How hidden trauma can be holding you back
What is trauma… How is it stored in the body… and how is it affecting you?
What is Trauma?
Trauma is any experience that overwhelms the normal coping mechanisms of the body resulting from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or threatening and having lasting adverse effects on physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual well-being.
Trauma can occur when you experience an event yourself, from witnessing someone else experience a traumatic event, and even from constant stress. Trauma can be held in the body from a very young age without even releasing, you may have been so young you don’t recall the traumatic event but your body remembers EVERYTHING! When we’re young we are very sensitive little beings, completely dependant on our parents to fulfil our needs. Something like being forced to self soothe ourselves to sleep, ignored when you are crying out for your parents causes trauma to be held in your body, resulting in lasting physical and emotional effects, affecting the way you live your life. This also affects the quality of relationships you experience, including the most important relationship, your relationship with yourself.
Whilst there are significant events that are easy to label as a traumatic experience, many if not all of us have experienced, or even continue to experience on the daily, traumatic experiences, we may just not realise that they are in fact traumatic to our nervous system and the root cause of issues and challenges in our life. Constant stress is a type of trauma, this can be in your job, relationship, or life in general, constant anxiety that can be caused from a previous trauma can create more trauma in the body if not dealt with.
Trauma is an energy, a consciousness. When traumatic and/or stressful experiences occur, the body contracts, and when you avoid these uncomfortable emotions and sensations the energy gets jammed into the cellular body. As it gets stuck it causes recurring issues, these can show up in the physical body, pain, tension, physical ailment, disease… In the mental body, stress, overthinking, anxiety, constant worry… In the emotional body, depression, anger, rage, sadness, heartache… In the spiritual body, lack of purpose, disconnection from source energy, lack of energy and motivation, disassociation. You might be walking around feeling numb and almost lifeless, just going through the motions, living in survival mode… Can you relate to this?
Trauma and stress whether you are conscious of it or not prevents you from living your best life,
Stuck traumas hold you back from living fully, feeling the vast array of human emotions and experiencing the abundance of life here on earth. Restricting life force energy, preventing you from experiencing abundance, joy, love, freedom, and peace.
Some symptoms of trauma include insomnia, irritability, anxiety/panic, rage, chronic pain, decreased concentration, numbing, amnesia, intrusive memories, hypoarousal, hyperarousal, decreased interest, hopelessness, depression, grief reactions, substance abuse, flashbacks, self destructive behaviour, nightmares.
My experience with trauma
I never thought I had experienced deep trauma, I’ve had some not so nice experiences that I would have preferred not to have. But for most of my life I would experience deep depression, anxiety, struggle, emotional pain, sadness, feeling lost, unloved, unworthy. I tried to avoid feeling all of this by partying, drinking alcohol, experimenting with party drugs, depression to numb out and stop feeling, constant denial, and even through spirituality, courses, positive thinking and affirmations. I tried everything I could think of to bypass my pain and go straight to the “good stuff”.
But it just doesn’t work like that… and for good reason!
I read countless books, did course after course, seminars, was immersed in self-help but nothing seemed to change, the good feelings never lasted. The anxiety would bubble up until I was absolutely riddled with, sending me into shut down mode, drawing me down into the darkest hole of my being. I would cry for hours, on and off, for days and days, wondering when this horrible life would end, when the suffering would finally stop, if ever… I had regular thoughts of suicide but thought they will probably just put me right back here and I’ll have to start over. That thought was even more terrifying… What if I get this life wrong, what if I can’t overcome this and I have to do it all over…?
I hated life, I hated my existence, I hated myself, I blamed some God like figure in the sky for sending me to this god forsaken place… It was like my own personal hell, I felt like I was being punished, I felt alone, scared, miserable, and I was in constant emotional pain. I just wanted it to be over.
WOW!
Let’s all just take a breath here…
Writing the words really takes me back, I can remember vividly these times of my life, the memories, the feelings, how I held my body, the lifelessness in my face, the hopelessness…
These experiences were playing out due to trauma that was stuck in my cellular body, trauma I had no idea was within me. They were sharing vital messages with me, letting me know there was healing work to be done. These experiences were guiding me to this very place I am today, I went through all of this to learn, grow, and now to serve.
I want to share with you that this is no longer my experience of life. My life has DRASTICALLY shifted and transformed as I have moved THROUGH my Healing Journey. I emphasise THROUGH because that’s how transformation happens, we move through our pain, our struggles, our hardship, we can’t just simply jump over it or burrow around it, there’s no escaping it… I’ve tried.
My life now is something of a dream, I’m struggling to acknowledge the realness, it’s just so surreal.
All my life I wanted to be engaged, I wanted a baby, to start a family… I have this in my current reality.
I wanted to run my own business that I was passionate about, I wanted to love what I do, I wanted to be authentically motivated by what I do, I wanted to feel on purpose and be of service… I am experiencing this in my now moment.
I wanted to be free of depression, anxiety, the pain, or at least know how to navigate it and not allow it to run my life, I have now learned practical tools on how to heal the pain, the trauma I had held in my body, I have learned and practiced so repetitively how to be with my pain so that it can be acknowledged, fully felt, and released so now it doesn’t linger and deepen that it prevents me from living and enjoying each day.
I can’t say I’m 100% free of these uncomfortable emotions but I am able to navigate them with much more ease so they don’t linger, the energy is able to move through me and I can return to a state of balance and peace.
One of the biggest challenges I’ve had all these years is… knowing what my purpose is, why am I here, why was I experiencing all this pain, why, why, why… These questions ached within, I desperately wanted answers. Discovering this only recently, what a revelation!
As I look back on my journey I realise just how far I have come.
I have realised just how much trauma was being held in my body, not just my own but trauma from my ancestral line. As I have been able to feel and heal these traumas for myself as well as on behalf of my ancestors I have freed myself and shone the light for those before me to do the same. I have stopped the cycle from being passed on to further generations by doing my own healing and by sharing my story. My beautiful baby boy will have his own hardships to face but I know that by doing my own healing work I can be a much better mum to him and help to prevent the ancestral trauma from being passed on so he can live out his own journey. My healing journey has allowed me to be more present with my son and enjoy our time together on a much deeper and profound level. I have received so much wisdom from the work I've done, that I can't wait to share with him. I feel an abundance of love, compassion, joy, passion, freedom, and peace flowing through me everyday.
As we do the work and heal ourselves we gain invaluable lessons, insights, and wisdom, that we can then share with our loved ones and our community. Collectively shifting and transforming the world. It all starts with you.
My healing journey continues, there’s still more to uncover, more to learn, more to heal, more to discover, to be felt, expressed… Going deeper and deeper, layer by layer, learning, growing, evolving, moving into new chapters, inviting in new experiences, living out new desires, passions, and variations of my purpose.
Life is a journey, so let’s enjoy that journey rather than getting fixated on the end, the destination, the goal, the desire… By doing your healing work you are able to live more in the now and by doing that you can Enjoy your life each and everyday. Not everyday is easy, but we can find the joy in the simplest of things, we can appreciate the lessons and insights within our hardships.