Trauma - Lost and Found

In any search to understand traumatic experience one will get lost. Real confidence is needed. Real confidence empowers people to listen to their intuition; a kind of trust in one's intuition is required, in one's instinct and ability to withstand the impact of the search. When I talk about intuition, I’m referring to the small, still voice inside each one of us that can tell us the truth about things. While it takes courage to tune into our intuition and then to trust what it’s telling us, the good news is that the more often we do so, the better it can guide us.

If we want to learn to listen and trust our intuition and if we want to learn to let our heart guide us, we have to first learn to be quiet. We have to learn how to silence our mind. We have to get into the habit of thinking less and feeling more. That wise inner voice inside is always communicating with us. The problem is that it can be hard to hear until we learn how to quiet our mental chatter. Once we can learn to quiet the mental chatter, we can access our intuitive intelligence.

Trauma is both a process and a state of being. It is an experience of everything and nothing at once. It defies words, yet demands expression. Survivors of trauma commonly have difficulty recounting the events they have suffered or witnessed. The central dilemma for many survivors of trauma is that they must tell their stories, and yet their stories cannot be told. Traumatic experiences often defy understanding.

Out of the fragmentation and chaos of the losses caused by trauma, new connections must be made. It requires us to take risks that might put us face to face with our limitations and shortcomings. A significant method for self-protection is the act of forgetting, repressing, and/or splitting off memories of traumatic events. Most of the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can be understood as coping mechanisms for individuals living in an environment (either actual or perceived) of danger, harm, and/or neglect in a world stripped of safety, order, and/or meaning.

The individual pays a high price for the chronic repression of his/her natural impulses and over time his/her range of resiliency narrows, his/her access to his/her sensations and feelings is disturbed, and his/her ability to experience life diminishes. In addition, his/her mental acuity, relational flexibility, innate resiliency, and creative, spontaneous expression are all disrupted. In other words, an individuals life energy is channeled into resisting life, thereby sacrificing his/her natural expansion towards life.

Much of trauma theory revolves around waking up to our denied, repressed, fragmented, dissociated and wounded selves, then we can begin the journey of healing and integration. This is the journey from trauma victim oriented around fear, abuse, helplessness and/or neglect, to trauma survivor oriented around empowerment, hope, courage, and recovery. In not acknowledging our pain and fear, we are narrowing our life experience and isolating ourselves even further from the reality of life all around us. Within us all, there is a wellspring of love, compassion, and creativity that grows in this direction towards life.