Ep 31 l Friendship After Medical Trauma: Growth, Evolvement, Loneliness

Tightening your circle, misalignment, outgrowing people, quality over quantity, discernment, friendships that no longer fit….the list goes on.

Oof! This was a tough one - tough to live and tough to write. Peer reviewed by fellow medical trauma survivors, this is our take on friendship after trauma. The reality of how friendships change after trauma, how to show up for a friend who’s gone through trauma, &  how necessary friendship is to healing.

After medical trauma, everything changes…so why wouldn’t your friendships? That makes it sound really simple, but figuring friendship after trauma is like trying to solve a Rubix cube, if the Rubix cube had fourteen times as many small cubes as the original Rubix cube and also you were taming a lion while trying to solve said mega Rubix cube. 

Not everyone survives your survival. Unfortunately, trauma shows you with “painful clarity” where you stand with every friendship in your life. Over the course of your healing, friends - both old and new - will come in and out. 

It will start off very chaotic, intense, & drastic - and stay that way for a damn bit - but overtime, it smooths out. You attract people you are a vibrational match for, so while your vibes are figuring themselves out, so are your friendships. Growth is lonely before it’s aligned.

While some connections will expire, you’ll have the most pure chemistry with the new ones you make and the old, healthy ones you keep: safety. My recovery & healing has brought me to the most beautiful friendships that I never would have found sans coma. It strengthened & grew some existing friendships into the most pure love. 

Even though this episode does provide the harsh reality, it’s also a tribute & ode to some of the most incredible people I’ve met and those that I’ve kept. 

Win most, lose some

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Transcript

They tended to be less genuine friends. They were social friends—that was the role, or niche, they filled in my life. But they were still people I saw frequently and spent a lot of time with, especially on the weekends. And then, all of a sudden, I was alone. And that fucking sucked. But it is what it is.

This is who I am now. And if that’s not enough for you, okay. And if it’s too much for you? Have fun finding less.

Almost dying taught me how to live. Being struck by a car left me in a three-and-a-half-week coma, with 15 broken bones and 16 surgeries to complete—including brain surgery. However, I woke up from that coma in an even greater place than I ever foresaw for myself. How? The universe will guide you out of the darkness and into the light if you allow it.

Often, spirituality comes off as too highbrow. I’m not about that.

Welcome to the podcast that talks and teaches about it through the lens of humor. Together, we’ll harness positive energy and use it to work with the universe—all while giggling the entire time.

Welcome to Gabriella Rebranded: Win Most, Lose Some.

Hello, everyone.

Okay. This one’s a bit of a tough one. It’s a bit of a doozy. I had to make sure I was really delicate and careful with what I’m going to say. And I also had this peer-reviewed by some other physical trauma survivors, to make sure what I’m saying is a general consensus of opinions from various physical trauma survivors—and not just myself.

So… yeah. Let’s get into it.

Friendship after trauma. That’s what today’s episode is. And friendship after trauma is quite complex and complicated.

Everything about you changes after significant trauma, so why wouldn’t your friendships? I mean, logically, that makes sense. However, living through it feels anything but.

Before I get into the rest of the episode— I fucking hate this part—like, review, subscribe, hit me up on TikTok and Instagram @GabriellaRebranded, tell all your friends, all the good vibes… okay. That’s it.

Back to this tough episode.

Friendships should be easy. Friendship should be easy. I mean—yes—friendship has its work. Any relationship has work. But overall, it should be restorative, not draining. And unfortunately, after trauma, that can be hard to find… or even to work out.

When friendship changes suddenly, frequently, drastically—so many all at once—it feels extreme. It feels chaotic. It feels random. And it adds so much pain—so much unnecessary pain—when you’re already going through so much.

As Kat Prescott said in her episode when she was here: a physical traumatic accident will show you, with painful clarity, where you stand with all your friendships—who people actually are, and how you’re actually seen.

When people first hear about your trauma, friends will show up in droves. There is so much initial support. But just like healing isn’t consistent or linear, friendship isn’t consistent either. People don’t know how long-standing trauma is—how much it stays with you—and how long healing takes.

I mean, I didn’t even know when I had my accident, so how the fuck would my friends know?

When a friend first experiences a traumatic accident—or goes through a traumatic experience—think about what support you can extend sustainably. Don’t think about how much you can give at the beginning. Think about how much you can always give.

Ask yourself: am I overextending myself with the help I’m providing now? Will I tire? Can I always extend this amount of help and support?

There is a huge influx of support at the beginning, and it is useful and helpful and necessary. But over time, that support tends to fade.

A suggestion I’ve received from someone else—that I think is a really good one—is: when someone you know goes through a traumatic experience or accident, try coordinating with others how much support can be extended, and when. So it’s not just a huge influx of support at the beginning, and then nothing.

Because when it feels like there’s so much love and help at first and then it all just disappears—that’s community isolation whiplash. And it multiplies the feeling of loneliness by a thousand. And trauma already creates an overwhelming feeling of loneliness, so this community isolation whiplash takes that to an exponential level.

No one can give a huge amount of support forever. That’s just not realistic. So try coordinating with other friends or family who are supporting the individual. Like: okay, you go visit her this week. I’ll drop off dinner next week. You drop off a DoorDash gift card the week after. You go help her with groceries the week after that. And then so-and-so has a list of 10 people who can coordinate walking her dogs.

It sounds complicated, but that is the best way to show up for a friend who has gone through a traumatic accident.

Another helpful insight: trauma survivors hate asking for help. We always feel like we are burdening our friends and family, and we absolutely hate doing that. So we’re not going to always voice when we need help—even though we should, and we do.

So make sure to check in with friends who have gone through a traumatic accident, and just ask if they need help—because they’re probably not going to offer up that information on their own. And keep asking that friend—not just in the first couple weeks or the first month—ask them consistently until they don’t need it anymore.

Dr. Herman said, when he was here recording his episode about brain injuries, that a brain injury is not an event. And that’s the number one thing he wished people understood. It’s not an event—it’s lifelong.

Unfortunately, with a lot of traumas and different types of healing, it’s the exact same thing.

And for me—and for other trauma survivors I’ve talked to, my peer reviewers—the emotional healing doesn’t even feel like it can begin until the physical healing is over. Because the physical healing takes up so much time, space, and energy that that’s what you’re focused on. You can’t even give the bandwidth to the emotional healing. So the emotional healing can’t even begin until the physical healing is done.

And physical healing may go on for years.

Extreme healing—both physically and mentally—is misunderstood by almost everyone unless you yourself have lived through it, or you’ve watched a loved one live through it. It’s not this “over and done with” thing. That’s what most victims expect or hope. That’s what I expected and hoped.

But it’s not. It’s not an “over and done with” thing—especially when it affects the brain. That trauma is sticking around.

And trauma can show up in really weird ways that people don’t necessarily expect.

For example: a lot of people ask me—or assume—that crossing the street is traumatic for me. It’s not. Crossing the street does not bother me at all. However, when I went snorkeling, putting on the snorkel mask and the snorkel? That really activated my PTSD. That was really hard for me.

And that’s partially because the brain is weird—brain injury or no brain injury. But it’s also because an outside individual does not have access to every single part of the experience. Trauma includes a lot of things that an outside observer doesn’t even consider or know about.

Back to Kat: when she was here, she pointed out that the reason the snorkel mask and tube probably bothered me so much is because when I was trached and on the vent… and I was like, oh yeah—that’s probably what it is.

But I myself hadn’t even considered that. And I don’t consciously remember being on the trach or on the vent. It’s something that’s just been told to me happened. But I don’t remember living through that experience. So I hadn’t considered that would be the reason. So other people definitely are not—except for Kat.

How trauma can present is definitely not always what people expect.

When Nadege—the sex scholar—was here, she talked about how after a sexual assault, a victim either shuts down, abstains from sex, or becomes extremely hypersexual. Most people would not expect the hypersexuality of it. So it causes a lot of invalid, negative judgments by outside observers when a victim takes the hypersexual route—even though that is a natural trauma response, and that is to be expected by people who actually know about sexual trauma.

Society kind of expects survivors to be the perfect victim—like our PTSD is valid, but only when it’s just affecting ourselves.

And sometimes PTSD, often unintentionally, does bleed out into the outside world and have an effect on other people. And that, again, could be because we don’t even realize we have PTSD, or we don’t know all the ways it presents. But that is something that can happen.

I mean, again—back to Kat—you heard me and her: we both walked around for over three years not thinking we had PTSD, even though we very obviously had terrible PTSD. But it took us both—separately, entirely separate accidents—living in different cities, over three years, to realize that.

My friend Alyssa was talking about how when trauma bleeds into another trauma—as it often does—it kind of just becomes one big trauma ball. So while isolated incidents seem totally unrelated, your brain somehow connects them.

Life is traumatizing. So often trauma is not limited to a single event. I mean, why would it be?

So a lot of my pain points—I had them before my accident. They were emphasized before my accident, but they were already there. So when they’re triggered, it’s triggering years and years of trauma—not just the trauma from being hit by a car.

And then since my accident, I’ve had a couple things happen completely unrelated to my injuries—or the fucking car—that trigger my PTSD. That’s how trauma works.

Now: if I feel unsafe in a situation, or I feel like my life is remotely threatened in any way, I panic. I panic because I know too well what it feels like to have your life be in danger—very legitimately—for an extended period of time. So now, if there is the smallest little threat to my safety, I fucking freak out.

If someone lays their hands on me in a way that is remotely forceful or aggressive—no matter how small—like a girl being a bitch at a bar—that sends me. Something that would just get an eye roll from someone else? That makes me freak the fuck out.

I’ve had to work really hard to accept that that is part of normal life, and sometimes that will happen. And it is not a direct attack on my person.

My panic attacks present as anger. My fear presents as anger. And that’s not what people expect.

It’s a self-defense mechanism, but people expect the image Hollywood creates of a person having a panic attack. They expect the hyperventilating and the freaking out and… well, panic. They’re not expecting the anger.

Hollywood also shows people waking up from comas and chatting like nothing happened, so Hollywood doesn’t always get it right.

People handle panic attacks in a myriad of ways. For example, there’s something called silent panic attacks, where someone can be having a panic attack internally and no one on the outside would know anything is happening—but they’re very much having a panic attack.

So when my panic attacks present as anger, sometimes negative—and invalid—judgments get passed there too.

Everyone is the main character of their own story—as they damn should be. Humans are inherently selfish. A trauma survivor, as they’re healing, needs a lot of love, patience, and care. Friends from before your accident—or people you meet thereafter—may not be able to give the amount of energy a trauma survivor needs.

Some because they’re unwilling, but most because they just quite simply don’t have it.

People can only understand the extent of their own emotions. So if you’re out here living some stratospheric emotions—like I have, like all trauma survivors have—chances are most of the people around you will not be able to understand you.

So someone you fell into stride with before your accident—after your accident, you may completely fall out of stride with.

And some friends from before your accident—or people you meet thereafter—may be willing to change their pace so they can match your stride and stay with you. Hold on to those friends fucking tight, because unfortunately, most will not be able to.

And it’s not consistent either. I told you friendship after trauma is complicated.

Friendships ebb and flow—normal friendships. So add trauma and that’s magnified.

Friends are like flowers: sometimes you’re growing at the same rate, and sometimes one’s growing a little faster, one’s growing a little slower, and then one grows faster and you stop growing entirely and they pass you. That’s just life. That’s human relationships.

But what trauma does is it makes that more intense, more sporadic, and it happens at a greater magnitude all at once.

So some friends may be there for you after your trauma and then fall away. Or some friends may not be around at first and then, after some time has passed, start showing the fuck up for you.

That’s just how it is.

We all change. Trauma changes you in a million different ways, but we are all changing. So your changes may be in sync with someone for a bit, and then not—or vice versa.

Over the course of my healing, I’ve changed so, so, so much at so many different times. Overall, for the better—but I did lose some good parts of myself. And I’ve gone through healing periods where I’m not engaging in the healthiest coping mechanisms.

So that right there leads to friends cutting me off, or me cutting friends off at different times, or drawing them in closer, or me drawing them in closer—and then pushing them away, or me pushing them away—whatever, all at different times.

It depends on where they are. It depends on where I am. And it depends on how we all fit together.

As anyone goes through life, this happens. But trauma survivors—remember this: all the friends who forever fall away during trauma were eventually going to fall away forever. Trauma just unveiled them faster. And it’s often not the people that you think.

Trauma really exposes you, or completely shuts you down—often both, at different times. And just like trauma survivors may be handling their trauma in an unexpected way, friends may respond to one’s trauma in an unexpected way.

Trauma really, really strips you, and then you get a taste of who you are at your core—and who the people around you are at their core.

Some people may have been your friends because you had things you no longer have. Or they were friends because you didn’t have things that now you have.

And all friends are going to go through a readjustment period after trauma, because things have been shaken up—quite a lot.

And going with that: people you didn’t expect to show up for you are going to show up for you. Maybe they actually understand the emotions you’re going through. Or they want to understand. Or they’ve watched someone else in their life go through that, and they’re willing to hold space for your experience.

Maybe you weren’t close before, but they—or someone in their life—has lived something similar, so they want to show up for you in the way that you need.

Or maybe they’re just really emotionally evolved. They don’t even have to have lived it themselves.

It’s interesting, because sometimes friends you make after your trauma feel safer—or like more refreshing—because they didn’t know you before your trauma. So they don’t have an expectation of you. They don’t see all the ways you’ve changed. They just see who you currently are. That’s the only person they know. They never got to know the old you.

Not everyone from before your trauma is going to vibe with the new version of you, because that’s not who they became friends with. You’ve changed so much. That’s not the person they became friends with. They became friends with the old you.

So, logically, it makes sense. But it’s really painful going through it.

I was a party girl before my accident. I had “going out” friends—social friends. They liked me because I was always down to go out and we always had so much fun and it was so great, you know? I sometimes did a couple reckless things with them—and they liked that version of me. That was who they became friends with.

I can’t do that anymore.

They tended to be less genuine friends. They were social friends—that was the role, or niche, they filled in my life. But they were still people that I saw frequently and spent a lot of time with, especially on the weekends. And then all of a sudden, I was alone. And that fucking sucked. But it is what it is.

This is who I am now. And if that’s not enough for you, okay. And if it’s too much for you? Have fun finding less.

In the wake of trauma, and through the course of your healing, you will be picked up by people—or you will pick up people—at different points. And you will drop people—or you will be dropped by other people—as your opinions of people and the world and friendship change, because it’s obviously going to change quite a lot over an extended period of time.

Trauma will also change what you need from friends. It sort of refines your standards and boundaries. Maybe something you didn’t need before, you now need. Or something you did need before, you now don’t.

And you may not think about this—or put it all together, or put words to it—right away. Because as you heal, you get to know more about yourself.

Using myself as an example, again—just because I’m here, and I’m a pretty primary source—a standard I have for my close friends is: they need to respect all aspects of my injury. The entire thing.

Which makes sense. You would logically assume that. But I didn’t know I needed that—and didn’t discover that—until about three years after my accident.

And that’s for a few different reasons.

It starts with the denial that this injury was going to last forever, and that it would always be with me. That wasn’t something I was looking for, because I thought this injury and this experience would be over shortly.

I didn’t want people to see me for my injury. I wanted to be “normal,” because I thought this was just going to end—and that I was going to seamlessly blend right back into my previous life. So I didn’t need it to be a defining thing about me. Or I didn’t want it to be something that people needed to consider when becoming my friend—or that I needed to consider when choosing who was the right fit for friendship.

I don’t want to be viewed as “the brain-injured girl.” I still don’t.

It’s also not like anyone right off the bat was like, “Fuck you and your injury. I don’t take it seriously.” No, no, no. It’s specific situations where people reveal themselves—or aspects of your injury reveal themselves—over time.

As your healing is in different stages, and you find yourself in different situations, you get to know yourself more. And you clock people’s reactions to certain things, and you decide what you need.

As people see you in different states, they learn more about you as well.

I don’t give people that I meet a handwritten test on all aspects of my TBI. I don’t even know all of them—or how it affects me. So it’s kind of like a waiting game. A wait-and-see. We’ll see how people are there for you over time.

And I have lots of casual friends and general friends who don’t know all the ins and outs of my experience—because they don’t need to. Maybe they won’t give something I need a close friend to give. And that’s okay.

Every human has different friends at different levels of closeness. Everyone says, like, “Oh, they’re a tier one friend, they’re a tier two friend, they’re a tier three friend.” Yeah—exactly that. Trauma intensifies it, but everyone has that.

What I need from a tier one or two friend isn’t what I need from a tier four or five friend.

It is impossible for anyone to know every single one of another person’s triggers. So it’s unfair to hold anyone to the standard that they should know that and be cautious of that—especially friends and acquaintances who aren’t particularly close to you.

Even close friends who are just unaware of that piece of your mental makeup—what that trigger is—it’s unfair to hold them to the standard that they need to operate with respect to it before they even know it’s there.

You can’t know how you—or someone else—responds to a situation until you’re in that situation, and you see your friend see you in that situation.

Because healing can be so sporadic, it’s going to change what trauma survivors need at different times. And we may not know yet what we need.

So what’s true on Monday may not be true on Friday, and that’s really, really frustrating.

We may have a very hard time articulating what we’re feeling, where our mind’s at, or just the entire head-fuck that’s going on in our brain. Our frustration may come off like we’re upset with other people, but it’s mainly just being upset with ourselves—and the situation that is.

It’s really hard and really upsetting to feel like no one will ever completely understand you. My own parents won’t ever completely understand me—they haven’t lived this. And that’s really frustrating.

Sometimes we just need to take a beat and dwell in our feelings for a little bit. It’s not directed at anyone. Don’t try to cheer us up. Just let us feel our negative emotions fully, and let us try to figure out what’s going on with ourselves.

What trauma primarily does—and perhaps the hardest part—is it takes away your innocence.

Once you’ve had rose-colored glasses—or even slightly tinted glasses—poof. The glasses are ripped off violently. We attract people we were vibrating at the same level at. So prior to your trauma, you probably had a lot of rose-colored or partially tinted-glasses friends.

And now you’ve seen things you can’t unsee. You know things you can’t unknow. And that will affect your level of emotional intelligence. It will affect the level of emotional intelligence that you have. It will affect the level that you would like those around you to have.

Your lived experience—literally or emotionally—may just be too different from someone else’s to connect with them. And that someone could very well be someone that you vibed with before your accident or experience.

I remember one time someone asked me to jaywalk and they said, quote: “You can’t be hit by a car twice.”

Yes, you fucking can. In fact, I’ve met two people who were hit by a car twice.

Just because something has a low chance of happening doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Trauma survivors know that more than most.

Young people think we’re invincible and act like it. And believe me, I did that too. I look back at some of the shit I did in high school and college and I’m like: what the fuck was I thinking? What the fuck were we thinking? Because obviously, I was fucking around with friends.

Trauma survivors have a heightened awareness of the fragility of life that most people don’t have yet—or maybe will never have.

The absence of innocence is one of the heaviest points of grief because it will affect every moment of your life going forward.

You know how people actually move and how things actually work, and that changes you—noticeably. Every little thing that you do will forever be different. You will always feel a bit heavier. Your eyes will always shine not quite as bright.

And until you know that pain—everyone’s different.

So no, I’m not moving through the world exactly how you move through the world.

I spend every day with the awareness that I could have a seizure at any given moment. I spend every day with the little fear that if I have a gnarly fall, or I hit my head just a little too hard, I’m either dead—or so disabled and fucked.

That’s what trauma unfortunately does to you.

You will always be aware that life is limited. You will always be aware that you are not the exception—none of us are. You will always be aware that life is delicate. Everyone’s existence is fragile and delicate.

And that’s not only a bad thing. Because trauma survivors will also always be a little more grateful and a little more thankful for the ordinary, everyday things.

Having a broader perspective is never a bad thing. But that broader perspective includes a broader perspective to pain.

I am so much more empathetic. It is so much easier to make me cry, and I take everyone’s pain so much more seriously. That makes me a better friend, a better daughter, a better sister—maybe one day a better mother and a better partner.

But it doesn’t take away the fact that I am so much more susceptible to pain.

Visiting someone at the hospital is so much more important to me, but it’s also harder for me. And all trauma survivors have that—with at least one thing.

More often than not, trauma survivors go through a period—or several periods—of being very lonely as friendships are refined, especially before you’ve attracted new people.

And, you know, when people aren’t there for you that you thought would be there for you? That fucking hurts. And when you haven’t brought new people into your life? That really fucking hurts—even more.

Been through that more than once. More than twice. Mayhaps more than thrice.

Always remember that we are all on our own journey. Some people are stagnant. Some people are learning and growing. You will find your place.

And at the current moment: you aren’t alone. The universe is always supporting you. I had to learn that, for sure.

And how to be there for a friend that’s a trauma survivor? Show the fuck up for them. Validate them. Just listen to them. All they want is to be heard.

Whenever you ask someone to be there for you—even if it’s just temporarily to go for a walk—it feels like a major fucking burden. So that trauma survivor is probably really lonely even if they’re not saying it. So just make the fucking plan with them.

And if you haven’t lived their experience: shut the fuck up about your opinions of what you would do.

No, you don’t know. Your theoretical imagination is beautiful, but it’s exactly that: imagination.

Who got that reference?

That’s what your imagination is. You haven’t lived it. So shut the fuck up. It’s not real.

Everyone is entitled to their own wrong opinion, but not everyone is entitled to share that opinion. And not every opinion is equally valid in every conversation.

For example: I can have my cute little opinion on Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner. It’s invalid. I don’t know them. I don’t observe them in daily life. It’s invalid. My opinions are invalid. I would never voice it to them, nor would I ever be in a position where I could—

And never say never, never, never. Maybe one day I’ll sit down with Timothée and Kylie. Okay?

I think I said everything I want to say. That one was hard.

But it is my opinion—which is a valid opinion, as I am a trauma survivor—and it has been peer-reviewed by several other trauma survivors. So it’s an opinion of all of us, consensually.

And if you haven’t lived through a significant trauma, your opinion is invalid—regardless of if it’s wrong or right. So shut the fuck up. Okay?

That’s it.

This has been Gabriella Rebranded: Win Most, Lose Some. X-O. Bye.