There are dark places in my life, as there are in yours, as there are in almost everyone’s life. It varies in degree and intensity, but I think we are all, in some ways,   the children of Post-Traumatic-Stress. Trauma is common, in childhood, in life, it doesn’t always take a war to scar and frighten people.

I find, sadly, that many people cannot see past their own traumas and fears, the traumas and fears of others are not visible to them, they think these things belong only to them. Just yesterday a woman stopped me in the street and talked for nearly 20 minutes to me about the death of her small dog from liver cancer, she spared no detail or anecdote.

And yet, I realized, she is a friend. She knew we had lost dogs and donkeys just this winter. It never occurred to her that we had experienced the same thing. I admit to having little respect for the narcissism of loss and grief, I have not yet learned how to be tolerant of it.

I used to think  my dark places were unique, until I began to work on my perspective, and came to see that nothing about me was or is unique. I feel nothing that hasn’t been felt before, done nothing that hasn’t been done before, suffered nothing that hasn’t  been suffered before.

Panic attacks are as common as headaches, people just don’t know how to talk about them, and are rarely encouraged to.

The issue for me, and for many people is not how to live a life without struggle, disappointment and loss but how to live a life with struggle, disappointment and loss. As universal as trauma is, it reminds me of death. We will all experience it, but were are most often stunned and unprepared for it.

Life is filled with triggers for the people who experience trauma – I confess I dislike the term “trauma” or “survivors”, life is not a trauma, I experience life, I don’t survive it. Victimization is a national passion now, it is not a movement I wish to join. I don’t want to be a victim of life, I want to be a liver of life.

I realized just a few years ago that I don’t have to go back to the dark places, that to some degree, this is a choice, not our destiny. I don’t have to think of the people I have lost, or the dogs I have lost, or the love I have lost, I was  very surprised to learn this.

Many things can bring me back to my dark places, and once there, I can lose perspective on what is real and what is not, and it is not always simple to get out. But I understand now when I am reminded of someone I love who is gone, or a bill is overdue or someone does or says a hateful thing to me it does not mean I have to go back to the dark places in my life, and get stuck there, as in an awful kind of emotional quicksand.

I can stop, pause, breathe, think. These feelings are not real, this is not now, this is something else. I can deal with my problems and my loss and fear and trauma, I don’t need to return to the darkness of experiencing them. The very idea of family used to send me back to the very dark experience of mine, I could quickly become what I was around them. That does not happen to me anymore, real life is between me and that, between me and them.

I can’t control everything I feel, but I can control much of what I think. A few years ago, I began learning how to get the fear straight, and end the mental lawsuits that cloud the brain, drain the heart and never end.