Learning about trauma has been a complete game-changer for me in my ability to heal–mentally, emotionally, spiritually—even physically.
Using the word trauma doesn’t give us any excuses.
In fact, it opens us up to a very specific and powerful toolkit to more skillfully and accountably address what’s actually happening.
(In fact–without the toolkit, we most likely won’t ever actually get to the root of the problem!)
These 5 primary understandings can bring clarity to some of the chaos you may have experienced in your life and relationships:
Understanding #1: Trauma is stored in the body when you feel deeply unsafe/overwhelmed
When you experience something that your body/mind/spirit perceives as deeply unsafe or threatening, there’s a good chance that it will be stored in your brain/body as trauma.
This means that something that is traumatic for one person might not be traumatic for another person.
Your core values, past experiences, and life expectations will all influence if and how experiences are stored in your body as trauma.
Understanding #2: Trauma is stored in a very specific way that’s tied to your survival brain
Trauma is an evolutionary response that’s intended to help us survive.
If we were cavemen who lived in the jungle and a tiger showed up, our trauma response would kick in and we’d hightail it out of camp or suddenly have the superhuman ability to scale a tree, without even thinking about it.
This response evolved intentionally to bypass the rational mind (the left side of the brain) so that in life or death situations, our body would immediately respond to get us to safety.
But in the modern world, many of the experiences that feel deeply threatening are not literally life and death. They’re more relational and psychological.
But our body doesn’t know the difference.
Our body doesn’t know that blasting our system with adrenaline actually works against us when we’re in the triggering conversation with our spouse or boss.
It doesn’t know that taking our language center offline blocks our ability to express ourselves in those crucial moments when we want desperately to have our own back but we literally can’t.
Many, many people live on high alert, in a state of low-grade trauma all the time, because they’re constantly engaging with people and situations that create this kind of a physiological response.
This constant internal imbalance seriously deteriorates our health and well-being in every way—mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically, with serious consequences, including auto-immune diseases and low self-worth.
Understanding #3: Relational Trauma is a Particular Doozy
Relational trauma occurs when your primary attachment suddenly becomes the source of pain or threat.
If you’ve been (or currently are) in close relationship with a person or organization that has betrayed or manipulated you, you likely have some level of trauma associated with the person or relationship.
Depending on the depth of the betrayal and your level of dependency upon the person or institution, you may experience dysregulating physiological reactions like intrusive thoughts, heart-pounding, disrupted sleep patterns, body tremors, excessive sweating, digestion issues, or chronic muscle tightness.
Because the trauma is relational and now associated with your formerly safe people or places, you may feel isolated and abandoned.
You are moving through the pain and physiological chaos without a support system.
This typically causes people to feel crazy and question their lived reality, which is extremely painful and disorienting.
Understanding #4: Trauma is experiential, not logical
In trauma, the left side of the brain (where language centers reside and logical, analytical, and sequential thought occurs), goes off-line.
Trauma is then recorded by the right brain as an experience of visual images and location. Any sensory input that is associated with the event is also gathered and stored.
This means that smells, sounds, places, dates on the calendar, songs on the radio, time of year, time of day can all be wired in as triggers.
When we experience these random snippets at later times, our body connects them back and rekindles the trauma response as if the event were actually occurring.
We feel again the full embodied experience of being under threat, even though we are no longer in the threatening situation.
This feels crazy-making when we don’t have the tools or awareness to understand what’s happening.
Understanding #5: With the right toolkit, we can fully heal from trauma
Trauma represents a soul-split: a tear inside of us that creates intense levels of suffering.
Without awareness, this internal split plants seeds of fear that then sprout and grow to infest other areas of our lives.
We end up living from fear in self-protection, bitterness, and trapped in victim stories.
Because trauma occurs on such a deep physiological level, trauma healing requires a toolkit that integrates mind, body, and spirit.
To effectively heal trauma, you need an approach that systematically:
- Re-establishes a safe connection between your mind and body
- Helps you identify when you’re lost in a trauma response
- Arms you with tools to ground into the present moment
- Connects you to safe places and people to share your story
- Helps you identify the core beliefs that continue to bring you pain and shows you how to release them
These 5 understandings have been life-changing for me and I hope they help you gain more insight and clarity as well.
Our programs at Body Soul School incorporate all the necessary elements to support deep, long-term healing from traumas of all kinds. If you need help, I hope you’ll learn more here.
With Hope for Your Full Healing Journey,
Becky
