Either it's love, or it isn't: trauma, recovery, and gaslighting

How to integrate experiences and move ON. You don't have to work on stuff forever.

Terra Brooke, Dance Church at The Awake Retreat Center, Costa Rica. Photo courtesy of The Awake Retreat Center and Jasmina Schmitt https://www.threads.net/@jasmina.schmitt

A friend (let’s call him HeartWarrior) has picked me up to meet for lunch. We have only met once, months ago, on a prior trip to Costa Rica. We both attended a Nostr Event (which had to do with freedom of speech and personal online identity). He was one of the beautiful souls who touched my heart. At the time, he and his partner had a baby on the way and were looking for environments in which to live that would have a sense of community and care amidst this ever-changing world.

We texted a few times over the following months. Their baby was born, in Costa Rica, and they moved back to Tennessee where he purchased some land and was considering gathering friends around and creating a community there. But they were still exploring. They planned to come back to Costa Rica.

So our paths, our in-person paths, crossed again.

They had crossed a few times in the prior months through texts, as I said. But they weren’t “normal” texts, meaning superficial. They were interesting. Once, HeartWarrior sent me a text asking how I was doing, on a day I was struggling (and I mean shouting at God about something I was finding very painful). He mentioned I came to mind in his meditation.

So, there was something beyond interacting in a superficial way with him. I liked his wife as well. We had spoken on the phone once and she felt and sounded so kind, and thoughtful to me. Beautiful. I guess I would call them both “not-normal,” like me. That is a term my teacher Beverly used to give her students. She worked with people who were “not-normal” and Beverly felt that was a good thing.

Perhaps this is the case for you as well and you can join this club with me and feel a little less alone in this world of so-called “normalcy”?

Which brings me back to my friend, HeartWarrior. The baby was napping at home, so I would have to meet his family another time. While they were occupied, he offered to pick me up for lunch and join him to meet one of his new friends .

I was very excited to see HeartWarrior again and was open to anything that had to do with meeting in person.

That is how I found myself at a little restaurant on the side of a dusty road I had never seen before, in a tucked-away corner of Uvita.

There, we met his friend, a young woman who was fit and enthusiastic about traveling. She had been to Costa Rica before. She was exploring solo travel and finding her way in the world.

But then she mentioned a recent event and I could feel the impact of it. I could feel her can-do veneer crack, just a little bit. She apologized after she mentioned said event and told us talking about it made her want to cry. She told us she didn’t want to do that. We were mostly strangers, for heaven’s sake.

Well, heaven was not absent. That’s for sure.

Because here’s the thing: I love Costa Rica. And, I mostly stay at a retreat center, which is walled, gated, and peacefully tucked away from the world like an oasis of permaculture bliss. But before I left the country after my last visit, I had heard rumors of things not being as safe as they used to be. Rumors of houses being broken into when people were home. Rumors of the police not coming when called and the need for the community to come together to hire security guards.

That is one reason I went to El Salvador to see how things felt there.

Don’t get me wrong. I think many, many countries have issues like this, including the US. I am not on a pedestal of first-world grandiosity here at all. I am leaving where I have lived in the US for a reason. Actually, for many reasons. And I am very discerning regarding where I choose to live and how places feel.

This young woman was traveling alone and staying in an Air B&B when she heard loud banging on the locked gate, late at night. She didn’t know what to do. The banging continued for hours and she arranged her things to exit the house quickly in case the person broke through the gate. Again, she was alone as she experienced all of this.

This is a key to how trauma lands in the body.

Something happens that is stressful, and people feel alone as they are experiencing it. Two people can go through the same event and if one person has a companion who is with them, offering empathy and care, they will most likely not suffer from lasting trauma. But someone who feels alone and goes through a traumatic situation? Well, that is where a lot of future work may need to come in.

So, I saw and recognized this as she was speaking.

My friend offered a thought, a very rational statement he thought might be helpful. Maybe it wasn’t her gate? Maybe it was construction happening nearby? She couldn’t be sure, could she, that it was a threat to her?

But I knew it didn’t matter. (And as I mentioned above, based on things I had already heard, I assumed chances were that it was a true threat, but that didn’t matter anymore either). Why didn’t it matter? Because for her, while it was happening, it felt like a threat and she was scared and alone.

That is the key.

It doesn’t matter what you have experienced. It doesn’t matter if other people have different memories or reasoning about past events. What matters is how you remember it and how you feel about it now.

Real or not, if you felt scared and alone about something and it is still impacting you, there is some energy there that is waiting to be met. You don’t have to justify it.

So, I offered her some words I have learned from John Barnes. I reminded her that she survived. The words are that simple: “I survived.” He would have people say that when he worked with them.

I looked across the table at her. She was fighting tears. She was on the edge. She wanted to share more about it and she didn’t want to. We were new people, and me, she had just met. She was a capable woman sitting in a restaurant with people in it.

I gazed into her eyes. They were glossy and wet.

So I said, “Can you feel that we are with you now, here, and that you survived? Can you feel that right now, as you remember it?”

Now, I am not a therapist. I was not and am not offering therapy to her or anyone. Let’s add that as a caveat here. Anything I say here comes from workshops I have been in and personal experiences and experiments. You are on your own to discern and use my stories as you see fit. There. Disclaimer done. “Normal” world don’t-sue-me box is checked. Let’s move on.

When someone is telling a story and feeling and remembering it, they are still “inside” it. It is like experiencing it again. I feel one way out is to really feel someone is listening to you, can hold the story and pain of what you are sharing, offers empathy, and you can tell that in that moment you are not alone. You feel it while you are talking about it. That feeling permeates time. It seeps like a balm into your cells. It heals the past, in the present, because really, there is no difference. What it heals is the living energy of it. It does it through the frequency of love and companionship.

You are not alone.

“I survived.”

These are not small things.

A lot of people have felt traumatized in some way over these past years and they felt alone. We all know this and you can apply this little vignette in a bigger way here. (And I know some of you are.)

So, let’s offer some care and togetherness so we can find our way out and simply remember, rather than re-experience traumatic events over and over again.

That is the first part.

I felt very focused at this lunch. I did not feel I was there by chance.

As her story poured forth, into the container between us, and I gazed at her across the table, her lunch sat untouched.

She said she left the place the next morning, not planning to come back. She had paid for more nights, but she no longer felt safe.

She told the Air B&B owners what had happened to see if she could get a refund for her unused nights. The owners told her they never had a problem with safety. She contacted Air B&B directly and asked them for a refund for her unused days. The company told her she had to deal with the owners.

So now she was both traumatized and suffering from gaslighting.

Gaslighting is when someone tells you things happened differently than your direct experience. Or they discount it. They are not with you in a supportive and caring way. And in addition to that lack of empathy, they attempt to convince you your version of reality and experience is false or misguided.

She experienced someone pounding on a metal gate, loudly for hours. The hosts said everything was fine.

So I pointed out to her that she was being gaslighted and I validated her experience.

I told her that I had heard similar stories about the area. That places were broken into when people were home. I offered an antidote. The antidote was: you are not crazy and your fears are valid. Your experience is valid, regardless of how other people are treating you or feel about it.

Then, she mentioned that she had a family of local Costa Rican friends she met, who lived on the same street where this Air B&B was. They wanted her to visit. She really liked them and she was scared to go back to that street. She was scared to be anywhere near the place where her experience had happened. She said other locals had warned her to be careful regarding her safety. She told us older, grandfatherly Costa Rican men had pulled her aside at times to warn her of human trafficking. And she loved this family. She was wondering if maybe something was wrong with her for being scared and she should just go meet them and ignore the feelings her mind was telling her were irrational.

This is another thing that can happen. We can gaslight ourselves. We can tell ourselves something really isn’t so bad. We can tell ourselves we are wrong for feeling the way we do and that we just need to ignore “it” (meaning our feelings) and move forward in our life. We need to man-up God-Damn-It. (Sorry and swearing seemed appropriate at this point).

I saw this strategy emerging in her.

I am not saying this to appear good at any of this. Probably like you, I have done a lot of work and I could see these things from experience.

So, I asked her why she didn’t just meet this local family she loved in a coffee shop somewhere else.

She looked at me, stunned.

She hadn’t thought of that.

That’s another thing a mind will do. We often see only two choices. Two sides of a coin. I am always wondering about the edge. Where is it? What might it be?

Here, a coffee shop seemed appropriate.

She softened. She looked more relaxed.

We talked a bit about the rest of her trip.

I had mentioned she was not alone in the present moment so she could really feel it. I had pointed out the gaslighting. I also pointed out her coping strategy to justify something that didn’t feel good.

The last thing I did was explain how children use similar coping mechanisms. You see, children tend to make themselves at fault for things that happen around them that are troubling. Why do they/we-as-children do that? Because it gives the child, or young-us, a sense of control over a situation that feels very much out of control.

When you are a child and something is happening with your caregivers, where can you go? If you see your parents as the problem, and you are dependent on them for your survival, what options do you have?

The brain has a strategy for this. The strategy is to make whatever is happening feel like it is your fault. Then the answer is obvious. It is easy. Simply fix something about yourself and the world out-there will all be fine. Fix yourself. This is the answer to everything.

There was a moment I heard her say something like this. “If I had just…. Next time I will… " There was a subtle hint of confusion.

So I pointed out this strategy children use (and I wasn’t demeaning her and calling her a child…but those strategies stay with us sometimes until we see them and can grow new ones). I pointed out the facts. The rational fear she had. Her capacity to care for herself in all the things she did, including leaving that Air B&B. Her courage to share her story with us and cry a bit.

HeartWarrior paid for our lunches and suggested she might want to come share a house he was considering renting with his family and some friends. He told her that she didn’t have to be here on her own.

(Now, that’s love, isn’t it?)

Then we left. I had a class starting soon and I felt the importance to honor my own needs as well. I am a mostly-recovered codependent and I could feel the edge of showing up late for something I wanted to attend. Plus, my job felt complete. I spoke up about needing to get there on time, when I started to get a tiny uncomfortable nudge that I might be late if we didn’t leave soon. I also offered to hire a taxi if she and HeartWarrior weren’t ready to leave yet.

And all of that is a huge thing to do for someone with codependent tendencies who is with someone who seems to need care. I have been making progress. Offering to get my own taxi would have been a win win for everyone. But she and HearWarrior were ready, and so off we went together.

And there you have it.

I hope this is useful to you in some way. Sometime someone will tell you a story, or you may have a story that has a lot of energy in it, waiting for a caring companion or two to be there to hold it with you.

Now, there are people who will tell stories over and over and do not want to let them go. That is different. They are not ready to heal and they likely are trying to get an energy hit from you while they tell it. (You know those people, don’t you? They feel energetically draining.) I suggest you excuse yourself from those types of situations. Your listening is not love, because it doesn’t free anyone and you will most likely feel depleted from it. Compromising yourself so other people feel better for a moment, only to repeat the cycle, is not love, is it?

I am talking about people who want to heal, or integrate something and just don’t know how. People who seem a little ashamed, a little shaky, a little scared and uncertain.

Those people, or maybe you and I at times, are waiting to hear: “I survived” and to feel it. They are waiting for someone to be there with them. They are waiting for some care, empathy and love so they can process the energy of something. You have to be solid in yourself to listen to them. It helps if you have worked on your own shit. That is one of the gifts of The Shit (who knew there were gifts in it, right?).

Now, here are a couple of stumbling blocks that may arise:

If their story takes you into the emotional state they are in….you want to cry, change the subject, hand them a Kleenex so they will stop (imagining that is care), or start offering them solutions, their story may be too much for your own nervous system. That is ok. Nothing is wrong with you. These things are nuanced.

Just be very, very careful if these words come to you, just a little too quick:

“Thank you for sharing….” and then you start to move on to another topic or offer a “fix.”

Then, when it comes to gaslighting, I know there are people who have been through a lot. Sometimes, they point angry fingers and shout accusations of “Gaslighting!!!!” towards others.

I don’t think gaslighting is a strategy that brings connection and joy. But, I do have some compassion for people who use it. I imagine it is their way to deal with the world and navigate it.

So: “Father forgive them. They know not what they do.”

That doesn’t make it ok.

And that doesn’t mean we can force those gaslighters to change. Forcing things is not what love does. But love is strong as shit and we can see things and call them out for people who will benefit from us naming it. That is what beacons of light do. There is no shame in that. Just simple truth.

I want to point out what may be happening sometimes, for you or your friends, so you know how to heal and have some moves in your pocket.

The unfolding journey of becoming butterflies involves integration of our experiences. We integrate and move forward and we are stronger for it. We grow. We become more compassionate and we can help other people who are ready, to do it right along with us.

You survived. They survived. And we can love each other right out and through the trauma of all of it. We can integrate and live in freedom while growing our capacity for love and connection.

That’s the world in which I wish to live.

In the end, you are a being of light made in the image of God. No matter what has happened, no matter how you feel, no matter if you are angry, guilty, full of revenge, or floating in a sea of bliss….you are a being of light. You are a soul. And nothing, nothing can touch that.

It is love or it isn’t. Period.

Let’s love the shit out of each other.

Thank you to my many teachers, authors, and practice partners including Lisa Romano, Dr. Peter Levine, Thomas Hübl, Stephen Busby, Beverly, John Barnes, Sandra Davies, Gabor Mate, and Dr. Bruce Nayowith. And there are many many more. I include you in this as well…. There are simply too many to list. Thank you for helping me hold things with companionship and for teaching me this.