. Due to unfortunate and unforeseen circumstances, my mother had to leave her corporate job. I don’t blame her. She made the right decision based on the circumstances, even though it had to have been hard. But sometimes, I would wake up in the middle of the night to sounds of violence somewhere on the block. Occasionally there were fights, sometimes there were gunshots. One time, the house on the opposite corner burned down. Another time I watched my dad persuade intruders to leave our front porch with a chainsaw. While many things can shape a person such as genetics, relationships, and experiences, few things shape our world like traumatic events do.

Trauma

Trauma is a very popular word on social media. I’m grateful for the awareness but frustrated with the bad information.

People use it to describe a range of problematic or stressful events in their lives. Clinically speaking, we define it as exposure to real or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence. But rarely do I hear clients use it this way. They use it to describe relationships or breakups. They talk about stressful situations that never brought them close to physical harm. They often use it to describe things that are emotionally painful, not events that are physically dangerous.?

The best way I know to describe this idea to folks is to redefine trauma into two categories: capital “T” Trauma and lowercase “t” trauma.

Trauma is the clinical version. Exposure to war, domestic violence, sexual violence, car wrecks, natural disasters, etc. These are the events that can lead to clinical problems (e.g., depression, anxiety, PTSD).?

trauma is the everyday stressful experience. The breakup, the poor grade, the bad work environment, these are all in this category. These are uncomfortable situations and can create stress, but people won’t have the same reaction as they do to the clinical version. This is also the most common one you will find on social media.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder?

The clinical version of this falls into 5 categories that make up PTSD.?

1.???? Exposure to a traumatic event

2.???? Intrusions - unwanted memories, flashbacks (where the person relives the sensory experience of the traumatic event), nightmares, or physical or emotional reactions to reminders of events.

3.???? Avoidance of reminders - avoiding people, places, things, emotions, or thoughts associated with the traumatic event.

4.???? Negative alterations in cognition and mood - negative beliefs about themselves (“I am not good enough”), others (“you can’t trust anyone”), or the world in general (“the world is a dangerous place”). Folks also have difficulty experiencing positive emotions like happiness or enjoyment, difficulty remembering, or poor concentration

5.???? Hyperarousal - being on guard, difficulty with sleep, angry outbursts, or reckless behaviors

I would argue that one of the most insidious symptoms falls within category 4. It is feeling distant from others.

Once something traumatic has happened, the person who experiences it begins to feel emotionally disconnected from the people in their lives. It creates Invisible Walls. It's not just the acquaintances or colleagues, but also the people closest to them. Their experience drives disconnection from others. It wreaks havoc in relationships and leaves the person feeling alone. This is the most common reason I have seen adults coming into therapy in the years following the pandemic: “relationship issues.”

Sometimes people come into therapy after they’ve experienced trauma. Sometimes, they experience it while therapy is happening.

On October 7th, thousands of people died in the blink of an eye. They weren't people I know. They weren't anywhere close to nearby. They were on the other side of the globe. Despite the distance both physically and metaphorically, I watched the emotional impact of those missiles land in the experience of one of my clients, whose family thousands of miles away hides in their bunker, waiting to see what happens. As the days have gone on and the violence continues, the situation has not improved.

It’s an unnerving thing to see, someone whose body is present in the room with you, and yet, their mind is thousands of miles away. Clearly, there was a distance between us that was almost tangible, but only existed in the space between our minds. There are many things I can empathize with fully: addiction, marriage challenges, parenting challenges, anxiety, depression, different kinds of traumatic events, and the list goes on. I cannot imagine what their experience was like in those moments. I cannot imagine what it was like for them to grow up there, seeing, hearing, and experiencing war.

What is even more interesting to me is that we were both alcoholics.?

It's no coincidence. Trauma is directly linked to addiction. Researchers have found that trauma exposure, whether directly or indirectly experienced, is related to increased risk of addiction (Levin et al., 2021). Furthermore, severity of trauma and number of traumatic events is correlated with addiction severity (Kuksis et al., 2017). Of my three siblings, I am the oldest, and I saw and remember the most from that neighborhood. I am also the only one with an addiction. It seems clear from research that many people who struggle with addiction are just coping the best way they know how with their experiences. There is also a great documentary that you can watch here .

I have often felt disconnected from people around me. The feeling of being isolated, even when you are around other people, is hard to describe if you haven't experienced it. But it didn't happen only because of my experiences. Brick by brick, drink by drink, I built emotional, mental, invisible walls between myself and others. I spent years building them. At first, maybe they were protective for me. But as time went on, they became a prison. A prison I built and couldn't escape from on my own.

Ironically, recovery requires tearing down those walls. Another commonality I share with this particular client and everyone else who is in recovery is that someone showed up to help us remove those bricks. If you have a really good support system or people who care enough about you, they will teach you how to use those bricks to build bridges instead of walls.

Nobody recovers alone.

In the therapy space, it’s my job to create connections. I've become a professional bridge-builder. It's my job to walk alongside people in pain, and sometimes, those experiences remind me of mine and I feel the walls go up. Not only is it hard to sit with other people in pain, it's even more challenging when you are, too. I still find myself feeling like I have a long way to go as a therapist when I can feel that internal distance increase, not because of the client, but because of me. I have found that for me, I have to be an active participant in keeping my invisible walls down if I want to really connect with others. Connection is simple but it's not easy. It requires us to be vulnerable, to take the risk of being hurt.

The most profound personal discovery I have made from spending thousands of hours sitting with people in pain is that our pain is what connects us to others. If you have ever been talking to someone who describes how perfect their life is, I'm willing to bet you couldn't relate to them at all. But when someone is vulnerable and owns their mistakes or shortcoming or difficulties, we feel more relatable, more connected to them.

Pain connects us if we can acknowledge and share it in a healthy way.

While many events have happened in the past few years (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic, two wars), it's important that we stop building those walls. You don't have to experience Trauma to build them, sometimes trauma will build them too. It's an easy trap to fall into to take our negative experiences and use them to create social or emotional distance from people in our lives. Sometimes it feels like the right thing to do. But I would challenge everyone reading this to consider the places they have built invisible walls in their lives.

What experiences have caused you to disengage from others?

What has reduced your trust or faith in other people?

What makes the world seem dangerous to you, physically or emotionally?

Or better yet:

What experiences can you use to build bridges instead of walls?

Have a great week!

If you need help with your mental or physical health, please reach out to us at the Center for Renewed Minds (330-826-1430).

References

Kuksis, M., Di Prospero, C., Hawken, E. R., & Finch, S. (2017). The correlation between trauma, PTSD, and substance abuse in a community sample seeking outpatient treatment for addiction. Canadian Journal of Addiction, 8(1), 18-24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2021.106889 ?

Levin, Y., Bar-Or, R. L., Forer, R., Vaserman, M., Kor, A., & Lev-Ran, S. (2021). The association between type of trauma, level of exposure and addiction. Addictive behaviors, 118, 106889. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2021.106889

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