Processing Trauma

There's a lot of information out there on the importance of releasing trauma, on sitting with pain but very little on how, unless you read an entire mindfulness or well being related book.

im not saying i have all the answers. i have my own personal lived experience and research. 

there are certain people in your own lives that you will meet and certain experiences that you will have that will cause heightened emotions to rise. known commonly as a trigger. you could argue that general disrespect is not a trigger and the reaction to such is but a primal, instinctive response designed to protect you and keep you safe. however, unless your life is under any real danger then a reaction is unnecessary and by reaction i mean fight, flight, freeze or fawn (FFFF). totally natural of course but not necessary. i would argue it is a total waste of energy. important to observe and be grateful for as it is something that has always ensured the survival of our species.

some FFFF reactions come from a place of instinctive survival that is sometimes necessary and sometimes unnecessary. some come from deep rooted trauma originating from either childhood or adulthood.

here are some examples to further explain. i do warn that some of these examples may cause you to feel triggered and that's totally natural but i encourage you to read on with an open mind as this article does not come from a  place of judgment but rather a place designed to open your mind to healing and in order to do that, sometimes we have to look at the wounds.

1. someone approaches you with a knife

you react with a FIGHT response and disarm the person with a knife.

your life was in danger, an FFFF response was entirely necessary

2. a stranger who is upset with you spits on you 

your life is not in danger but you are triggered by this aggression and react with the FIGHT response.

 response was not necessary.

3. you grew up with a family member who always put you down as "stupid" (childhood trauma) and a friend tells you that they think your ideas are stupid (trigger)

your life is not in danger but you are triggered by this and your reaction is FLIGHT as you storm off without a single word.

 reaction not necessary.

4. you've recently been attacked by a dog on a walk and during another walk you notice a non aggressive dog running around without a lead on.

you are triggered and remain glued to the spot until the owner puts their dog on a lead. your life was not in danger but the trauma response was to FREEZE.

 reaction not necessary.

5. a child is screaming and shouting because they didn't get their own way

you are triggered by this and desperately offer the child a number of activities, food and other distractions to diffuse the childs reaction. also known as FAWN or people-pleasing.

reaction not necessary

the final one hits very personally with me as i am often guilty of this.  but to pretend that we are all perfect humans is false and a goal that isn't achievable. the most achievable goal is to love and accept ourselves for our imperfections and once we do that we are more open to the self awareness of our own trauma responses that will be the start to altering our behaviour in a way that diminishes those FFFF responses so that we are no longer living in a survival mode of anxiety and depression and no longer re living our trauma in our day to day lives. 

im aware that the final part of each example stresses that a reaction was not necessary. it feels very robotic and lacks compassion but I promise I'm getting to that.

so if were not being reactive, what response is there to have?

you can either be reactive or reflective. 

practicing reflection means expressing how we feel in a situation and taking the necessary action to work through our feelings in that moment to prevent a FFFF response.

personally, if im self aware enough at the time (not always the case and takes a lot of practice) i will state  "hey im feeling uncomfortable right now and im going to have some space"

This allows me the time and capacity to react to the moment in a way that doesn't cause anyone else any potential harm. sometimes this time is a number of hours, sometimes its weeks, sometimes its months. 

i've currently cut myself off from a number of friends as i work through abandonment trauma that has recently surfaced following a breakup i had 2 years ago. isolating, lonely, difficult but for me its necessary.

now that ive established what trauma is and how we can be reactive in our every day lives, a good question to ask is how do we know the difference between what is a trauma response and what isnt? 

essentially the question we could ask ourselves regularly is this:

am i saying/doing this from a place of pain/trauma or from a place of love?

im going to give a very recent and raw example.

my personal trauma is my dads opinion on a woman's relationship to money which is that all women take pleasure in spending mens money or rather wasting it. it is also mixed in with a healthy amount of confusion as it was also a large way in which he showed his love to me. so the messaging i received was "here, i love you, here's some money but i will also judge you for how you receive it"  

i was recently treated to tickets for a music gig. i immediately felt that deep rooted pang of anxiety and discomfort followed quickly by self judgement because i SHOULD be happy and excited. it was only until id booked a hotel that i couldnt afford for us that id actually become self aware of these thoughts and feelings that were surfacing. 

im going to input a bit of psychology at this point. when we are exposed to trauma, we can have a parasympathetic response which is responsible for controlling homeostasis. translation: our brain can sometimes sense that we are going into a heightened emotional state and will automatically suppress these emotions to achieve balance. our brain and our body always wants us to feel and be safe and will do whatever it thinks is necessary at the time to achieve this

so if you're not aware of a trauma response you are playing out till much later on (like i was), this is why.

so to go back to my question above, was i booking that hotel from a place of pain/trauma or a place of love? and by love in this example i mean, was i booking this hotel simply for the fun of it, for the love of it and for the addition of joy it would bring to the experience. partially, yes, but the fact that i couldn't really afford it suggests that it was largely more to do with the uncomfortable feelings i was having when i first heard about the gig. i was acting and motivated to book the hotel because i was afraid of being judged for receiving the tickets. i felt i needed to balance out the money spent with my own expenditure to prevent judgment. Tears are actually running as i write this as i imagine a small child within me, afraid to receive.

so how do we process trauma?

trauma is trapped energy in the mind and in the body's nervous system. there is so much text and living proof out there that screams at us that the leading cause of so much ill health is down to stress which i believe is down to trapped trauma, desperately seeking release. first it will try to seep out in sporadic, random, unintentional, confusing and embarrassing ways that can be so incredibly exhausting and difficult to navigate. not just for you but for others trying to interpret your behaviour and if you are not taking enough notice and repeating the same trauma responses over and over again, it will manifest in the body as disease or in the mind as depression. Heres my list of activities and qualities to practice that will ensure trauma is released in a way that is peaceful, fun and empowering.

1. Compassion - stop judging yourself and reassure yourself that everything that you are feeling is natural and ok. your mind and body are speaking to you and the discomfort and pain you feel are simply an opportunity to listen to that to release it. remind yourself that you are safe. seek out help if necessary, it is an incredibly brave thing to ask for! sharing your pain with a non judgmental friend helps to clear a lot of self judgment. forgive yourself. you cant do better unless you know better.

2. self awareness - incredibly difficult and almost impossible to achieve when we are in FFFF. the saying "prevention is better than cure" comes to mind. meditation allows the things in our subconscious mind and hidden traumas to surface in a way that can feel safe. Being in a meditative state doesn't always mean sitting in silence to some plinky planky monk music. personally that was a horrifying thought for me, especially having ADHD. hello 1000 thoughts at once. i dont recommend this at all but driving often brings up a lot for me and im sure there are a list of activities that you do personally where you find your mind wanders in a way that feels safe. eventually when i found such an activity, meditating didnt seem so scary. i now spend 10 minutes allowing the 1000s of thoughts to surface and releasing them and then another 10 actually listening to the guide on the chosen youtube meditation.

 finally, theres journaling. getting your thoughts down can bring order to the thousand thoughts at once and at least condense it down to a short few to focus on for now. processing trauma, like life, is a journey and not a race.

3. play -  there is a lot to learn from carefree, happy children. physical activity such as sports, walking, running, yoga, etc are an essential puzzle piece in the release of trauma as is being creative. creative writing, music, art, dance, etc. those who claim they arnt creative simply havnt found their creative outlet but i believe it is an essential way to express the emotions within us in a way that can be empowering. work and play balance, if you can achieve that, youre half way there. if youre working or playing too much, ask yourself, why? 

4. routine - a daily well being routine wont stop you from fucking up, it wont stop every bad thing and it wont stop the trauma responses from playing out altogether but a routine will be a life raft in a storm. We are exposed to triggers regularly and external factors play a key role in our capacity to deal with those triggers. the more triggering our environment is, the more strict our routine needs to be.

5. affirmations - write down the negative self talk and list the negative messages you are giving yourself. e.g "i am stupid, i am incapable etc..." then reverse them with positive self talk and say them out loud. "i am smart, i am efficient etc..."  if there was a repeated negative message an adult gave you as a child, make the reversal of that message a daily affirmation to tell yourself.

6. alchemy - probably the most empowering and magical part of healing trauma which is one big life long journey. taking the pain you've held onto and found personal ways to work through and being the light in someone elses darkness. this gives meaning to the pain and the journey. you will notice that the trauma you have experienced has gifted you with so much compassion and empathy for yourself that you are now more able to express that with others. nobody is ever fully healed in this journey of life and as such there is no official qualification that says that you are now healed enough to heal others. everyone has their own many many layers of trauma and in each new layer is a new empowering message to be discovered and shared with the world. what i mean to say is that, if you are working through trauma in a way that works for you and may work for others, that is enough in itself to share your practice of alchemy. you don't NEED to have it ALL figured out. sharing where you are in your journey right now is enough and if that alters another's direction in a positive way, then your pain has purpose. a happy, joyful, magical purpose.

7. Celebrate - every new layer discovered. every time you have chosen to reflect rather than react, every self aware choice you make and every time you have over come a knee jerk reaction. celebrate!!! we celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, religious dates but what we should be celebrating the most is our wins in life because our wins in our wellbeing are preventing disease, they're preventing the next generation from suffering the way we have. They are so much more profound than anything you could ever celebrate because healing yourself means healing the world.  the chain of pain that has been passed down from generation to generation is stopping at you. each persons trauma in a single day that has been triggered and passed on from person to person, stops at YOU.  You are becoming unreactive, untouchable and happy and every step towards that is worth a silly dance in the kitchen, a pat on the back or any other self given reward of some kind. its an incredibly brave journey that most people are too afraid to start but YOU are doing it. celebrate that!

Releasing trauma is hard, yes. but it needn't be an endeavour to fear. its an exercise. its a muscle. first sessions in the gym are hard but over time they become enjoyable and you start to notice the differences in your general well being. other people start to notice too. 

releasing trauma is hard. supressing it is hard. choose your hard.

"the only time I can receive someone's wisdom is when its embodied and the only way to embody wisdom is to have gone through whatever initiation that has instilled that wisdom into the experience

its not about the words, its about the vibration of the words and the vibration is determined by the level of embodiment"

- charlotte brereton, blu of earth

id honestly like to write more but i feel i have overly exhausted the topic in a single chapter. in my next blog id like to go into detail on how embracing the "dark feminine" with music and dance helps in the aid of trauma release.

to whomever this may have helped, you do your best and that is always enough.