Does it count if there are no physical wounds? No war-torn veterans? No rape victims? No plane crash survival?

How do you know if what you have been through could be considered traumatic? This is a question that I have grappled with over and over in my life. While I have had people tell me that what I have been through involved an immense amount of trauma, my answer was always, “But there are so many people that have been through worse.” It didn’t feel like it counted because there was no alcoholic parent or close calls with bullets or bombs. What there was a lot of, however, was betrayal. From parents, family, mental health care workers, bosses, husbands and more. Over and over again the world was trying to prove to me that people couldn’t be trusted. Betrayal trauma may not get the recognition it deserves, but I’m here to validate your experience, and maybe mine too.

While this isn’t the whole story, it’s a good place to start, and it begins as a crime of passion more than violence. I had a mother that loved me so much, it transcended into deep seeded anxiety and fear. My early teenage behavior, like many others, consisted mainly of smoking cigarettes, experimenting with marijuana occasionally, not doing well in school, acting out against my parents wishes and lying about where I was going. That was pretty much the extent of it. My mother later revealed to me that she felt seeing me as this ‘bad kid’ as she called it, had undoubtedly been just the tip of the iceberg for what was REALLY going on. Most certainly the foreboding of imminent self destruction. Surely my decisions would lead me to a life on the streets stippled with days on the pole and nights laden with needles and prostitution. In her mind, this was the only plausible outcome, so something drastic had to be done. I vividly remember telling my mother during this period that I had been feeling depressed and not sure what this life meant or what my place was in it all (as many young people do while grappling with trying to find their place in this world.) Her immediate response was to send me to a mental hospital for two weeks to be put on a suicide watch. I was given heavy doses of antipsychotics, mood stabilizers and antidepressants “for my own good”. Once admitted, I discovered that to allude to anyone that this treatment might be unnecessary was about as effective as proclaiming innocence inside prison walls. “Sure honey, no one else here needs it either.” The nurse had responded to my defiance after nodding to the kid in the next room talking to the people on the other side of the floor.

Not long after coming home, it was decided my behavior was ‘not improving’ enough, even with the drugs, and the ante was about to be upped. It was the summertime and in the middle of the night when I awoke to hearing my name. When I opened my eyes my heart skipped a beat. I saw not only my mother and father standing over me in the dark but two strangers, a man and a woman. I jolted up and could see that my mother had been crying and my father looked pale and ghostly.

My mother choked through fresh tears “You have to go with these people now, please don’t fight them on this.” My instant conclusion was, of course, that our house had been broken into, and I, obviously, was to be kidnapped and held for ransom. The woman stranger told me that my mom had a bag packed for me already and I had to go with them right away. Did that mean my parents had something to do with this? I wasn’t sure. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I was awake.

The strangers walked me to their car. Once I was secured in the backseat, I pleaded, “Now will you tell me where we are going? Or what the hell is happening?” The man responded, “Nope, sorry. You’ll know when we get there. We want to warn you though, the less trouble you give us, the easier this will be on you. We will put you in handcuffs if we have to. There is no getting out of this now.” We drove in silence for another 30 minutes until I saw it. We were at the airport.

They again reminded me not to make a scene because my parents had set this up, so no one was going to come ‘save’ me. I heard this and my heart plummeted into my stomach. My ears went hot and started to ring as I processed what had been said. Once the plane had taken off, they finally explained to me that my parents were sending me to a wilderness program to help me. The woman told me my mother had been sure that had I known about it, I would have run away and ended up dead on the side of the highway. My mother had always gone from fine to ‘hit-the-red-button” in 60 seconds or less, but this seemed like a lot, even for her. Little did I know, it was just the beginning. In the end they both thanked me for not making it more difficult than it had to be and just like that, the trajectory of my life changed forever.

During a jarring 3 weeks in the Oregon wilderness, I had struggled immensely to cope with my environment both literally and emotionally. Little did I know, it had already been decided that my parents were not ready for me to come home. So on another plane I went. I was off to live in a group home just outside of Salt Lake City, for how long, no one would say.

To say I felt out of place was a bit of an understatement. Most kids came and went every few months, seemingly leaving as hardened as when they arrived. Meanwhile I stayed. I ended up staying for 18 months actually. Every ‘mistake’ I made added time to my sentence.  Any outburst of emotion led to being locked in a padded room with no shoes (for your own good, of course). Every time my parents came to visit I pleaded with them to take me home. Later in life, I found journal entries my mom had made about this time. It outlined her confusion as to why I would keep pestering her to come home as if I had really wanted to yet continued to screw things up for myself. A passage stated, “What’s wrong with her? I wish I knew. I hope they can help fix her there with more time.” To this day I’m not sure whose ultimate decision it was to keep pushing back the clock, whether it was the facility trying to get more money or my parents, overwhelmed by the fear and responsibility in having me home, or both. In fact, for years I declared myself  a reformed ‘bad kid’. I mean, I must have been with so many people telling me along the way that it was true. Therapists, counselors, and even teachers confirmed this reality of who I was, contrary to how I felt inside.

From the day I got home I wanted to prove that I would never be that caught off guard in my life again. I wanted to prove to myself and everyone else that I could do anything, no matter how hard. I vowed to never need help, and would take care of myself no matter what. I was going to show the world that I could handle it. For the following 15 years I kept my promise. I dealt with other betrayals as time went on, but always kept busy and had more plates spinning than I could count. I did end up doing the impossible, including a lot of things that people said couldn’t be done, but I also held the weight of the world (and everyone else’s) on my shoulders. To be anything less than perfect (totally possible, right?) was unacceptable. This manifested in a variety of issues with my body image, with food, in my relationships and with my career. You were either the best or a failure, there was no in between. The amount of pressure I put on myself was beyond unrealistic. To say I was stressed out all the time was so much of an understatement that it became my baseline. Anxiousness had become my homeostasis, and as much as I resisted, I was ending up just like my mother, just in my own way.

Any of those traits sound familiar? That’s because they are often an outcome of posttraumatic events. When you learn that what you had perceived as love, acceptance, and worth are conditional, then you damn well better not screw things up. When your reality is not being mirrored back to you by those that are supposed to be trusted and fear is masquerading as love, it is indeed traumatic. It’s not whether it’s life threatening, fear, abandonment, neurosis, or all the gray areas in between, but in the life you live after where your trauma is carried. What I have learned on my own mental health journey is that there is power in naming it, in validating what happened and that even if someone meant well, it doesn’t make it OK. While it’s true, you can’t dwell in the past, understanding how it made you who you are can help break free of unknowingly making choices based on false assumptions you have been carrying with you since childhood.

I know that finding a good therapist, coach, or confidant is harder than finding a good hair stylist. I have had my share of bad ones, trust me. Find a good one though, and you will have not only a deeper understanding of yourself, but an entire garage full of tools you didn’t know existed for creating a different reality for yourself now and the ability to create the future you want and deserve. This life is what we make it, so go out there and make yourself a good one. If you are like me, people call you tough when it feels like just doing what has to be done, but I’m here to tell you not everyone can make it the way you have. So keep your chin up because you are a damn lioness. Carry on my fellow badasses, you got this.