What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

by Stephanie Foo

having an ACE score of 6 or higher takes twenty years off your life expectancy. The average life expectancy for someone with 6 or more ACEs is sixty years.[5]

Experts say it’s all part of the three P’s: We think our sadness is personal, pervasive, and permanent. Personal, in that we have caused all the problems we face. Pervasive, in that our entire life is defined by our failings. And permanent, in that the sadness will last forever.

scientists have found that some people who suffer from depression, anxiety, or C-PTSD have overactive DMNs.

That’s why lying there, feeling my arms and legs and chest exist in the world, felt so relaxing. Because it also completely shut up the voice that constantly edits and punishes me.

There is one major difference: I don’t have to work on earning his love anymore. I can just work on accepting that I will never have it. That is far from peace. But it is what it is.

Road to Resilience, a show put out by the Mount Sinai Health System. This episode, “The Long Arm of Childhood Trauma,” features comedian Darrell Hammond, who is a C-PTSD survivor, speaking with Jacob Ham, a psychologist at Mount Sinai.

This is the aftermath of dissociation.”

Like, ‘I’m not going to actually learn how to be connected to you, but at least I’m going to be able to regulate how upset I get from you.’ And I don’t want you to just be self-regulating in a corner by yourself.

Racism can cause PTSD.

Being healed isn’t about feeling nothing. Being healed is about feeling the appropriate emotions at the appropriate times and still being able to come back to yourself. That’s just life.”