Healing Trauma
The first step is to recognize that you have been traumatized and like most people, have hidden the effects of your traumas deep inside.
Many traumas remain invisible, hidden beneath layers of shame, denial, or simply a lack of awareness. Society’s collective blindness to certain types of traumas exacerbates this invisibility, leaving many to suffer in silence. The journey toward healing begins with recognition — seeing and naming our traumas for what they are. This process often involves unraveling deeply held beliefs about ourselves, and our experiences, many of which were formed as survival strategies in the aftermath of trauma. You can learn to accept and integrate the experiences and lessons of both the dark and light aspects of life, becoming more connected, whole, and eventually a fully alive person.
This integration happens in our bodies. Trauma is often perceived as a deeply emotional or psychological issue, overshadowing its profound physical embodiment. Your mind may forget but your body does not. Understanding trauma as a bodily experience is crucial for those navigating the complex journey of healing. When traumatic events occur, they do not just impact our minds and emotions; they leave a lasting imprint on our bodies. The experience of trauma creates energy that becomes trapped within our physical selves. This energy influences our reactions to various triggers, often in ways that may seem disproportionate or irrational to outsiders. A war veteran reacting to a car backfire with a drop-to-the-ground response is a stark example of how trauma is stored and reactivated within the body.
Our bodies become hypersensitive to stimuli that resemble or remind us of the traumatic event, causing us to react in ways that protect us from perceived threats. Something as simple as a sound, a smell, or a familiar face can unexpectedly awaken this trauma response. This sensitivity underscores the fact that our bodies remember what our conscious minds might not recall explicitly. This state of constant alertness and sensitivity can be exhausting and deeply affect one’s quality of life.
The physical symptoms of trauma are diverse and can include hyperarousal, fatigue, a feeling of unwellness, tense muscles, hypervigilance, clenched stomach, and physical pain, among others. These symptoms are the body’s way of signaling that the traumatic energy trapped within needs attention and release. Recognizing trauma’s physical dimension opens up new pathways for healing. Traditional talk therapy, while beneficial, might not be sufficient to address the somatic aspects of trauma. Integrative approaches that include somatic experiencing, trauma-informed yoga, and bodywork can be incredibly effective in releasing the trapped energy and restoring the body to a state of balance.
The wonderful thing about this way of working with trauma is you don’t have to remember your traumas. In fact, some of the most primary ones happen in the first 3 years of our lives when most people do not have the capacity of memory. But your body does. And you may never be able to touch on a very specific situation but as you listen to your body you will be able to hear the feelings that got frozen inside of you when you were overwhelmed by life. The memory of an actual trauma is nowhere near as important as accessing the feelings that are frozen through trauma.
So healing from trauma involves becoming attuned to your body’s signals, learning to interpret its language, and responding with compassion and care. This process requires patience and often the guidance of professionals trained in trauma-informed somatic therapies. By paying attention to the body, individuals can begin to unravel the tight knots of trauma, allowing for a greater sense of presence, safety, and aliveness.
If that interests you, Google Somatic Experiencing and click on ‘Find a Practitioner”. If it is beyond your means to afford, read The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel A. van der Kolk. Or In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness by Peter A. Levine. Or The Myth of Normal by Gabor Mate.
And, of course, you are welcome to listen to my radio show The Great Healer of Trauma airing on Dreamvisions radio on Thursday, April 4th and 11th at 5am and 5pm HERE. After the 11th, it will be available on demand, along with every other radio show I’ve ever done HERE. Please feel free to explore my catalog and listen to topics that call to you.
Offerings:
If this topic resonates with you, I invite you to join us for our next free live call. The feedback we’ve received has been tremendous, it warms my heart. The next live call will take place on May 7th, so save the date. The topic is: Healing the Unhealed. Here is the summary:
We are each a community of parts, parts we like and parts we don’t like. But the parts we try to hide from don’t go away. In fact, they influence us from underneath our everyday awareness. Join Mary in exploring how to heal your unlikable parts so you can become a whole and vibrantly alive community.