Trauma & Compulsive Rituals
Why the two often go hand in hand.
My alarm went off: 4:30 a.m.
My first class to teach was at 8:00 a.m., but I needed to be up this early to get my to-do list done.
This is because my to-do list now incorporated a variety of rituals.
First thing, smoke a cigarette and stare blankly into the quiet moment as I comb over my profound despair: I was returning to work after a 3 month leave for PTSD after my home was broken into and I’d been assaulted for several weeks.
I’d barely scratched the surface of healing that (I’m not fully healed from it today).
But the need to survive doesn’t stop for trauma. There’s little space for grief, healing, or self compassion in our broken world. I had to manage my autism and my BPD alongside the trauma alongside a highly demanding job that offered little room for error.
To do that, I had to leave the house.
To leave the house took the most effort of anything in my entire life.
The first few days, I vomited on my floor in the doorway, called in sick: the agoraphobia that had rooted after the trauma had me in a chokehold against my will.
In order to leave, a series of rituals began.
All the rituals centered on pampering myself enough to make it possible for me to be brave enough to go to work, to spend a day giving instruction to students about how to write papers that most of them would cheat on or give minimal effort to anyways.
But I had to pretend they wanted to learn. And I had to pretend I wanted to teach them.
So I had to pretend I wasn’t dying inside, that the most catastrophic thing I could imagine hadn’t just happened…from a FRIEND.
I had to pretend the world was safe enough for me to walk in, that the world wouldn’t punish me for existing in it, that institutions would deem me good enough to “earn” the right to housing and food.
If I could just ignore/control the pain, I could play the game of pretend well enough to survive.
If I could just EASE the pain, perhaps I’d be able to limp through another performance.
After the cigarette, it was time for the morning coffee.
After the coffee, the rituals become a little more unusual.