Trauma is a word used a lot these days and often not in the correct context. Many people have experienced trauma at different stages of their lives. Some are aware of it and some not even aware, because they don’t understand what trauma is or how to heal from it. Trauma stays and impacts the body, mind, emotions and your energy for many years if left untreated. It needs to be healed on all levels.
What is trauma?
Trauma is the effect of an unexpected bad event that, to the victim, is so bad the mind and emotions cannot quite comprehend or interpret it at a speed fast enough to engage any type of natural healing ability. What I mean by that is that something happens that shocks you so much that it leaves such a fast impact that is so totally incomprehensible to you that the mark it leaves changes you in a way that your life is impacted forever if left untreated.
An example of this would be someone being attacked in a dark street, ending up in hospital and the shock of that, fear, vulnerability etc. stays with that person for many years to come. This of course is a sad, extreme example and can affect the person in many ways. They may become afraid of the dark, fear someone coming up behind them – even in a joke, have a distaste for hospitals as it triggers the memory of the attack and this mark is left with them for years to come. After some time some of the memory of what happened may fade, or become distorted in their mind and sink deeper into their psyche. So thirty years later they may not connect why they are scared of the dark if this trigger took thirty years to surface. This is why some people have ‘unexplained’ panic attacks sometimes and don’t even remember the trigger.
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Ashley came to me with dreams she was having about a therapist she once knew. Bad dreams where he was there and was talking to her but her memories of the therapy with this person were a mix of bad confronting issues among the good things that came out of it. Ashley remembered the bad sessions far more than the good ones that had helped her move forward and unfortunately when she looked back most of the sessions were a mix of very traumatic, confrontational criticisms from the therapist rather than leading her to discover for herself her own healing, in her own time. The therapist had pushed her way beyond her comfort level many times and in some ways, in the group therapies she had gone to, had made her feel hurt, shamed and wronged. All these things had stuck in Ashley’s mind, emotions and energy and were coming out in her bad dreams. When Ashley had wanted to leave the therapy he told her how concerned he was for her welfare and safety and made her feel again as if she would do herself psychological harm if she stopped attending his sessions.
I suspect that the workshops and therapy that Ashley had attended were almost part of some ‘cult’ like group from her descriptions and this is the word she actually used when she told me of the activities of the group therapy. Ashley suffered for many years after she left the therapy and it was only now, some 12 years later or so that these dreams were clearing out the remainder of the trauma from her subconscious mind. Ashley thankfully is now processing all this at her own pace and is healing well.
How to remove trauma
Over my years as a natural therapist I have met many people who have been ‘put off’ by different ‘therapies’ which did not work for them. All of these in some way traumatised these people and in some way these people became ‘victims’ of what we can call ‘bad’ therapy. This is why it is so important that the person you see for your healing be trained and certified and you check them out properly before you hand them insights into your treasured life.
Different things can trigger trauma in different people. Take away your child’s sweet as she has eaten too many today and hear her screams. You would swear she is being traumatised. In some ways that may be true. It is not so much the action as the way the person interprets the action that plants the seed for the trauma. If your child forms a seed that she is somehow hurt, neglected, unwanted by the action of taking the sweet then a seed can be planted for future trauma. That is not your fault or intention of course. In this way we all plant seeds for our own trauma unknowingly by our biased perspectives formed from our personal vision of the world. The vision of your three year old is very different to the vision you will have at thirty. So what traumatised you at age ten, although it would have no hold on you now, did impact you at ten and planted that seed. The seed that may rear its ugly head when you are 45 and all of a sudden you lose confidence in your work and place in life and go into anxiety and deep depression without knowing or understanding why. A lot of this has got to do with why you begin to think negatively. Some people are locked into negative thoughts and thinking that make their head spin. Take a look at my article on this to see how it can also assist you.
Trauma can be healed
Trauma can be healed by pulling out the seeds that were planted by some of the simplest things such as losing your ice cream to some of the horrific scenes that create PTSD. Counselling certainly has its place to some degree in delving into your story but effective trauma management is not handled through only counselling or psychological sessions. Trauma management works on uncovering the trauma in a similar way to counselling to begin with, but then quickly goes on to empowering you with the tools that remove the impact of the trauma. There are certain therapeutic techniques which can be used with much success. It becomes a work of art between the therapist and you, the client.
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Good therapy will give you tools to not only deal with the trauma but to take the lessons from that to remember for your future and to digest and transform what has happened to you. There are no fast, magic wands for this but it doesn’t take years either. So is it time for you to take your life back from the fear, panic, trauma, anxiety and depression you may be going through? If so then perhaps it’s time to give a competent, certified trauma therapist a call to empower you with the right tools to do that.
