What Calms the Wounds of Trauma?

My son was born on the autism spectrum, and although he is now a very functional adult with a full-time job and two community college degrees, raising him was challenging. Only three people could reliably babysit him for me: his father, a friend who had two sons on the spectrum, and another friend who was a former nun and child psychologist.

He drove other babysitters crazy, and they drove him crazy.

Somewhere I read that riding and grooming horses was very calming to children on the autism spectrum, so I took him and his younger sister to horseback riding classes. We were not even remotely interested in competition. In fact, my children preferred grooming the horses to riding them because the horses seemed to prefer being groomed to being ridden.

Horses helped my son feel safe around other living beings, as well as learn how to be sensitive to the feelings and needs of other living beings. Horses were so much kinder and more predictable than other kids, and so were dogs, cats, and gerbils. Our dog did not last long because she was a trauma victim and jumped fences, so I had to give her away. But we had a cat for about 13 years. The cat really loved the gerbils, although the gerbils did not love the cat.

I think my son loved animals so much because they were less judgmental and more loving than other humans. He understood what annoyed cats, dogs, and horses. And gerbils were even easier to understand. Other than eating food, I won’t mention what they loved doing most.

There was something else that helped my son both cope with the problems in his life caused by being on the autism spectrum—Kung Fu—specifically, the after-school Kung Fu class taught by his middle school science teacher. I think the physical activity helped, but also being a part of an accepting group of students in the smaller, more tight-knit Kung Fu class. He was often bullied and excluded by the students in his regular classes.

But the Kung Fu teacher also taught his students two skills helpful to mastering Kung Fu: mindfulness meditation and yoga. Both involve focusing the mind on your breathing and movements or being still and not moving.

There is a form of prayer I learned in the Catholic Church that does this too—Centering Prayer. I went through the Rite of Catholic Initiation so long ago that they used a simple prayer thanking God as the core of Centering Prayer. When I read about the practice online recently, writers advise focusing on one word such as “love.”

Centering Prayer became a core way I coped with a high-conflict child custody battle. My ex-husband would send me three pages of criticism of me as a person and parent, with one or two sentences about how he was requesting a schedule change from our court-ordered parenting schedule. So I had to read and reread three pages of his criticism of me to figure out why he was sending me the email

I was often too anxious to sleep. 

So I normally went to sleep praying, “Please God, help me be strong,” over and over and over.

You may have read elsewhere in this blog that I am a generational child sex abuse survivor, so I went through a lot of trauma as a child, including child sex abuse. I struggled with depression for decades.

After both my children turned 18 and my child custody battle was over, I realized I didn’t feel anxious or depressed anymore, and those feelings never came back. However, I have to add two more things that helped my family cope with trauma to what I have mentioned so far. My loving but flawed parents loved spending time in nature. I started hiking in the woods by myself when I lived in Connecticut with my uncle and aunt at age 12. I quickly realized hiking made me feel better, and I've kept up that habit my whole life. 

Later, after I became a homeowner, I discovered that gardening also calmed me down. My ex-husband, unwittingly, inspired me to work very hard on my flower-, fruit-, and vegetable-filled garden.

I am just hoping that my sharing what I have learned about healing trauma in my own life can help others cope with trauma too.

Oh, and one more thing. My son and I recently met a young woman who was a pastor of a church and had grown up in an abusive family. She told us her story--she had a horse she deeply loved, which helped her cope with her family situation. The horse fell ill, and she spent hours in the family barn, caring for her horse. The horse was so ill that it just lay on its side on a bed of hay in the family barn. One night, when she was caring for the horse, it was so weak she thought it was going to die that night. The horse lifted its head and looked out the open barn door, so the young woman looked out the barn too. In a beam of light, she saw a bearded man standing there. She thought the man was Jesus of Nazareth. She and the horse watched the man for about twenty minutes before he disappeared. The horse seemed better, so she went to bed. In the morning, the horse was standing again and doing much better and lived another ten years or so. The woman told the story to my son, and he told the story to me, so I guessed at a few facts as I wrote the story. The lesson I take from all this is that religious people can deeply wound other people, but spiritual practices as diverse as yoga, meditation, and prayer can all heal. You don't have to be religious or believe in God for them to heal trauma. All you have to do is do them. And if you really don't want to engage in any religious practice, you can literally go for a hike because that heals trauma too. Just remember that healing trauma is not like taking an antibiotic pill every day for a week. You have to do what heals over and over and over for years, although you may notice small improvements in a few weeks.