All about trauma anniversaries
Plus, suggestions on how to cope.
Welcome to Solicited Advice, our weekly column that celebrates the helpfulness in health. Because in a world where strangers at the grocery store love to tell you that a specific brand of magnesium will indeed “cure” what ails you (it probably won’t, so sorry), we’re all about passing on our lived experience in a way that makes your life a little better. Are we experts? Nah, not really. But we’re great listeners who have perfected the art of pillow screaming. Let’s get into it!
Without getting into details, I have an “anniversary” coming up of a traumatic event I experienced several years ago. Leading up to the date — without fail — I always find my body tensing, my anxiety mounting, and a fresh wave of depression lingering. How do you all deal with reminders of trauma as time goes on?
Ash: I think it’s key that you said “reminders of traumas” because I think that encapsulates the experience of a specific memory or feeling bubbling to the surface. If you think about it, a “date” or “time” can be classified as a trigger, and we know triggers are what put us into that heightened state.
So I encourage you to think of it in that regard and ask yourself questions such as:
How do I manage my other triggers?
Can I apply one of my existing coping tools to this situation?
When do those feelings start? Does it last a few hours, days, weeks, or more?
Have I given myself the space (whether through therapy or other means) to process the experience I had?
As with most things, I recommend starting with some self-reflection at a time that’s far removed from the “anniversary” date so you can fully be present without those heightened feelings impacting your mental clarity. Make a game plan — anything from “two weeks before, I will add in a 15-minute daily walk to my routine” to “I have a crisis number ready to go” — and try to stick to it. I find the analogy folks use with grief to be applicable in this setting, too: It may not get smaller with time, but you and life will grow around it.
Kat: April 16, 2003 is a date I’ll never forget. It marks the moment when my entire world imploded, thanks to an exploratory ear surgery that revealed a skull and brain infection, and the subsequent IV antibiotics that left me with ototoxicity — permanent damage to my inner ear — in the form of bilateral vestibular loss. I would never be the same person after that, and yet it’s a date I always mark on my calendar every year. It seems counterintuitive, I know.
One thing I’ve learned about trauma is that everyone copes with the aftermath in their own way, and I think the choice of whether you consciously remember that day, event, or season of your life is up to you and you alone. For me, while it can be painful to be tugged back to a time in my life that could very well be defined as rock bottom, it’s a time of reflection that I ultimately welcome because it forces me to see how far I’ve come in the years that have since lapsed. I find it’s really easy to fall out of a state of acceptance when you constantly have acute health emergencies and new diagnoses cropping up. I get angry and I lose sight amid those current crises about how I had to relearn the basics as a freshman in high school: how to read while my vision bounced, how to write with a pencil on lined paper, how to walk up and down a flight of stairs without crawling. And look at me now! I did all of that and so much more! I remember April 16th because it helps me. It resets me. It fuels me to keep going. But I am fully aware that it’s not always safe to sit with trauma because it can unwind the progress a person has made to move past it.
So here’s the main advice I’d give, because, like you mentioned in your question, the body keeps score no matter if you pencil something in on your calendar or not: Choose how you want to navigate it and line up a distraction (rage room, anyone?).
Here are some questions to consider:
Do you want to use that anniversary as a time for deliberate reflection or is it something you need comfort and self-care for?
Who in your life are your safe people? And how can they best support you through it?
Pick what kind of company you want to keep. Would you rather be surrounded by loved ones or completely alone?
What can distract you? Maybe it’s a time where you take on a little extra work or plan a small vacation instead (I say this as someone who does not do well with idle time when my emotions are bursting at the seams).
And finally, I like to keep this affirmation I wrote in mind: “I am not what happened to me. I am not the sum of those broken parts, because I myself am not broken. Every day I live is a rebellion against the people, places, or events that hurt me. I am safe and I will not be stagnant.”
Sending you love as you navigate what’s ahead in the face of what’s behind you. 💖
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