They're also not "irrational" reactions that we end up with--in our worldview and life experience they're entirely and genuinely rational, and in fact can be the very things that once saved our lives, saved our sanity; if I hadn't become just the hypervigilant little adult-child that I was, who knows what further terror I might not have otherwise managed to avoid, and what alternate set of afflictions I might be dealing with. It continued to serve me, for many years, the wisdom of having had to contain and carry that shrapnel; only recently did it become a problem when it was dislodged and hit an artery. Metaphorically speaking; or maybe not so metaphorically. It feels like that anyway. Perhaps if my father had considered that inflicting abuse on me at the age of 4 was tantamount to shooting me with heavy artillery, I would never have become such a creative thinker; would never have had to. But ignorant bliss is a luxury that was not afforded me.

It does seem to me that it is much more complicated to resolve effects of trauma relative to how early in our development they may have happened, because we weren't processing then with the same language we use today; we have no records written, even in our heads, in what would become our native tongue. What were our thoughts like, before we had vocabulary on which they could travel? Who can recall? I certainly can't. For the few very early memories I do have, I only remember being there and receiving the information of my experience. And while I was speaking at the age of 4, I had few words to describe aspects of the trauma I experienced.. and no one to talk to about it, with only perpetrators, deniers, and the terrorized in my midst. So although the memories are vivid and intense, they do not carry the kind of linguistic narrative that is a major component of how I process everything else in life, and I do think that makes processing them more difficult, even with the recall.

I've had therapists complain that it's almost like I'm talking about someone else, when I discuss those events at all. Well, I am, sort of. I was dissociated in the sense that no part of who I knew how to be was there when those things happened (also no part of me that could be integrated with the self I was allowed to be, in order to be part of a more integrative character development over time). I'd not been given skills for operating in those kind of conditions; in contrast, I was constantly told how good I had it, how easy, how ungrateful I was. Talk about cognitive dissonance.