Trigger warning-references to trauma
“The shark is the apex predator in the sea. Sharks have molded evolution for 450 million years. All fish species that are prey to the sharks have had their behavior, their speed, their camouflage, their defense mechanisms molded by the shark”
Paul Watson
“Bandit or demon, human or beast, none of it made any difference. The bandits had made this a situation of predators and prey. Only living mattered. Everything else was nothing more than an afterthought.”
Drew Hayes, Split the Party
“I remember wondering how the rabbit’s heart must have known without doubt that it would be eaten. I think about this as we turn our backs on the wolves, and head deeper into the woods. I try to bury the worry, because we’re not rabbits. We are humans. We are hunters. We are not prey.”
Victoria Scott, Hear the Wolves
I have five ex battery hens. Hens are, by nature, prey. With no real defence or attack mechanism, they are at the mercy of any predator who comes across them. When threatened they make noise. They run. They try to fly. At night they sleep up high and they are never out and about after dusk. They have a very rare ability to focus their eyes in two different directions; one, to search for food and one, to keep an eye out for enemies. You could say that this is hypervigilance at its very finest.
When you go to pick up a hen who is frightened or unsure about you, they run and then they freeze. Literally. They crouch down and freeze.
One of the saddest things about hens is that when they are ill, they can hide it, often to the point where they are near death. I have had hens literally fall of their perch in the night without any prior indication of their state of ill health.
They are inbuilt to be prey both to humans and to other animals. Every mechanism is to increase their chance of survival. They only trust me when they recognise that I can offer protection and most importantly, that I mean food and care for continued survival. All else is second to that.
I have rescue dogs. My littlest and oldest dog, Lily has been with me for almost a year and a half now and we have always been close but it’s only in the last month or two that she has started to greet me by rolling over and showing me her tummy. This progressed to a little routine where she rolls and reaches for my hand to rub her. It’s beautiful and I am honoured that this is her way of telling me that she feels safe and she trusts me to look after her. Her sleeping position is to stretch out, sometimes on her back, fast asleep whereas once it was tightly curled. Body language tells you a lot about where any of us, human or otherwise, are on the feeling safe scale.
My pets teach me a lot about trauma and how they overcome the things that have happened to them. Oscar, my gorgeous Doberman who died at the ripe old age of 12, never completely overcame the horrors of his puppyhood. He loved 4 people and that was it. Outside of us, humans were feared and not to be trusted. One time in the local park when a gang of drunk men were shouting obscenities, Oscar stood in front of me and bared his teeth at them. It was the greatest honour to know the courage it took for him to do that for me.
Trauma is big and little. There’s a tendency to think of it as the huge stuff…soldiers, battlefields, life changing events. But it’s individual. It’s everything that happened that couldn’t be coped with, the fear with no outlet, the overwhelming emotions that couldn’t be named or expressed. Trauma gets tucked away and if you haven’t experienced it there’s an assumption that it can be as simple as an event that needs talking about or facing up to. But trauma is like a virus. It’s in your system, changing every cell. It changes your thinking, your sense of safety, how you relate to people.
Sadly, when trauma happens at a young age, there is no comparison between before and after. You grow up with no sense of who you might have been or could have been. You are the version of you who had to survive. All you can do is take the coping mechanisms with you. Safety nets.
As an adult your safety nets slowly turn to habits with the power to destroy you. Addiction. Suppressed emotions. Self harm. You get diagnosed with personality disorders, depression, anger issues. The trauma stands silently with you, medicated, battered, covered up in a series of unremitting chaos and sometimes no one sees it.
There will come a time when you choose between death and calling it out. This process has the power to further destroy you. But you are exhausted. You are tired of the sense of wondering what’s wrong with you and why things can’t be simple. You isolate because people are scary. You have had enough. You are drowning in your own emotions. You need to feel them and look at everything that’s led you to who you are today. But you can’t do it alone. And you need to know that you can make it back.
You will face that pain. You will feel every inch of it and feel everything that you’ve spent a lifetime trying to run from. You will name it. You will feel your life change again. You will wonder if there will ever be a firm ground under your feet again. You will wonder if things will ever feel solid.
A part of you will hold on to the trauma. You will freeze like the prey animal. You will curl up around your pain and hold it tight so it can’t bite you in your sleep. You will run from the world while at the same time shouting at it to see you.
You will wait for someone to tell you that the bad things that happened should not have happened. You will wait for someone to tell you that you are ok, that you are human and real and deserving of love. Then you will realise that that someone needs to be you. Another relentless battle.
But everything will stem from the choice to name it. That will be the moment where you realise it’s time to show that soft underbelly of you to a world that let you down so horribly. You won’t want to but still you’ll feel compelled and curious. You don’t want to admit that maybe you still want connection, acceptance, love and peace. You wonder why you should make yourself vulnerable. It goes against your instincts. The world doesn’t deserve it.
But maybe, just maybe, you do.
“The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me
forget what the trauma said.
The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems.
Nobody wants to hear you cry
about the grief inside your bones.”
But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped
from the George Washington Bridge
into the Hudson River convinced
he was entirely alone.”
My bones said, “Write the poems.”
Andrea Gibson, from “The Madness Vase”
Help information
If you need help please talk to friends, family, a GP, therapist or one of the free confidential helpline services. For a full list of national mental health services see yourmentalhealth.ie.
- Samaritans on their free confidential 24/7 helpline on 116-123, by emailing jo@samaritans.ie
- Pieta House National Suicide Helpline 1800 247 247 or email mary@pieta.ie – (suicide prevention, self-harm, bereavement) or text HELP to 51444 (standard message rates apply)
- Aware 1800 80 48 48 (depression, anxiety)
If you are suffering with an eating disorder, please get the help you deserve and contact bodywhys.ie or find a counsellor to talk to in your local area:
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