Living on the Road: Exploring Trauma and Lifestyle Choices

I can’t believe I’m about to write this, but my past has defined me. Only recently I discovered that my need for freedom – choosing a lifestyle where I constantly pack up and move on – has its roots in my past.

After decades of inner work – Louise Hay, Theta Healing, Reiki, Tie Cutting, Journaling – I’ve discovered that my present has been wired and moulded by my past. Friends and family are unaware of how trauma from childhood shaped who I am today. How can they when I just discovered it?

I was recently referred to a book on trauma called The Body Keeps the Score (Author: Bessel van der Kolk). After consuming most of the book, I feel like I’m unravelling on the inside.

According to van der Kolk’s book, every behaviour – from reactions to social expectations to the capacity for vulnerability – has been physiologically wired since childhood. Understanding this and identifying trauma coping behaviours pulls threads from the tightly wrapped cocoon I created, as a child, in response to endless moments of panic and fear.

Reading this book peels layers off my life. Reflecting on childhood events makes me feel increasingly naked. So many experiences have been buried for decades under a driving need to integrate – to be seen as normal. Each layer covers more underneath.

Each time I uncover a new layer, another one emerges, ready for peeling when I feel strong enough. Am I undergoing a rebirth? Will I ever stop finding layers – can I ever feel whole?

In the past, I feared what I might become after going through a healing process: tie cuts, intensive journalling etc. But now that fear has shifted to curiosity. Am I beginning to trust the healing process? Perhaps, I’m meant to shed the layers that obscured the real, inner me – the one I’ve always known existed.

I recall trying to share something with friends years ago. It was the sensation of being wrapped in cling film preventing me from truly engaging with life. I wanted to ‘touch’ life but felt unable. I described feeling like a layer of dirt, or something invisible, sat between me and life. I was helpless to fully articulate what I felt then. As a result, my friends did not understand what I was saying or feeling either.

After exploring trauma responses, I realize what it was. I knew something prevented me from fully embracing, fully engaging, and feeling my way through life. I was trapped in a cocoon spun while inhabiting a landscape of terror. But I had no idea how to break free from the cocoon.

Reading this book, I have connected its insights to my lifestyle choices.

I was recently asked if living on the road is a trauma response. Initially I refused to indulge that analysis of my lifestyle. After reading most of The Body Keeps the Score, I am rethinking that question.

Feeling trapped is a major trigger for me. Now I understand why. I spent my early childhood in suffocating, paralysing, inescapable terror. My unconscious self has always known: Bessel van der Kolk was right, the body does keep the score.

But the adult me never considered my childhood as a landscape of terror: an environment where fear and punishment were daily realities. That was my normal. Today, living on the road has become my way of sidestepping the familiar panic that comes from an inability to leave an unsafe environment. As a lifestyle choice, van life keeps my escape options open. But it also highlights a fear I will eventually have to come to terms with.

Without the freedom to pick up and go, I feel trapped. Wandering as a Grey Nomad is my way of avoiding any sense of inescapable terror. Van life provides unlimited opportunities to run away, to feel in control by packing up and moving if I feel unsafe, or if I need to disconnect from everyone and everything. Curiously enough, I read this morning that self-isolation can also be a trauma response.[i] 

On the road, I am at peace – with myself and with the world. Vistas of infinite green hills and pastures, endless blue skies and rolling banks of clouds, all contribute to feeling part of something bigger than myself. Those sights make life feel spacious, not claustrophobic like my childhood was. I find them especially comforting when I need to decompress, ease the pent-up anxiety that thrums in my body constantly.

On the road, few people know where I am or what I am doing. There is freedom moving through the day at my own pace, with no expectations from anyone other than myself – a freedom that allows me to keep a part of me private, something I didn’t have growing up as the eldest of six.

The more I dig, the clearer it becomes how much of my behaviour is a direct trauma response. Frankly, I find this realization horrifying.

Yet today I came across a PIN on Pinterest. It was about urgency – the need to physically move quickly. I figured my longstanding urgency stemmed being rushed as a child, though no specific incident comes to mind.

This definition –

“Urgency is a complex trauma response rooted in survival—an instinctive attempt to regain control over situations that feel overwhelming and unsafe.”

– knocked my socks off.

Reading this shed light on my reactive urgency, opening a window to understanding the deeper trauma that has shaped my responses for a lifetime. It seems I’m in good company; others who endured longstanding trauma share this experience. Here I was thinking it was a residue from some obscure incident that defies memory. Instead, it’s a fully-fledged survival response.

Bessel van der Kolk (Author of The Body Keeps the Score) insists that the Self we were born with exists, despite the trauma of childhood, and is separate from the internal psychological protectors and defenders we develop. I take comfort in his words, knowing full well that I am yet to meet this woman, this Self, who has not been tainted by terror. 

I am in a process of becoming. Who, I am not sure. Only time will tell. All I know is that she is capable of deep vulnerability and is driven to engage authentically with life and with others.

I also know that as I discover the scars in my psyche caused by a traumatic past, I’m compelled to assist others in their healing journeys. I am unclear how, but if I trust the process, I feel certain I will figure it out.

Eventually, I will understand whether life on the road is purely a trauma response, or whether a gypsy lifestyle is innate – like a current flowing along the bedrock of my soul. Until then, I am focused on my healing, and hope readers will hold my hand and their hearts as I learn more and share my journey.

[i] Self-isolation can be a response to trauma, serving as a way to cope with feelings of overwhelm. While it provides temporary relief, prolonged isolation can hinder connection and healing.