The Reluctant Subject Matter Expert

There are two paths to becoming a subject matter expert on surviving trauma. One path is to acquire a formal education, to practice under the mentorship of more experienced specialists, and to gain insight through your experiences in providing treatment to survivors that you will apply to your future practice. The second path is to be brought to your knees with a pain so excruciating that you don’t quite know how to function in this world anymore; and yet, somehow, you find the strength to pick yourself up, to live, to thrive. You find a way to process this thing that has forever changed you and to utilize the pain to create a tool to help others navigate their pain.

I am a graduate of the second path. It was not a path that I would have chosen for myself, but it was the path life gave me. It would be negligent of me to exclude the part of this story where I describe the ways I tried to conceal or rationalize the trauma that I experienced by telling myself that I somehow deserved it. Or the times I self-medicated to numb the pain of being forever stained by the profound violation of what I experienced. Or the times my senses encountered a sound or smell reminiscent of that night – his cologne, the flickering light of the television at the foot of the bed, the warmth of the pool of blood that had collected in the sheets beneath my thighs – that left me paralyzed and retraumatized all over again, wanting to sink into my own body, build walls, and never let another human being get close enough to hurt me again.

That said, how do you become a subject matter expert on subject matter that you were painfully thrust into? The answer: carefully, through self-compassion and grace. It’s important to note that you do not owe the world your story or your expertise. Surviving is a monumental victory in of itself. We live in a world where tales of overcoming the odds to achieve high levels of success have become their own porn genre. Survivors are encouraged to share their highly personal, highly traumatic stories (often times in an unsafe environment, clumsily and rushed, without any context or reference of the journey it took to be able to tell their story) in exchange for the approval of a voyeuristic audience.

To be able to help others, you must first help yourself. Because healing is not a linear process, survivors must accept that despite a desire to be of service to others, they may not be in a position to safely share their story for years or even decades. It took me nearly twenty years to write this essay. This essay is the culmination of years of sitting across from numerous physicians in cold medical offices, a diagnosis of PTSD, hours of therapy sessions, a tiny pill containing 75 milligrams of magic that allows me to function on a daily basis, countless tears, countless setbacks, countless comebacks, and being surrounded by an intensely loyal circle of human beings who have carried me along this journey.

I did not choose this path. I did not choose this subject matter. I do choose to believe that a big beautiful life can also contain a great deal of suffering and that those two things are not mutually exclusive. I have been forever changed by the trauma that I experienced. You cannot compartmentalize trauma – the body always remembers. What you can do is let it bring you to your knees, find the strength to get back up, allow yourself the time and space to process it and – if you should choose to do so – find or create an outlet to share your experiences in healing with other survivors. What we as survivors of trauma experienced was not kind or humane, but as we transform (however reluctantly) into subject matter experts, we can extend kindness and humanity to those who need it the most.