Why Wake A Sleeping Dragon?

A friend just asked me something interesting.  To paraphrase his question: “I know I’m carrying trauma but I’ve spent a lifetime getting it to a place where it doesn’t affect me negatively.  Why would I want to mess with that?”  Essentially, he’s got the dragon safely sedated.  Why would he choose to prod it awake?

 It’s a very good question, to which I honestly had to say, “I wouldn’t, if I were you.”  

 The only reason I started working with my own trauma was because I had no choice.  The dragon busted out on its own and I had no choice but to face it.

 Until then, however, my survival mechanism was to keep that dragon parked and snoring.  And that is OKAY.  Because when the original event occurred, I truly believed I was incapable of handling/surviving it.  If I’d had the resources to deal with, I would have.  But I didn’t have them, so I did the next best thing, the thing that kept me alive and functioning--I tiptoed around it and pretended it wasn’t there, and eventually that dragon went to sleep. My method of survival was to not fight that dragon because I knew it would eat me if I tried.   

 Point being, if we can’t handle the dragon when it first shows up, and we continue to believe that we can’t handle it, if we’re lucky enough to get that dragon to sleep, darn skippy we’re going to let it lie.  I can’t argue with that approach to dragon-fighting. Better to stay alive than be crispy-fried.  Because that’s what we believe: the trauma will destroy us if we wake it up.      

 In order to keep that dragon sedated for many years I didn’t like talking about trauma of any kind. Mine or other peoples’. I needed it to be a moot point, not something that affected or interested me. In hindsight, underlying this was awareness that the trauma WAS still there, but that it was far too big to take on, that I could never learn how to work with it.  I felt that so long as I was a somewhat functioning member of society, I was totally justified in letting that dragon snore away, regardless how much time and energy it took to keep it in that slumbering state. 

 And it took a lot of energy to keep that dragon sleeping.  I had to avoid any loud noises or sudden jolts that might bring it awake. The way I accomplished this was to stop taking risks.  Like connecting to people, traveling the world, trying new things, putting myself out there, and, believe it or not, slowing down and befriending whatever was arising in the moment.  Because what was arising might be a yawning, stretching dragon. 

 The truth is, I probably would have continued letting the dragon lie.  But sometimes, no matter how many comforters we wrap around ourselves, or how much white noise we pump into the background, life happens.  It busts in with something new and disorienting and threatening…and that dragon wakes up.  And roaring ensues.

 My reaction to the grumpy, just-awakened dragon was: Argh! It’s going to dip me in ketchup and have me for snack-time! I still believed I couldn’t handle it. But no lullaby or Sleepy Time or Netflix marathon would soothe that dragon once it was awake again. I was getting munched.    

 Fortunately, I found the right dragon-whisperer.  AKA therapist. And no, she did not put the dragon back to sleep for me.  She helped me understand how trauma affects the mind and body.  She also helped me slow things way way way down so that we only had to contend with one tiny dragon scale at a time.  In other words, we worked on one sliver of the traumatic event at a time, so that I wouldn’t get overwhelmed. There was enough time and space to introduce resources that I didn’t have when the trauma first occurred.  My dragon-whisperer served as an anchor to the present moment, where I still had all my strengths and resources.  She guided me to apply these resources to each dragon scale, one at a time.  In this way, sliver by sliver, scale by scale, we transformed that dragon.  

 We didn’t slay it.  We befriended it. We incorporated the dragon into the normal realm of my experience. And eventually I realized the thing I was so scared of didn’t exist.  The dragon was gone.  The traumatic event wasn’t erased, but it was integrated.  It had become something I could work with. 

 The best thing about all of this was that I no longer had to expend so much time and energy keeping the dragon asleep. It became safe to explore and take risks again.    

 So, to finish this long-winded answer to my friend’s question: Everyone’s coping mechanisms are valid and essential for their own sense of well-being.  I’m not advocating poking sleeping dragons without back-up in place. But if your dragon should start to grumble and yawn, or even if it’s still asleep, instead of thinking you have to go to battle with all its fiery fury, instead imagine examining it one scale at a time, slowly and safely, with the help of a good dragon-whisperer and all your resources come to bear. If it starts to sound more do-able, good. A single dragon scale can’t hurt you and there is freedom on the other side of this quest.  

Today’s exercise:  Draw your dragon, and then write a scene about inviting it in for tea.