Autobiography In Five Chapters (Barbara’s Version)
– With thanks to Portia Nelson
When I First Fell Into the Hole and Fear and Pain Began Shaping My Trauma Patterns
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost… I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
When I read this first “chapter” of Portia Nelson’s poem, I am immediately seven years old and waking up after my first sexual assault. I felt lost and hopeless and quite a bit clueless. At age seven all I could do was… well… nothing. I went to school; I carried on with all my expected actions as a seven-year-old child.
I do not remember actively crawling out of this hole, mostly I just recovered and forgot.
Until it happened again.
If anything, the next sexual assault taught me that perhaps there was safety in that deep dark hole.
Other similar traumatic events also remind me of this first chapter. Losing my job in 2011. Losing Molly in 2016. Brain tumor diagnosis. All things Roy Frazel. These events can make me feel like I am in a deep dark abyss. And while I may have a hand in the cause of these events, for the most part none of them were totally my fault.
We all have deep dark holes, and it isn’t always our fault that we find ourselves in them.
When Denial and Coping Mechanisms Kept Me Falling Into the Same Hole
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
This is where the initial event that puts me in the hole begins to separate from the hole in my narrative. When I was sexually assaulted the second time, I spent hours wondering what I would do to prevent it from happening again and what I had done to cause it. At the time (now age eight) it never dawned on me that I could say something and not fall into the hole again.
Trust me, my sexual abuse was not my fault (I know that now), but I did not know that then. I had let it happen again, or caused it to, and here I was in the dark scary hole.
This is also where denial comes to mind. Every traumatic event will create within it a piece of denial. Either while it is happening, in the immediate recovery of the event, or in the false comfort that the passing of time can bring. There is also denial of the behaviors that we create and develop in response to trauma.
Denial is a powerful coping mechanism. It protects the mind in the moment, especially for a child facing fear, confusion, and shame. But over time those coping mechanisms can quietly become habits, shaping our behaviors and relationships in ways we don’t fully understand.
Those behaviors are often the beginning of repeating trauma patterns that follow us for years before we ever understand what is happening.
When I Began Recognizing My Trauma Patterns and Self Sabotage in Relationships and Behaviors
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in… It’s a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
By this time in the poem, I have told my mother about the abuse and it has stopped. What now exists and puts me back to Chapter One are all the behaviors resulting from that abuse. My sexual promiscuity in my twenties, my affinity for older men (losing my virginity to my 33-year-old biology teacher at age 15), and my recreation of relationships that are either not socially acceptable or simply abusive.
Looking back now, I can see how trauma shaped many of my behaviors and relationships. What once felt like freedom or rebellion was often a trauma response, a way of coping with emotional pain that I didn’t yet have the insight or support to understand.
Telling my mother might be me getting out of the hole quickly. Realizing that I did not cause the abuse and that telling someone could make it stop. But this admission and the treatment that followed did not remove the hole from my life.
In my version of reality, the hole simply takes on new shapes and appearances, disguising itself so I fall (or jump) into it again and again.
This leads me to Chapter Three in relation to my behaviors. The sex, drugs, alcohol, and friendship issues that send me back into the hole. I am quite good at getting out of the hole quickly.
I once told a story when I was teaching high school health about how “I can quit drinking super easily, I’ve done it a million times,” to which a student replied, “Then you have relapsed a million times.”
Talk about jumping right back into the hole.
Recognizing those patterns is often the painful middle step in breaking cycles of trauma patterns and self sabotage.
When Therapy, Recovery, and Support Helped Me Learn to Walk Around the Hole
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
I think, as it pertains to my sexual abuse, I began to do this chapter in my first marriage. I saw personality traits and attitudes in my spouse that should have been red flags before I committed my life to him. That five-year experience taught me a lot about myself. Not enough obviously, but enough to know I did not want to marry someone who might mistreat our children.
Let me be clear, I do not think he was a predator in that regard. I think he was narcissistic and verbally abusive.
I also look at my time in Alcoholics Anonymous and my years of therapy with Judy Rowan as learning to walk around the hole. Just as it took years for it to dawn on me that I could say no to my abuser and tell someone, it took years to realize that there were other ways to respond to the hole besides falling into it.
Therapy, recovery programs, and the support of a mental health professional helped me begin recognizing those patterns in my life. They helped me understand that healing trauma is not about pretending the hole is gone — it is about learning how the mind reacts to pain and choosing healthier responses.
Walking around the hole is slow work. It is the beginning of breaking trauma patterns and self sabotage.
I should also note that much of the beginning of my relationship with Kenny was what I call here “Chapter Two behavior.” Thirty years have passed and we remain together, so perhaps there has been significant walking around the hole.
I do think we are heading into Chapter Five.
When I Started Choosing a Different Street and Slowly Breaking Trauma Patterns and Self Sabotage
I walk down another street.
This one took Molly’s death for me to figure out and put into play. In the months after Molly died, I kept driving to her school. I did not do this on purpose. I would start to drive to my CrossFit gym or to the grocery store and find myself stuck in the student drop-off line.
My grief counselor Elizabeth Moulton told me to start turning left out of my driveway rather than right. I remember wondering what that would do, and she replied that if I changed the route I drove then I would be less likely to subconsciously go to Molly’s school.
She also said it would create neuroplasticity in my brain, cutting loose my driven desire to keep things the same and allowing for flexibility of thought and action.
Changing a route might sound simple, but it is actually a mental health strategy. The mind forms habits and patterns over time, especially after trauma. Creating new paths — literally or emotionally — can help interrupt those cycles.
Walking around the hole.
I have applied this idea to many of my unhealthy relationships, all the boyfriends, and many of the friendships I have pursued over the years. I can have five people telling me how terrific I am, and I will fixate all my energy on the one who doesn’t.
I currently have a minimal social life. I am still navigating the hole on this one. The friendship thing — and supervisors and bosses — remains a challenge.
Here is my other concern.
What if there is a hole in the sidewalk on the new street?
And what if it is bigger?
Clearly, I still have work to do.
Because breaking cycles of trauma patterns and self sabotage is not something that happens all at once.
Sometimes it simply means learning, slowly, to walk down a different street.
