Trauma Healing is Messy!!
Things I have learned on my healing journey
There are as many ways to work with trauma as there are ways to be traumatized. Everyone is different and will need to follow their own path. My own journey continues to be an evolving path of the most excruciatingly difficult lows as well as profoundly healing and connecting experiences.
The more I travel down my healing path, the more I see how insidious trauma really is, especially childhood abuse. As I am unraveling this tangled ball of beliefs, ideas, feelings, sensations, and memories, I am realizing that nothing is as it appears to be. The gaps in my memories painted an incomplete picture of the childhood I thought I had. The beliefs I had about myself being unloveable, damaged, alone, all trace back to seeds that were planted when I was too young to understand anything else. These seeds grew into noxious weeds that I have spent the better part of 3 decades trying to eliminate. From the early attempts at CBT and changing my “distorted thoughts” to learning how to treat myself with self-compassion. My path recently has taken me into my body; literally. I am gaining a profound understanding of how much of my trauma my body still holds. The modalities that have been most helpful in this area has been integrative breathwork therapy, somatic approaches as well as various other alternative therapies.
I used to covet my rational thoughts and relish in logically understanding my experiences. I used to think about feelings instead of feeling them. I used to think about my trauma vs. feeling into the edges and the depths of the sensations. The thoughts are only a fraction of the story. What I realize is that I was bypassing the feelings, sensations, and emotions and jumping to the narrative and the meaning of my experiences. I was missing so much, but now I see that I can’t out-think my trauma. I can’t out-run my emotions or those sensations that are trapped in my body. The only way I can transcend my past is to feel the depths of what I have experienced and move through the healing stages. Is it fun? NO! Would I rather do ANYTHING else? YES!!! But let me assure you, the relief that I feel- the expansive and energetic shift in my body after somatically processing or after I come through a breathwork session is glorious. It’s what keeps me coming back for more. Despite the challenges of moving through the process. It is worth it! The freedom I feel afterward reinforces the courage that it takes to stick with the hard shit.
I don’t know what lies ahead, but I do know that I have the tools and resources to help me continue moving forward to help process the things that were done to me years ago. It doesn’t change the grief I feel about what happened to me, but it does help me feel more empowered to decide how I move forward and ways I can leave these experiences in my past; digested and processed and not centre stage in my life. It allows me to move towards a life full of connection, energy, play, and fun. That sounds like a good path forward from where I stand!!!
