How much unprocessed trauma affects us:
It can really pack a wallop
The thing that is most shocking to me now—in reflecting on the somatic healing that my body has undergone is just how…stupidly simple it was. I really didn’t have to spend hours and hours in therapy, and expend a lot of time and energy processing the grief, trauma and wounds.
It’s odd. Because it all seems so counter-intuitive. How could just letting some emotions to flow make THAT much of a difference in my calmness and state of mind?
The great lie is that many of us shut it down; we think that we can’t deal with the emotions and the pain from the trauma and grief. But, paradoxically, the repression of it, is far far worse and more damaging to ourselves. Because, essentially, we are not getting rid of it or letting it go. Instead, we are still carrying it with us, in refusing to process it, we are clutching it, now allowing it to flow and, essentially, to let it go. And it gets really heavy carrying it around for years upon years.
I told my therapist the other day that you would think that I would have spent hours and hours reprocessing traumatic memories and oh-so much time and effort to release the grief and wounds from my body—considering how much calmer I feel.
I said I feel like a different person.
She nodded in agreement, understanding just how much difference it can make—allowing the body to process the trauma. Just a simple nudging along, when you help to integrate what has happened, allow your mind and body to understand it and so it can finally relegate it to the past, helping your body to know that it’s no longer happening right now, that you no longer have to b estuck in that hypervigilant state, fight or flight response.
In short, it’s amazingly powerful how much our body and brain and nervous system remain affected with unprocessed grief and trauma.
As I reflected on this yesterday in therapy, I said that I was sleeping better and feel calmer than I have in…years. And then I paused and said—
Maybe ever.
She nodded.
I mean, it makes sense. I grew up in a volatile and dysfunctional household. I frequently felt like I was walking on eggshells with my father’s temper and tantrums. Home was not a safe space.
A sense of calm both at home and within my own body is something that I am only now feeling, embodying, enjoying. That state of calm is a foreign concept to me.
Sure, there were stages of more calm, being away from my childhood home, before my trauma and PTSD, the big capital T-traumatic moments that messed up my brain and cortisol levels.
Even still, I don’t think I was ever as calm as I am now.
I reflect on this when I realize that the other day I didn’t want to listen to a father yell at a child about misbehaving in the store or in watching a movie where the band director screamed at the students. I realize how much nicer my life is without men screaming, or partners misbehaving and acting like children, and even amongst strangers or in stories, I don’t want to listen to them.
So, I don’t. Because I can. I choose not to invite disrupt into my calm inner world now.
I am cultivating my own sense of calm now and I don’t want to invite any more of that shit in it.
I also realize that I am less and less tolerant of men’s fragile male egos and bullshittery. I simply have had enough. And I will not tolerate it, now that I have a securer self attachment style.
My life is small and simple. I am surrounded by women and books and a happy little life.
And I am content.
I am calm. And I finally am
feeling at home within myself and in my inner dwelling and residence. And it has made all the difference in the world.
Somatic healing is helluva powerful, y’all.