Case Study: Noticing Trauma Responses in the Moment (Patreon)

Good morning cutie,

Storytime again. Let's discuss very elevated trauma responses, and mindful ways to seek support, deescalate, and repair. I'll use an example of something that happened last week to myself, and hopefully that will be helpful for you.

As always, I'm not a psychologist. I'm just sharing my experience in a way that may offer you some tools to use in your own life, if you relate to me.

So, what happened?

Well, I went viral on TikTok last week. I'm new to the platform, and started out my day on Wednesday with ~140 followers there. I decided to turn my most recent IG post into a video, to describe a conflict I had with a partner, and explain how we resolved it. Within 2 days, 400,000 people watched the story and 11,000+ new followers showed up. It was intense and overwhelming.

Most of you know that I left home at age 15. I joined a community that turned out to be a cult. I was there for 6 years, during very formative high school and college experiences. So, to be on TikTok at all has been somewhat activating to me, because the last time I shared so much space with 15 years olds, I was being abused.

One of the biggest forms of abuse in the cult was public humiliation. Maybe you see where this is going.

In the community, people you barely knew would spy on you, search for any "unhealthy" behaviors, like wearing flip flops or sleeping past your alarm. They would call you out in front of 20-50 of your peers in nightly group meetings. If you were friends with someone the community didn't like, or felt attracted to someone they deemed "unhealthy," you would have your money and car keys confiscated unless you agreed to stay away from them. If you kept disobeying, you'd be excommunicated. Group consensus took priority over your personal agency.

Knowing this history of very specific trauma, I've always sort of dreaded virality online. I was very, very secretive for years on social media. But when I realized that my presence could be a form of much-needed service work, I thought, "ok, maybe the reward outweighs the risk." And I've very much enjoyed the slow-and-steady pace of Instagram, which took almost 2 years to reach 10,000 followers.

Suddenly, hundreds of thousands of strangers were looking at me, expressing very strong and uninformed opinions about my life. They called me delusional, secretly monogamous, assumed I was an abuse victim in my (very loving and stable) relationship, accused me of being abusive to my metas (as if a request for accommodation around insecurity is somehow the same thing as veto power), and just a litany of other things that amounted to "unhealthy."

The trauma response hit first in my body temperature. I could feel the cold sweat, the heat on my shoulders and forehead. My heart raced. I struggled to breathe. At first, I figured it was just the normal "social media is being too much right now" response, which many of us experience. So, I put my phone down.

But then I picked it back up. I obsessively scrolled through the comments, reading the hate, and tried to reply diplomatically. I thought that I needed these strangers to understand me, that maybe they would be nice if I only could reason with them. Red flag Number 1. A very, very old trauma reaction of mine is to try to ingratiate myself to an abuser and get them to like me.

Then my own comments were harder to regulate. My tone would vacillate from diplomatic to snarky to warm, all with the same person. Red flag Number 2. Without realizing it, I fell back into the "wheel of manipulation" thing, where you keep cycling through different tones and tactics in order to elicit the response you want. This one caught my attention, because I can't remember the last time I did it.

"I need support with this," I realized.

I actually tried googling "TikTok support group" which was funny, because no such thing exists. I only found tech support pages. What I really need is to talk to my cult recovery therapist to unpack this very cult-specific trauma.

But, I can't chat with her until Thursday next week. What now?

"I need peer support," was my next move.

I chatted with the lovely @polyphiliablog on Instagram, as she's someone who goes viral frequently on TikTok. She was so warm with both emotional and practical support options. We set up a call with each other in the coming days. I almost forgot how beautiful it can be to struggle, because that desperation for support can sometimes form new friendships.

I also texted close friends of mine who have anxiety, yet they manage to stay calm in the public eye. This is a big one: to find people who share my core struggles, but appear to not struggle with this thing. I asked them how they do it, and again, received so much emotional and practical support.

With the first intense wave of reactions subsiding, I foolishly thought I could engage with the platform again.

Then the trauma shut me down. I felt tired, flat, dazed. I zoned out, unable to focus on anything. Memories of my time in the cult kept popping up, but I felt nothing about it.

I had a video date with my nesting partner that night. I told him what happened, and that I was tired and wanted to go to sleep. So we chatted for a few minutes, and logged off.

Gradually, the urge to cry swelled up. It felt blurry and vague. I figured I wanted to cry from the stress of the day, but didn't have any specific thought attached to it. It was just a general somatic ache in my chest, and burning behind the eyes. So I called my nesting partner again, and started verbal processing.

That's when the fight-or-flight kicked up. Talking in-depth about the memories had my body shaking, hyperventilating, struggling to stand. Dizzy, I pulled a trash can near me, feeling like I would throw up.

I told him I was scared I would "have" to break up with him because the TikTok commenters wanted me to. He said, "umm... what?" And we realized it was the first time in almost 20 years that I faced a situation akin to this trauma. In the past, if my group said I should break up with him, it wouldn't matter how happy I am, or how wrong they are, I would have to do it or else lose everything.

Trauma can make the stakes feel absurd. We must be gentle with ourselves as we parse the past from present.

After an hour on the phone with this loving, gentle person who knows me so well, the nervous system calmed down. I slept deep, and felt a lot better in the morning.

I decided that, at least for now, I won't read comments on TikTok posts. My partner will scan them for me, and tell me if any valuable questions are posed, so I can answer just those.

I'm so, so grateful for the speed with which I can bounce back today. What might have taken weeks or months to sort out, now takes less than 24 hours. Within days, I'm sharing about it here with you and feeling very calm and secure.

Trauma is a life-long traveling companion, and it can catch us off guard when we think we're otherwise doing great. But knowing the physical reactions I have when PTSD is activated can help me stop in the moment and seek support from a variety of trusted sources.

That's all we can do: observe, report, and seek solutions with safe people. It gets easier the more we do it.

Anyway, that's my story this week and I hope it can help you feel less alone, if you also struggle with trauma responses.

Sending love and warmth to you in the coming week,

Morgan