Trauma is the wound created inside you

There's more in that

Photo by Julia Taubitz on Unsplash

So, the dictionary you’ll find when you look up trauma is the event or adverse experience itself.

This mistakenly makes us think that it was the thing that happened to us that was the trauma.

Dr. Gabor Mate, trauma expert, reminds me us though that it is not the event itself but what happened inside of us, as a result.

It is the wound - that we are stuck and frozen and feel unsafe and shamed from that moment/experience.

We cannot move beyond that space in time and therefore, we get stuck or triggered and regress to those moments where we feel unsafe.

However, this actually is good news, he explains.

Because - it means that we can heal.

We can do nothing about what happened to us.

But if the trauma is the affects we experience in oru body and our mind as a result -

Now, that -

THAT we can do something about.

So, we can feel more empowered to take charge of our own healing.

I consider this then in how easily it must be to misunderstand trauma - as it occurs and shows up within the body.

Again, because it is not what happened to you, but how it harmed/hurt you but then also - there is work to be done to help you heal from that.

Ultimately, there is hope.

And that’s critical.

Terms like post-traumatic growth are often times considered ‘pop psych’ terms, to redeem trauma and validate survivors.

But it’s not just a line -

It gives us back our agency - there is ability to transform, to evolve, to heal.

We are not helpless in what happened to us.

It brings me back to that old adage that life is only 10% of what happens to you. The rest of it - the 90% - is what you do with it.

We do heal.

We do recover.

We may just need some time to do so - and be willing to do the work for it.

Without hiding behind diagnoses and diseases - yes even physical ones because they now understand that most have roots in trauma - which results in chronic inflammation and stress on the body, addictions, labels, mental illnesses and learned helplessness -

There is hope.

Not just for our own mind/body/spirit recovery -

But epigenetics and modern psychology also now tells us that we can also heal our own DNA - so, our family line/descendents as well.

We can choose to become cycle breakers.

That is powerful.

Photo by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash