Around seven years ago I experienced one of the more difficult experiences of my life. Because of the millions of views of my first TED Talk, I was earning a good living speaking around the world. I was pastoring a new church. Five years after my transition, I was really settling into my life as Paula.

In the midst of this upturn I was suddenly afflicted with internal turmoil. I had a new therapist with whom I was doing EMDR, a rapid eye movement therapy known to heal trauma. The trauma I experienced when I came out as transgender and lost all of my jobs and most of my friends needed to be healed. That was the reason I began EMDR, but as if often the case, it brought up deeper trauma that had been retained in my body.

When we are threatened, the cerebral cortex turns over its functioning to the midbrain – the amygdala and hippocampus. The hippocampus goes into hyper memory mode, though what it remembers if not necessarily what is ultimately helpful. The amygdala helps us respond with fight, flight, fawn, or freeze, depending on the nature of the trauma. Flight is usually the first choice, if the midbrain decides fleeing is likely to be successful. If flight is not an option, we will fight. Fawning occurs when we befriend the perpetrator, prioritizing staying alive over fight or flight.

If the midbrain decides none of those options is available it goes into freeze mode. Freeze mode turns off active memory and in short, prepares you to die without consciously experiencing the death. If you survive freeze mode, you have no memory of the event. Though your mind has no memory of the trauma, your body does. The trauma is held in the body until it is released.

If you’ve ever seen a deer recover after being chased by a predator, you will notice the deer shake and shiver from head to toe. In that physiological response the body is ridding itself of the trauma just experienced. It is literally shaking off the trauma.

Humans have no such automatic physiological way to release trauma. It remains in the body until it can be released, often through therapeutic methods like EMDR, somatic therapy, cognitive processing therapy, or prolonged exposure therapy. I am fairly well acquainted with the first two. The clearest and most understandable book that explains the process of healing trauma is Peter Levine’s Waking the Tiger.

It is one thing to treat people experiencing post-traumatic stress. It is another when the post-traumatic stress is your own. On three occasions when I was in EMDR back in 2019, I left the therapy session without the trauma contained. Containment is a process in which the session is wound down so the trauma does not leave the therapy office with you. One time I went to the home of one of my copastors and literally slid to the ground in tears, completely dissociated. My copastor had no training to know how to deal with that.

On two other occasions I went to a close friend who did intuitively know what to do. She sat with me until I could move out of my dissociation and become regulated. On one occasion that took several hours. I will always be grateful for her presence, care, and nurture.

That was seven years ago. For the last two weeks I have found myself again in a place in which trauma has been triggered and I have found myself dissociating. If you know me at all, you know I am nothing if not controlled. Becoming dissociated is very troubling.

This trauma response arrived with the loss of the mayoral election. I wrote last week about some of the reasons for the loss. Doing a postmortem of the campaign was important, both for me and for other transgender candidates who might consider running for office. But this emotional response was not about understanding. It was about feeling, and the overwhelming feelings were shame and guilt for having let others down.

That has resulted in an inability to concentrate, an avoidance of friends, dysthymia (a generalized malaise,) acedia (spiritual torpor) and a few moments of dissociation.

You might ask why I am writing this. It’s a fair question. Why would I want to invite a few thousand folks to look into the process of my inner workings? The reason is because I know there is a very good chance you too have had a similar experience, past trauma you do not even recognize coming forth in your body via an unexpected trigger. You do not have to run for mayor for this to happen. The triggers that cause post-traumatic stress are many, and often bear little resemblance to the original trauma.

But when they come, you need to care for yourself. Do what you must to get through the day. This is not a time to be concerned about disappointing others. You must take care of yourself. Things began to lift when I left a conference I was attending with friends and cancelled my attendance at another. I felt like I was letting people down both times, though none of them gave me the slightest indication that I was.

As the weight began to lift, I found the strength to attend my last meeting of the Board of Trustees as Mayor Pro Tem. I gave a little speech, focused on helping the incoming board members feel comfortable in their discomfort. It is a big job, and anyone who takes it on without feelings of inadequacy does not understand just how big the job is.

I then attended a party honoring our outgoing mayor, who has become a very close friend over the last four years. I had delightful conversations with folks from town, politicians from the region who have become acquaintances and friends, and others who wanted to celebrate Hollie’s service to the town. I was complimented in how I ran my campaign and encouraged to try again. The trying again part does not sound very appealing, but the evening was very encouraging.

Life is not a problem to be solved, it is an experience to be lived. Sometimes it is a puzzle and a mystery. Some parts of life cannot be solved or even understood. They must be lived, and trusting the flow is a part of the living.

To be clear, I am good, and there is no need to reach out in concern. I have proven to be a very resilient soul. I just thought it might be helpful to you if I shared my experience with you. As I say at the end of many a blog post…

And so it goes.