Childhood Trauma

And all the ways it affects us..

I shared the youtube video because I find it amazingly thought-provoking how often and how many different ways that childhood trauma affects us as adults—how we think about ourselves, how we behave, etc.

I even grow more and more convinced that a great deal of ‘mental illnesses’ are caused by the bodily, somatic effects of trauma on the body. Unresolved trauma that is stored within the body.

It took me awhile to come to this—so different from how I was raised to think about mental illness and to embrace it as an inevitable part of my life journey, given the genes I inherited from my mother.

Now, that being said—

There is so much about the brain that we don’t understand, especially in regards to mental illnesses such as depression / major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, OCD, etc, etc.

In other words, maybe sometimes there are genetic factors. But I also think that dabbles into intergenerational trauma. In other words, genetics don’t create a foregone conclusion of mental illnesses, the way that I always believed them to be.

But the more I read and learn about mental illnesses, the more I have come to understand that the very phrase ‘mental' illness is indeed 'a misnomer: it isn’t just a result of the brain and it isn’t just mental. It may be a result of gut microbiome imbalance, vague nerve that dysfunctions, hormones, diet, lifestyle choices, etc.

There are so many factors.

Our inability to perpetuate this information—since we know it through science—I believe is partly due to western medicine’s approach to practicing medicine and to parse out the body into specific organs and parts and systems, rather than treat it as the unified whole that it is, the function of it all together.

I also believe that getting people/patients to believe that it is simply a mental deficit then makes it easier for us to accept that the answer is only and ever medication to treat it. Hence—keep them on the meds. Big Pharma. There’s a lot of money involved.

Again, medication is a life-saver for some people. It certainly has been for me at points and I’m very thankful for it.

However, my resources and knowledge regarding the matter at 18 certainly differs from what I have learned and developed now, at the age of 40.

That said—

So many of our ‘programming’ and conditioning has been formed before the age of 3. How many memories can you readily access from that age and before?

We are formed by experiences that we can’t even readily recall. That is amazing, sobering.

I recall one of the most powerful moments I had in biofield tuning sessions:

I was overcome with emotion. Felt so indescribably sad and trapped. A sorrow I couldn’t attach to any memories, but it was before the age of 3.

I know that I grew up in a volatile and unstable household, with an emotionally and verbally abusive alcoholic, with a mother who was traumatized and had depression.

I know the ‘norm’ for me was growing up in an unsafe environment.

As it is for too many of us, in very different ways.

Now, I don’t blame my parents—I see them both as broken and flawed and good people but both heavily traumatized themselves. I both pity and feel sorry for their pain and grief and trauma that they could never address, that hurt and affected them for the rest of their lives, defining their choices and their inactions.

But I do also take notice, and see the effects that it has had on my inner child—the wounds, the trauma, that formed large parts of my personality into how I exist as an adult, in self-perception, behaviors, coping mechanisms, how I feel I must earn love, how I feel fundamentally different from others and judged, etc.

Many of the points put forth in that youtube video by Social Worker, David Teahan.

I chuckle as I remember what I read—

Childhood is something you spend the rest of your life recovering from.

Hah. How true that often is.

It’s hard work. Trying to address old wounds that have been scarred over. To try to locate things about ourselves that have formed us that we can’t even recall. To address that we need to heal though we were the ones often hurt and as innocent children.

But, there’s really no way around it.

I have been returning to my Bodi/Beach Body regular workouts and yoga for self-care, mindfulness and exercise. And two of the things that supertrainer Autumn Calabrese says are—

“There’s no magic pill. You’ve got to do the work.”

and

“If you want something you’ve never have, you’re going to have to do something you’ve never done.”

I think both apply to trauma-healing work as well.

Our hurt was not our responsibility, but our healing is.

It’s on us.