Tethered to Trauma
I chose the word tether as a double entendre (one of my favorite literary devices) because of its significance in our linguistic world as well as our technological world. This is why I selected the above image as the backdrop for today’s blog post. The visual of me holding a phone embodies how our lived experiences, language use, and link to technology are tethered in every interaction. The technological links required for me to write and publish this blog post alongside your ability to access and read it is all because of tethering.
I took screenshots of the most simplest definitions of tether(ing) from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and a post from HP TECH TAKES.
During my earliest experiences of learning to navigate the college application process, I was explicitly taught that the saddest stories would help me secure scholarships. I internalized that lesson for at least 15 years.
Everybody loves a good “overcoming” story, but I took that struggle script to the max. Some call those struggle scripts trauma porn. I call it being tethered to trauma.
In the stories I shared, I tethered trauma to my talent. I seldom talked about my doctoral experiences and research interests without mentioning traumas associated with it. In the technology I touched, I tethered traumatic storytelling to social media platforms.
Remembering the lesson from childhood on telling the sadness story, I thought pairing pain with platforms in this way would enable others to use those traumas as motivation to combat injustices and violence against my community. In reality, I saw how trauma tethers are used as weapons of mass distraction and divisiveness.
During the middle of my PhD process, I went through A LOT of struggles, most of them hidden. However, many people did not know because I was the doctoral student doing all the things that signaled success on my scholarly journey. On the outside, I shined. On the inside, I was suffering. Between holding up the façade that I was well and hustling for my livelihood to the point of exhaustion, I eventually reached a breaking point.
That breaking point took me through hospitalization, near homelessness, and hunger. I was embarrassed for being lauded as successful while people had no clue how much I was really struggling. To cope? I went on a “testify my traumas” tour. This was cool at first, but turned toxic quickly. Testifying about my traumas opened up unhealed wounds over and over again. I quickly realized that I needed professional help to heal.
I sought a Black woman therapist who specialized in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), a trauma-based version of psychotherapy. She was an answered prayer: intersectionality-conscious, spiritually-sound, and could work through my “strong Black woman” shield so I can properly heal. In EMDR, you start with the worst and first traumatic experience in your life, then work down the list until you rewrite the negative cognitions around those memories with self-affirming thoughts. I spent several sessions processing all the traumas I endured over my lifetime as well as traumas inflicted during my doctoral program.
One time, I remember telling my therapist, “I believe my lot in life is to suffer.”
It shocked her to hear it, and it shocked me to say it. This isn’t the life I want.
See? I did it again.
I wanted this blog post to be a manifesto of me leaving the tethered trauma behind in 2022, but instead, it became another iteration of the struggle scripts I am so used to telling—especially when people ask me about experiences in my PhD program. Even my previous blog posts hold an undertone of trauma tethers.
Previously, I thought I would be relieved by telling everyone who would listen about all the trauma I overcame. I thought selecting research topics on the societal harms inflicted through anti-Black systems and organizational structures would untether me from that trauma and grant me vindication of sort.
For what? To convince people of y(our) of humanity?
I do not want to build a career predicated on pleading for Black people’s humanity, nor do I want to continue seeding every story I tell in struggle scripts. Our stories and shine hold too much transformational power to be trapped in trauma tethers for trauma tether sake.
I recently came out of a sunken place. I recognized that being tethered to trauma made me apathetic and swallowed by hopelessness. I became unrecognizable by loved ones in my community, and isolated from the very love of writing and research that drew me to pursue a PhD in the first place.
Now I see that trauma tethers cannot break my soul, but proper healing does require release. Any stories I share will not come from a place of pleading to be seen or sympathized. It is simply a space to recognize experiences and release them.
Writing my way through healing, one story at a time.
