Striving for Alchemy of Trauma
on Transformation: turning pain into gold
Alchemy, by general dictionary.com definition means: “the medieval forerunner of chemistry, based on the supposed transformation of matter.”
Transformative motivation from trauma:
I used to laugh at the idea that I could be a motivational speaker. I was too dark. Cynical. Depression plagued me and because of my trauma responses, I was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, something bad to happen. I was bracing myself for it.
Not exactly what you think of when you think of a motivational speaker.
I get it now. I was dysregulated and had emotional wounds and intergenerational trauma and my own lived, embodied experiences of trauma.
It’s funny then to me that I now believe in things like intergenerational growth, resilience, and even abundance. I believe in healing and capabilities of trauma to be transformed into gold, growth, hope and possibility.
I think it ironic, perhaps, or maybe deeply, deeply fitting: those of who have the trauma, the trauma responses, the anxiety and depression, the cynicism at the ways life has fucked us, we are the ones most in need of motivation.
Not the all sunshine and rainbows bullshittery of some motivational speakers.
But honest, straightforward—life fucking blows but keep going.
Hold on. Healing is possible. Keep working through the trauma.
I’m on the other side, with a calmed and regulated nervous system. And the view, the embodied experience, from over here is fucking glorious.
In more ways than I ever could have imagined.
Those of us with trauma, PTSD, CPTSD, heavy complex grief, survivors of abuse, those of us with depression and anxiety and other conditions, have a hard time grasping that you will never not feel like this.
We accept dysregulation as a state of normalcy.
We may not have ever known anything else. Or, can remember anything else.
“This is just me.” This is just how I am.
It’s quite the feat to even [seriously] entertain or consider more positive alternatives, other realities. Especially if you are or perpetually exist in a dark place. I know this. I’ve experienced this.
And I’ve heard friends say similar things. Perhaps you can relate—
Where we are always bracing ourselves, scared to have hope. When is the other shoe gonna drop? When is the bottom gonna fall out?
Because it always has. So we anticipate it. A classic trauma response.
But, what if you didn’t have to be like this? What if though what you went through is indescribably hard and your body is all out of whack, that it isn’t a permanent life sentence?
What if you could believe that there were resources out there, so many types of healing and opportunities to get well—better, more so than you can ever imagine and more than your family line would ever have had? Or that you could even entertain the thought of living that way, in this better state?
One of the hardest but most important things for those of us living with depression, anxiety, survivors of abuse or suicide, PTSD and CPTSD, is to be able to [at least, entertain] hope of a different reality. When both our lived embodied experiences and minds and nervous systems and attachment styles and inner wounded children within all scream at us, even mock us at points, that such a reality is not possible.
Maybe for others, but not for us.
I hear the words of my mother in the face of this:
“It won’t always be like this. It won’t always be this bad.” (Implication: even the worst pain and depression: temporary)
“There’s no use suffering when there is help available.” (Implication: hope)
My mother’s words reverberate in my head often.
The woman who lived with chronic fatigue, severe insomnia, major depression, anxiety, and so may types of trauma. She said these words to me even though I think she didn’t believe them herself for much of her life. Even though she didn’t ever get/receive the help, reaping the benefits of the help out there, available.
I don’t know if this is motivational. But in the face of trauma, any hope is important, it can become motivation, for those hanging on by a thread. At a different point, later on, weathered through some shit and gone through some healing. Things may be very, very different.
But we trauma survivors who have been through some shit don’t need pollyanna saccharine trite-itudes.
We need the acknowledgment, the affirmation. First. To be seen, heard. To have others bear witness to our story, our testimony, our survival.
But I also think we need this:
Acknowledgment that we weren’t given the choice to be resilient, to be strong. Trauma didn’t make us strong.
But how we live with it, carry it, and choose to look, what we do with it— what it can teach us and how to grow from it—
That, THAT—we do have a choice in. In what comes next.
And that is what can make us become strong and resilient. Seeing what growth and evolution and transformation can come about from all the shit.
That is how we alchemize the trauma.
Because after all that hard, this “gold” that emerges, is the greatest form of currency we have.
But unlike literal, physical gold, this form of ‘gold currency’ emerges from within us, through our work, as we cultivate growth from our traumatic experiences, as we invest in mental health and dysregulated nervous systems so that we may spend our time in peace and enjoyment, we may live lavishly. As though we had all gold in this capitalist world.
When you know what it is like to live in a state of trauma, with a fucked up nervous system, you know—
The opposite of that, a calmed one, is gold.
That’s about all I got for motivational speaking re: trauma.
