The Reality of Living Exhausted from Complex Childhood Trauma
Allostatic load and increased risks for chronic fatigue syndrome
Trigger Warning: This article talks candidly about potential long-term effects of complex childhood trauma. While my intention is to educate, some may struggle with reading this article in its entirety, especially if living with complex or relational trauma.
As a kid, I loved to sleep. I pulled the covers up over my head every chance I got. Sleep allowed me to escape an otherwise unhappy childhood; it gave me a sense of safety. When asleep, my mind and body were elsewhere, which was the only way I knew how to feel secure outside of the protection of my childhood dogs.
Sleep offered a momentary pause on my reality. When sleeping, I wasn’t dissociating; nor was I stuck in flight mode trying to think up ways of running away. Sleep helped me accept the reality that no one was coming to rescue me from my cries of pain, nor the silence that followed. Sleep allowed me to turn a blind eye to the fact that I was not on my teacher’s ‘high-risk’ radar because I wasn’t the rowdy kid causing trouble in class.
On the contrary, I came to realize only decades later that since I couldn’t fall asleep in school, I sat dissociated in class most days. I remained emotionally and physically numb in a state of suspended animation, yet eerily able to answer the teacher’s pop questions when asked.
Dissociating in class allowed me a few minutes to recharge from the “normal” happenings of the night before. School became my respite and my safe haven. It is little wonder I spent over half my adult life there. I didn’t know at the time, but as tough a kid as I was to the experiences of chronic trauma, my body was keeping the score.
Childhood Trauma & Its Effects on Our Health
In recent decades, research has found that the effects of stress on our physical, emotional, and mental health are significant and can be lifelong. Perhaps most groundbreaking was the study conducted through Kaiser Permanente between 1995–1997 on more than 17,000 participants — mostly Caucasian, mostly middle-class, mostly college-educated, and mostly with health insurance — which has come to…