Trauma is something we are hearing a lot about lately. Trauma is a universal human experience. Trauma can be big events or smaller ones that accumulate over time. Trauma, while none of us would wish it upon ourselves or others can be healed and that healing can be used as a gift to help others. It is my hope that from the experience of healing from the traumas in my own life, I can serve as a guide to others as they too travel the path of trauma healing.
To begin, let’s understand the word TRAUMA. It comes from Greek and means Wound. Pat Ogden a great pioneer in the work of trauma and the body, defines it this way ” Trauma is any experience that is stressful enough to leave us feeling helpless, frightened, overwhelmed or profoundly unsafe”. Another definition is ” Trauma is any event or circumstance that overwhelms a person’s ability to cope” Susy Giddy. Trauma also varies from individual to individual depending on our unique makeup. previous traumas and the ability and resources to cope at the time of the trauma. In other words, what is a trauma for one person is not necessarily trauma for another! I grew up in Southern California, home to poisonous snakes. As a little girl, I had several snake run-ins quite close together. I saw a rattlesnake eat a bunny rabbit, a snake wrapped itself around my little leg, and my sweet Nana asked me to move a garden hose and well you probably guessed, the hose moved, it was a big snake coiled up. I remain to this day not a super big fan of snakes. My husband a native Nova Scotian, home to zero poisonous snakes, has no reaction whatsoever to snakes. So what was trauma to me was not to him.
Circumstances or events that can cause trauma can be abuse, violence, accidents, environmental events, deaths expected and also unexpected, infidelity, pandemics, health crises, cultural or societal barriers, oppression, and discrimination. It can also be a series of small wounds that accumulate over time.
As I look at this list I see that I have experienced all of these in my own life. I was born into a family with two alcoholics and also rage alcoholics. And then this happened.( Excerpt from 30 + 1 Resilient Stories)
One thing I know for sure as Oprah would say, it is not what happens in your life it is how you choose to respond, that determines the impact that the circumstances will have on your life. You might be thinking at this moment: What if it is something horrific? I know about horrific! When I was 17 years old, the most unthinkable of the many unthinkable events of my life took place on a Saturday in January. One that started out like any other Saturday, but would change my life and the lives of the rest of my family forever.
After arguing over morning chores, I zipped off to the local mall, more of leisure activity with girlfriends, rather than a shopping expedition. When a couple of hours later, I returned home and saw a minister walking down the path in front of my parent’s house. “What happened? Is it my father? Is it my Mother?” “No,” said the grim and paled face minister, “it is Chris, he is dead” This would be the beginning of a whirling, incredibility, that would last for many years, and maybe does even to this day, as I tried to comprehend the “unthinkable.
How could my adorable, pesky full-of-life little brother be D-E-A-D? Then came the horrifying explanation, he accidentally died of autoerotic asphyxiation. In other words, while self-pleasuring, just at the moment of sexual climax, he tightened a belt around his neck and died. The intention is to amplify the experience, not to die.
A practice that takes the lives of many young people each year. At the time, I had never heard of it, and in a pre-Google world, information was hard to come by. We did not talk about how he died. I did not understand what happened, only that he was found hung in his closet by our Mother. Imagine trying to understand an accidental hanging with the additional layer of the sexual context. It was pretty much too horrible, too confusing to grasp. What I know is that he got the idea from a magazine. I also know that all these years later these kinds of tragic accidents still occur. It happens because we don’t know about it or talk about it. So, we can’t warn our youngsters and often don’t know how to comfort the families of the accident victims.
In a world that at that time did not know as much as we now know about trauma, I was left alone to cope with this tragedy and well let’s say that I bungled along adding trauma to trauma by marrying a violent and abusive man and all that went with that. I want to say that all along I knew there was a better way, I knew I just had to find it. The healing began when I met the great love of my life, my husband Martin. The first time I told him about my brother, he just held me as I sobbed in his strong arms and I felt safe.
Out of all of these traumas, the most difficult for me was the rage of my parents lashing out more or less idiosyncratically with tirades of verbal abuse which continue until this very moment.
I share my story only so that it is understood that a lot of trauma can occur and healing can still take place. This is true because the mind, the body, and the heart want to heal and they will.
When we talk about trauma it is crucial to understand that the trauma affects the body, the mind, and the heart. It can often be that the mind forgets the trauma, but it stays in the body and over time can show up in the form of pain, illness, and even disease.
So when we talk about our whole self, we have our mind, our body, and our hearts, right? They are all connected. In my case, I was abused verbally and physically when I would speak my voice or my truth. So I learned that speaking up for myself was dangerous and stopped doing it! Not only with my family of origin but just generally. My mind believed it was dangerous. This made me feel sad and get less than I wanted in life and my body stored it in my neck, amazing eh? So now I know, that when my neck hurts, I check to see if there is some truth that I need to speak and then my heart and mind. My mind is unlearning the fact that speaking my truth is dangerous.
Each of us of course is different, with different innate makeups, different experiences, and different resources. in my work as a Life Coach each day I see clients who have experienced trauma in some form in their lives. It shows up most often as being stuck. Stuck in ways of thinking, behaving, and being in the world that is not in their best interest. It shows up as procrastination, loose boundaries, and feeling less than or not good enough. It shows up as overeating, scrolling, staying in bad relationships, and money troubles. it shows up because that is what trauma does, it keeps showing up until we own it, claim it and heal it.
Mindfulness means being in the present moment. Trauma is about the past. So being mindful is a great tool for healing the past by being in the present. to practice mindfulness means to practice being in this moment and this moment and the next moment. we can do this in formal practices such as meditations, breathwork, yoga Nidra, and yoga. We can also do this by intentionally being present frequently throughout the day. One little example in my own life of being present is when I go for a walk with my dog Ruffus, I never use my phone. I want to be fully present to his over-the-top cuteness not scrolling or talking on my phone.
Trauma lives in our minds, bodies, and hearts to heal from it we have to become aware of it. So we have to learn to become mindful of our thoughts, our bodies, and our hearts.
Here is my Step by Step Process.
- Morning yoga Nidra. Yoga Nidra connects the mind and the body.
- Midday mindful walk or pause…. walk with Ruffus, go into the garden ( resets0
- Body movement( run, gym
- Bedtime yoga
These are what I think of as my well-being practice… they form the foundation of supporting my mindfulness, they support my nervous system which has been overloaded by trauma, and they help bring my awareness to thoughts and feelings.
When I know that I am going to be near a trigger for my trauma I do the following.
- Get my anchor and do my anchoring breathing meditation. ( add it here)
2. Do two thought models one unintentional and the other intentional
3, Do a trauma-sensitive yoga sequence ( add here).
These practices support the body, mind, and heart to unlearn the trauma.
Here is how it works.
Trauma Boundary setting
Task Have to set a boundary
So I have trauma around setting boundaries. Recently, I wanted to ask a friend if we could switch days of our visit. I know that for some this would seem easy. For me, it triggered fear. Fear of disappointing my friend fear of being abused, fear of losing the friendship, see what I mean, it is a trauma.
So I picked the morning to make the call.
I had already done my yoga Nidra meditation.
I centered myself with my anchor and anchor breathing.
I made the call and naturally it was all great and fine my friend was happy to switch the visit.
I then did the Yoga Inquiry Practice. This made sure any tension in my body was released. ( Insert yoga inquiry practice)
So my mind learned that setting a boundary does not need to be so scary. My body released some of the fear and my heart was happy. This is the healing growth part of post-trauma work. This is where from being broken we mend and we come back stronger, more resilient than before.
Experiencing trauma is part of life. It could be said that it is what makes us human. The fantastic news is that traumas no longer need to keep us stuck in the past but when healed anchor us to the present with gratitude.
Namaste
