Hey, everyone. Allēna here. This post will be a heavy one, but I want to write it even though I know it’s gonna hurt. I’ve spent years praised for my emotional strength and resilience when all I wanted was to be safe. Lately I’ve been deep in contemplation about that very thing and in conversation with several people about this and related issues myself and my system have been having. Then I came across this Thread and wanted to answer the question Nate poses for you so that you can see the true, extremely heavy cost of resilience and “strength” as most people define it. Don’t get me wrong, healing has been costly, too. But trying to be hard and guarded costs far more than healing ever has.

My Headmates and I Have Spoken About Some Of The Things That Happened To Us And How We Got Through Them, But What Did We Lose In The Process? Trust, for One.

The first thing that comes to mind is the ability to trust. System wide, we struggle to trust and are actually diagnosed agoraphobes as of 2021. It’s complete and utter hell. Our trauma taught us that we are the only ones that we can truly rely on at the end of the day, and that everyone has a price. Some people’s prices are simply higher than others. Everyone will fail us eventually in some way. After twenty some odd years of that horseshit, while we care about people deeply and want to connect with them, we don’t truly remember how to, at least not without soul-deep fear. That strength, that mysterious nature you supposedly see in us is visceral terror. We ache to connect with people, we love them, but often can’t because the fear is so exhausting that we get too tired to even leave the house. Talk about a fucking heavy cost. Some people have managed to prove these beliefs wrong, but it’s an uphill battle for everyone involved and we would give anything for the ability to trust back.

We Also Lost The Little Health We Had Left

Relatedly, due to repeated betrayals and us being too afraid to ask for help, we stressed the body out to the point of chronic illness and severe fatigue. We’ve gotten better at firing ourselves as we’ve healed, but by that point, the damage was already long done. We should have asked for help a long time ago, and we should have had people who made it safe to ask. But we didn’t, so we internalized the idea that the only way we would ever get anything for ourselves in this world was if we got it done on our own without help. That belief and the subsequent actions we took made us very, very sick. This has turned into an ugly, compounding downward spiral we’re still trying to work out way out of gently years later that I wouldn’t wish on damn near anyone. What doesn’t kill you does not, in fact, make you stronger. Ultimately, it tends to make you wish it had finished the fucking job and give you a fuck ton to mourn in therapy.

It Has As Also Cost Us Relationships And Opportunities

Due to the agoraphobia and exhaustion, we’ve had to back out of a lot that we truly didn’t want leave behind. It sidelines us a lot. We have to rest a great deal and has forced us to be nocturnal because we’ve developed a medical mystery of a chronic illness due to the stress on the house body that makes us very sick and physically weak if we are exposed to heat and sunlight for any length of time whatsoever. We will literally collapse if we aren’t careful. As such, even if we weren’t terrified of people, that severely limits our options for a lot and we miss out almost daily. It’s horribly sad. We miss the sunlight on our skin, traveling, and going out with friends. We don’t want to be stuck at home all the time.

Conversely, we also struggle in close relationships because of how guarded we are. The guardedness is absolutely a trauma response and comes with fun side helpings of anger, depression, and occasional impulsivity. We struggle with vulnerability and detest anything that even smells like control or manipulation and will fight hard for our autonomy even if there’s no reason to. We’re constantly on edge unless we’re completely alone. We’ve lost a lot of people because of our anger and inability to be vulnerable. We’re working on healing all of that now, but I wish we had never been forced into this position at all. So in a life of battles won at heavy cost, ultimately the heaviest cost of the supposed strength you see is our peace. All we ever wanted from the time we were young was to be kept safe and a life of peace, and we never got that until we began healing.

Final Thoughts

We still have a long way to go. Nobody’s perfect, especially not us cockroach motherfuckers. But something my system and I have learned over the years is that doing our best to feel and be kind and to keep an open heart and mind despite all the bullshit and trauma is true strength, not trauma responses and guardedness. Long term therapy with a therapist who’s no-bullshit like us has helped, as well as running our life like a meritocracy. If people show up for us consistently and show genuine respect for us and our boundaries, we open up more to them over time and let them in more and more. It’s a great way to ease both the body and the system into vulnerability and to make sure that the other person’s intentions are genuine.

If you’re traumatized like us, I understand that it’s a motherfucking struggle. I get that it hurts every goddamned day. You must have lost so much. My heart and empathy goes out to you. I hope you get rest and ease soon, my friend.

As always, stay tuned for more magic!

-Allēna, Super-Admin