{"id":4221,"date":"2023-09-21T14:54:49","date_gmt":"2023-09-21T18:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/?p=4221"},"modified":"2023-09-21T14:54:51","modified_gmt":"2023-09-21T18:54:51","slug":"beneath-the-surface-one-womans-struggle-with-aces-ptsd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/beneath-the-surface-one-womans-struggle-with-aces-ptsd\/","title":{"rendered":"Beneath The Surface"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One woman\u2019s struggle with ACEs and CPTSD<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By Nicole Heffelfinger
Current Contributor<\/strong>

I was born the second of two children to normal working class parents in their early twenties. My parents divorced when I was only nine months old, but they always maintained respect and civility with each other, which is much more than many children of divorce can say. It is important I note here that my parents were hard-working, dedicated parents who did their own work to overcome their own generational cycles of trauma that they inherited\u2014I know that they did their best and provided for me in many ways that I will not mention here. They are far from the stereotypes that my story may invoke, and this story is more about my experience than about their actions.\u00a0

My story begins not much differently than those I see in our community. I want to share my story not to be seen myself, but rather to give encouragement to those who may not have found their voice yet.

For the most part, I always had at least one parent who had a steady job and a safe enough home I could go between, and I didn\u2019t go entirely hungry or unclothed, much due to the support of a lot of friends, family, community members, and organizations. I was an otherwise clean, intelligent, silly kid who made friends easily and brought light to the room. Academics came easily for me, and I doubt I ever missed the honor roll. I had good attendance, and I probably didn\u2019t generally raise any red flags. In high school, I excelled, even when I started working a part-time job regularly to better support myself at age 14 for simple things like school clothes or the ability to participate on sports teams, where I found myself receiving leadership awards.\u00a0

Both my parents moved out of my home and to another town while I finished my senior year living essentially by myself, with them checking in occasionally; I was between 16 and 17 years old. While my father was able to provide me with the luxury of a simple car and basic insurance, and the independence in and of itself wasn\u2019t terrible, it certainly came at the expense of being very self-sufficient at a young age. I was attending college full time\u2014on the dean\u2019s list and accepted into an honor\u2019s society\u2014and working two jobs by the age of 17.\u00a0 I was self determined enough to arrange to study abroad at the age of 19 and surprised everyone when I booked my flight to Spain. \u00a0

All in all, my issues probably weren\u2019t readily apparent to those around me during my adolescence.\u00a0

What you wouldn\u2019t have seen from the outside is that I experienced mild physical abuse, verbal and emotional abuse, emotional neglect, a parent diagnosed with a mental illness, parents and multiple family members with various addictions, an incarcerated parent, and pervasive domestic abuse, including gun violence. Moreover, I lost multiple step-parents via divorce and four classmates\u2014one a family member\u2014due to separate tragic deaths between 9th and 10th grades. \u00a0

My hope is that there are at least a handful of readers who recognize these as a bulk of the 10 Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), as defined by the Centers for Disease Control.\u00a0

\u201cAdverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood. ACEs can include violence, abuse, and growing up in a family with mental health or substance use problems. Toxic stress from ACEs can change brain development and affect how the body responds to stress. ACEs are linked to chronic health problems, mental illness, and substance misuse in adulthood.\u201d<\/em>

To elaborate on these adversities, I experienced four of five divorces by the end of elementary school; I lived in at least six different homes by 8th grade, and at least 25 homes total by age 30; I attended four different school districts, three of them by 3rd grade. I first experienced and have record of suicide ideation at age eight, and again at age 14, when I first sought medical care and was simply sent home, because I wasn\u2019t \u201csuicidal enough.\u201d

Additionally, my family routinely experienced food insecurity. I was severely bullied by a large group of students, which was\u2014in a way\u2014supported and exacerbated by school administration. I had caretaking responsibilities for three younger siblings who were, for a brief period, homeless when I was about 14 or 15. I suffered the loss of a new sibling who was given up for adoption, due to said homelessness. Shortly after, my mother and younger siblings were the recipients of a Habitat for Humanity home, which offered a form of relief.\u00a0

I experienced these adversities, among others\u2014in varying degrees of intensity and duration, most often multiple being experienced simultaneously\u2014until I reached autonomy at age 17.

By this time, I was completely aware that I was experiencing mental health issues, but having a growth mindset, I was always actively seeking knowledge and support, looking for how to move forward. After years of reflection on where this drive came from, I now see that I owe it to the influence of my grandparents, with whom I spent a lot of time and who served as my first mentors and positive adult figures.\u00a0

Around this time, I had begun having what I\u2019ll refer to as \u201cepisodes\u201d that prompted me to seek mental health support. While this served as a tremendous intervention for me, I was also misdiagnosed and subsequently mis-medicated for a couple of years, leaving me with nothing more than a better awareness that my circumstances were, in fact, not \u201cnormal\u201d and a few years of significant struggle trying to re-group.

Nonetheless, I persisted and learned that these adversities had left me with some professional gifts.\u00a0

My work ethic was top notch, I was incredibly resourceful and self-directed, I always saw opportunities for improvement, and I took initiative to implement these changes. My internal desire to experience safety, security, and predictability proved a valuable asset when working within leadership teams to develop, train, and implement policies and procedures or to clarify an employer\u2019s mission and values. The necessity for me to share my calm with my siblings in the midst of chaos in our childhood grew into brave leadership skills that I\u2019ve taken onto the teams I\u2019ve been fortunate enough to lead. I stumbled upon an unsuspecting professional mentor, Mike Neill, who guided me through this time, until I accepted my first promotion at age 24 and relocated to Traverse City.\u00a0

In Northern Michigan, I found space and reprieve from my past, and I was able to dive into new interests and found myself training in tae kwon do. I cultivated confidence and a sense of safety and\u2014more importantly\u2014a community that supported me as I worked toward my black belt, which I ultimately earned.\u00a0

At this time, I also met my now-husband and was welcomed into the safe haven of his family, for whom no amount of words can express my gratitude. I was already experiencing symptoms of burnout and chronic stress at this age in my mid-twenties, and I wanted a change, so I again sought mental health support. This was the first time that I was treated for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but even then, healing was never presented as an option, and I couldn\u2019t really comprehend what that diagnosis meant\u2014I thought that I was just \u201cbroken\u201d and needed to work harder to fix myself.

Eventually, my familiarity with poverty and adversity\u2014and the resilience that I subsequently developed from these\u2014gave me the confidence to make an outlandish and risky life choice: my significant other (now-husband) and I moved to Brazil shortly after I turned 28. This was a country I had never visited, and I didn\u2019t even speak the language.\u00a0

After our move to Brazil, I had decided that I wanted to work in some capacity where I could help others to facilitate personal growth. I spent a fair amount of time supporting a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu social project called Terere\u2019s Kid Project, run by a close friend, which affirmed my desire to work with vulnerable youth. Upon my return to the United States three years later, this evolved into working with youth development, in the out-of-school-time field: in other words, extracurriculars, after-school programs, etc.\u00a0

There were many ways in which my life was flourishing by my early thirties, but I continued to have this pattern of behavior and recurring episodes of depression and anxiety that, over the years, became increasingly intense and frequent, even with the support of a therapist. But\u2014as I was led to believe through the medical care that I had received thus far\u2014that was simply life with mental health issues, and my only option was to endlessly cope.\u00a0

My career in youth development grew alongside me, and through my work supporting vulnerable youth, I found some degree of peace with my past\u2014yet I continued to struggle mentally. I poured myself into work, dedicating myself to creating safe, trauma-informed spaces for youth and developing mentorship opportunities, telling myself that this was how I could manifest something positive from my childhood and tell my story in a more empowering light.

Around the age of 33, imagine my surprise as I sat in a professional development training in Oregon with 60 of my peers and first learned about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs.) My mouth agape at the fact that I could effortlessly check off nine out of 10 ACEs, it was in that moment I realized that I was, in fact, not \u201cbroken\u201d or hopelessly dysfunctional, but my mental health experience was entirely predictable, based on the ACEs study. This opened up a new level of awareness for me and a new perspective from which to view myself.

In many ways, I was succeeding in my efforts to overcome my trauma, but I had failed to recognize how triggering my career was.
\u00a0
I found myself hitting my third burnout wall and relocating my young family back to Northern Michigan to find safety and security\u2014which seemed quite paradoxical to me at the time. Failing to listen to my deepest inner knowledge and simply rest, I stumbled into a demanding director position in the same field for an almost identical non-profit. I had landed in a uniquely supportive workplace culture, but it still wasn\u2019t long until I again started experiencing the physical effects of my adversity, trauma, and chronic stress.\u00a0

I had hit the \u201cburnout\u201d wall again, for a fourth time, like a Mac truck, right after the birth of my second child and right before the onset of the pandemic. My body was screaming at me that something needed to change, but I pushed through the pandemic sharing the little calm I had left with my team, knowing my program served hundreds of youth that now needed our support more than ever\u2014but, as the saying goes, you can\u2019t give from an empty cup.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Nicole
After years of reflection, Nicole Heffelfinger, the author of this essay, now recognizes that she owes her intrinsic drive and determination to the influence of her grandparents, with whom she spent a lot of time and who served as her first mentors and positive adult figures. Photo courtesy of Nicole Heffelfinger.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With all of the information in front of me, I had to finally admit that I was in the midst of a mental health crisis.\u00a0

As silly as it seems, although I had been treated for PTSD in the past, I didn\u2019t quite apply the diagnosis to my life. While I was having traditional markers of PTSD, I certainly diminished my experiences, because the adversity and traumas that I had experienced seemed inconsequential on the grand spectrum of traumas that are experienced by others. I also struggled so much more with the criteria that made my PTSD complicated that I doubted the diagnosis for some time. My diagnosis was also more than 10 years ago, when the language and culture around mental health was more abysmal than it is now\u2014there was no information or resources that came along with the diagnosis, and it was only through my personal growth journey that I learned of CPTSD and came to understand that\u2019s what I was experiencing: complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

That \u201cc\u201d may seem like a minor change, but let\u2019s talk about what makes it complex:

\u201cComplex post-traumatic stress disorder (Complex PTSD) is a disorder that may develop following exposure to an event or series of events of an extreme and prolonged or repetitive nature that is experienced as extremely threatening or horrific and from which escape is difficult or impossible (e.g. torture, slavery, genocide campaigns, prolonged domestic violence, repeated childhood sexual or physical abuse). The disorder is characterized by the core symptoms of PTSD; that is, all diagnostic requirements for PTSD have been met at some point during the course of the disorder. Those diagnostic criteria are 1) a persistent sense of threat, e.g. hypervigilance and being easily startled; 2) avoiding reminders of the traumas; and 3) re-experiencing or reliving the traumas; for example, flashbacks and intrusive thoughts about the trauma.
\u201c\u2026In addition, Complex PTSD is characterized by 1) severe and pervasive problems in affect regulation; 2) persistent beliefs about oneself as diminished, defeated, or worthless, accompanied by deep and pervasive feelings of shame, guilt, or failure related to the stressor; and 3) persistent difficulties in sustaining relationships and in feeling close to others. The disturbance causes significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.\u201d<\/em> (Read more at TraumaDissociation.com<\/a> online.)

The way that I like to describe my experience to others, in comparison to more commonly understood PTSD, is that with CPTSD, there is no \u201cbefore\u201d or \u201cafter\u201d\u2014there just never was.\u00a0

I never experienced a healthy childhood \u201cbefore,\u201d with a traumatic disruption, and a notably different \u201cafter.\u201d Rather, I just never experienced what a healthy baseline was, and it took me decades to realize that my point of reference was off. I can rarely recall experiencing safety or security in my home, and I have more anecdotes about times when I feared for my life than I can count. I don\u2019t necessarily recall healthy attachments, emotional attunement, or even co-regulation\u2014all of the foundational building blocks that allow humans to experience connection, intimacy, community, and even joy. I suppose there are blips of tenderness from my parents, and these elements surely must have been present somewhere at sometime, but the traumatic parts of my experience that aren\u2019t integrated simply overshadow them.\u00a0

In short, the story that I tell myself is that this makes me comes across as an incredibly socially awkward person with severe personality flaws\u2014I walk through the world as if someone is always around the corner ready to jump out and hurt everyone around me, and I feel like I\u2019m the one that\u2019s responsible for everyone\u2019s well-being when things go sideways.\u00a0

My triggers don\u2019t always produce intense flashbacks and dissociation, but more often come as strong physical sensations of being unsafe. I experience severe anxiety around transitions, new places, meeting new people, engaging in conversation, and what expectations and boundaries are. I experience a constant high emotional charge and extreme challenges to be present or relaxed in the moment. It\u2019s hard for me to be present in conversation and provide a response versus a reaction, or to attend a community event and simply listen to the music, because I am constantly scanning for threats and making contingency plans. It\u2019s often difficult to even recall what I spoke to people about afterward, which can make me feel like a really cruddy friend at times.\u00a0

Furthermore, when my nervous system is over capacity I experience abrupt irritability and anger, I say really stupid stuff that is out of alignment with my truest self, I have persistent insomnia, and my cognitive function rapidly declines. I have a hard time simply eating and nourishing my body, I believe because I spend so much time in a sympathetic \u201cflight\u201d response\u2014instead of my parasympathetic rest and digest\u2014and my body is too nervous to eat.\u00a0

My CPTSD gives me a rollercoaster of physical sensations daily, and it\u2019s exhausting. \u00a0

I feel the rapid heart rate, shortening or holding of breath, tensing of muscles, heightened arousal and fear, clenching of jaw, and more over the simplest things. When I am in a crisis, this can happen to me multiple times a day and leaves me feeling like I just competed in the crossfit games and Ninja Warrior trials back to back.\u00a0

I simply cannot emphasize enough how much of a physical experience CPTSD actually is.

About two years ago, when I was finally able to accept and understand what I was experiencing, I had to make the difficult decision to step aside from my career and focus on healing. At the time, I had two terminally ill family members, one being my step-mother with a shared history of trauma. Because of the ACEs study, I knew that I was on a similar trajectory of increased negative health outcomes. I was scared and knew I needed to allow myself to rest and recover, so that I could be here with my husband and children until old age.\u00a0

This simple act of surrender opened up an entirely new pathway of information for me.\u00a0

Through working on adrenal fatigue, I started to learn more about my autonomic nervous system, which led me to discovering the polyvagal theory and somatic experiencing\u2014essentially working out trauma energy that has been trapped in the body through mind-body exercises like breathwork, meditation, visualization, dance, etc. The book The Body Keeps the Score<\/em> by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk gave me the education about what was happening neurologically and in my body, along with decades of trauma research and how to heal. (I typically recommend this book with a high trigger warning.)

Big reveal: some of the most effective tools to my healing have included breathing, yoga, arts, music, theater, and dancing.\u00a0

After realizing I have been so scared that I have been literally holding my breath my entire life, I sought out physical therapy to learn how to properly breathe, so that I could better regulate my nervous system, which in and of itself has changed my life. I started dancing and singing in my yard more, playing more with my kids, spending more intentional time in nature, and exploring what rest meant to me\u2014turns out, being hugged by my hammock is my favorite thing. \u00a0

I also invested in three inexpensive local retreats during the summer that followed the departure of my job and several sessions with a somatic experiencing practitioner, which we are fortunate to have in our area of the state. I also found incredible support from local chiropractor Dr. Emily [Nugent] Eilers in Frankfort and from holistic transformative coach Sarah Louisignau.\u00a0

Lastly, I invested in a trauma-informed yoga teacher training, a program in which I am currently enrolled, knowing that it would provide a structured and supportive environment for me to explore what it meant to experience safety in my body, and I would learn a skill in the process.

Through all of the years that I was aware of my mental health issues and was actively seeking support and learning, the most difficult concept for me to understand was that trauma is something that happens to your body\u2014it\u2019s a physical injury to your brain that can be measured. As such, it\u2019s not in my mind; I cannot think or rationalize myself through it or away from it, and until I addressed it on the physical layer of my body, it wasn\u2019t going anywhere, and I wouldn\u2019t heal.\u00a0

As the saying goes, my issues are in my tissues.\u00a0

For me, this simple change in perspective opened a pathway to healing for me that I have been actively seeking for over half of my life. Since this change, I have been experiencing a gradual unraveling of sorts\u2014finding healing in unexpected places.\u00a0

Last year, the stories that arose about mental health in our community\u2014in part fueled by the special September issue of The Betsie Current<\/em> in 2021\u2014comforted me and brought me hope. My nervous system capacity is slowly returning, and I have learned what it means to feel a sense of ease, sprinkled with pleasure and joy at times. I still have to be really attentive to how much stimulus I take in, and I begrudgingly carry ear plugs in my purse and have to spend the majority of my time in public focusing on self-regulation, but I am much more able to stay with myself in those moments, instead of dissociating or having anger outbursts.\u00a0

As I\u2019m healing, I feel some lights turning back on in my brain, like neural connections are alive again. Sometimes my face actually hurts from smiling too much when I play with my kids. I don\u2019t understand all of my triggers yet, and sometimes I get blindsided by a completely obscure event that annihilates my nervous system and requires a lot of rest afterward, but every day I am learning, growing, and healing. After all of these years doing \u201cthe work,\u201d I am finally experiencing these beautiful ways to care for, love, honor, and be in relationship with myself and others. I\u2019m well aware that I\u2019m still a toddler stumbling along on this healing journey, but for now, I choose to savor and appreciate the wildly adventurous, love-filled, abundant life that I have. \u00a0

The biggest challenges that I now face are how CPTSD impacts my journey of motherhood and my economic opportunities. I\u2019m very cognizant of how my mental health impacts my children\u2019s development\u2014ages three and five\u2014and I have to be incredibly intentional with how I parent and model behaviors, including repairing any damage that may be done to our mother-child relationship because of an episode that they might witness.\u00a0

It\u2019s hard teaching my children co-regulation skills when I\u2019m just learning them myself, or seeing my children being confused about why Mommy has such big emotions and cries so much. In these moments, I try to give myself grace in the fact that I have\u2014thus far\u2014broken my family\u2019s cycle of generational trauma.\u00a0

Likewise, I give myself grace when thinking about how I had to step aside from a career where I was positioned to positively influence hundreds of young people\u2019s lives and to create the mentorship opportunities that the youth in our Northern Michigan communities desperately need. Aside from losing purpose and essential income, being a stay-at-home mom is hard, especially in a rural area where it\u2019s easy to become isolated. Some days, it\u2019s easy for me to have feel labeled, discarded, and without value from society, and\u2014although I feel like I have so, so much more to give\u2014it\u2019s also easy to feel that my talents aren\u2019t wanted or aren\u2019t useful, because I need a few simple accommodations, clear expectations and boundaries, and trustworthy leadership that, sadly, do not always exist in the work environment.

There are plenty of positives, too, though. I\u2019m thrilled to see so many conversations about mental health occurring in our area. Until the last year or so, it seemed that I was usually the lone voice in the room, nervously talking about my experience to highlight the outcomes that we work to prevent in the youth development field. I\u2019m typically met with enough support, but certainly not a genuine sense of understanding\u2014which is fair enough.\u00a0

I\u2019ll share a recent anecdote to sum up my experience and distaste for the culture I have often experienced in Michigan, and that I\u2019m glad to see changing: I recently had a simple medical procedure that was, in my opinion, unnecessarily distressing and left me in a useless state of dissociation for nearly two days. When I asked my doctor afterward how to better advocate for trauma-informed care for future procedures, my doctor\u2014whom I usually feel very supported by\u2014looked at me quizzically and turned to their computer to Google what I meant by \u201ctrauma-informed care.\u201d

Our youth are experiencing ACEs at an alarming rate, alongside the recent cut in funding to our local Child Advocacy Center. I find that we still sweep ACES under the rug as a \u201cnormal part of growing up\u201d and fail to recognize the long-term impacts for the individual, their involvement in the workforce once they reach autonomy, and for society as a whole.\u00a0

People fail to recognize that those adversities turn into resilience when you have the support and skills to process and integrate those experiences into your life, and many people are missing that vital piece. The message that I needed to hear the most when struggling with my mental health was that healing is an option.\u00a0

I hope that this essay reminds readers that you are tremendously more powerful and capable in your ability to facilitate your healing than our Western medical institutions would sometimes have you believe\u2014and that you are certainly never alone. I would invite you to welcome curiosity around your breath and autonomic nervous system, as I\u2019ve found it is a great reference point to enter into dialogue with yourself about what you may be experiencing. Lastly, I would remind folks that we are also blessed with professionals who offer a variety of healing methodologies in our area, many who offer sliding scale services and are working wonders in our community. Don\u2019t be afraid to seek them out and prioritize the investment in yourself, as it is money well spent and perhaps the best investment in your future that you can make.\u00a0

To the youth in our community who are experiencing adversity right now\u2014I see you.\u00a0

This wildly adventurous, love-filled, abundant life that my adversity led me to is waiting for you, too. My high school Psychology teacher always encouraged me, \u201cInch by inch is a cinch, yard by yard is too hard.\u201d So have courage, and move forward one breath at a time. I believe in you.

Featured Photo Caption:<\/strong>\u00a0For the most part, Nicole Heffelfinger always had at least one parent who had a steady job and a safe enough home, and she did not go entirely hungry or unclothed. She was an otherwise clean, intelligent, silly kid who made friends easily and brought light to the room. Academics came easily for her, and she never missed the honor roll. She had good attendance, and she probably did not generally raise any red flags. However, she had Adverse Childhood Experiences which have contributed to her CPTSD diagnosis as an adult. Photo courtesy of Nicole Heffelfinger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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