“I’ve had PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) for over 20 years and this self-portrait represents how I’ve changed my survival strategy. People often talk about two survival strategies – fight or flight, but we don’t talk enough about the third strategy: ‘freeze’. It’s not until I read an amazing book on PTSD and trauma called Waking the Tiger where I realized that ‘freezing’ was a survival strategy I had used my whole life.
Freezing means that when experiencing traumatic situations, you play dead, just take it and go numb. It also means that you do not say anything or fight back. This had been my way of coping with abuse and trauma since I was a kid because it was
the best survival tool I had for my environment as a child.
What I didn’t do is learn to adapt that survival strategy as I got older. It was only until this year, when I went through a sexual assault by two men and again employed that same survival strategy of ‘freeze’ that I realised that although the incident was not my fault, I don’t have to just take it anymore. I don’t have to freeze anymore. I’m an adult with a different life situation and I don’t have to play dead. I gave myself the permission to change my survival technique from freezing to fighting, from a bunny
to a tiger, from prey to predator. I realised I could change my old pattern because it no longer served me as the best survival technique and it wasn’t all I knew anymore.
I’ve gone from thinking of my PTSD episodes as the frozen bunny, who is terrified, freezes or hides away when attacked to seeing myself as the tiger. The tiger doesn’t hide, it asserts itself and takes situations head on. It’s been a lot of hard work but this has reduced the frequency and severity of my PTSD episodes.
This portrait is a reminder for me of how far I’ve come, how I’ve set firmer boundaries and cut toxicity from my life so that I can heal. That I deserve care and love and that I’m allowed to say no. That my body is not of a service and no one else is in control of it. That the trauma doesn’t define me. That I am no longer fearful, but fearless.”
