Self Improvement … Life … Emotional Trauma

Stop! The Hidden Obstacles That Are Keeping You Stuck Now

They are hidden because we stuff them in the closet and our consciousness tries to forget them … but they are alive and well in our subconscious

You’re in a car accident and your body experiences physical trauma. The paramedics rush you to the hospital where your injuries are dealt with. Depending on the severity of those injuries you may heal completely or there may be lingering consequences or even a life altering disability.

These short term and long term consequences, pose obstacles to your accustomed activities. There are generally visible and are recognized by you and by others. Their visibility proclaim an acceptable explanation for your current limitations … after all no one expects you to join a pick up basketball game with your leg in a cast. It is a readily visible obstacle.

The Hidden Obstacle -Emotional Trauma

Emotional trauma can result from any uncommonly stressful situation that shatters your sense of security. It is beyond your control and the resulting emotions stay with you denying you a sense of peace and security on an ongoing basis

Emotional trauma is not the same for everyone. Let’s go back to the car accident for a moment. You were driving with your best friend. Your physical injuries were similar. In a short period of time your body is healing and the emotions around it are dissipating.

Your friend is experiencing a similar degree of physical healing but they can’t let go. They are having flashbacks. They are terrified of getting in a car again. Their memory of the accident is getting in the way of them living life. You have a hard time trying to be empathic. You were in the same accident with the same injuries and are doing ok mentally and emotionally.

What’s the problem? Why can’t they just get over it like you are doing and move forward?

They are experiencing emotional trauma, you aren’t. That doesn’t make you better than them, it just makes you different from one another.

Perhaps you had more emotional resiliency prior to the accident than they did. It is serving you well. They undoubtedly had more strength in another area that is not serving them under these circumstances. In a different situation their unique strengths may well have served them better than yours would have in that circumstance.

Some psyche’s are more vulnerable to emotional trauma than others. Different trauma’s will trigger in different people differently.

Because any emotional trauma is painful, regardless of the source, human nature is to do one of two things. We shove them in a closet and try to pretend they don’t exist or we claim victimhood and use it as an excuse for anything and everything we don’t want to deal with in life.

This is what makes identifying them and healing from them so challenging.

What Causes Emotional Trauma?

Most of the hidden emotional traumas stem from childhood abuse (sexual, physical, emotional), physical or emotional abandonment, or parental addiction.

It is not uncommon to see all three interwoven. Think of the last heartbreaking story you heard of drug adducted parents pimping their child out to pay for drugs having totally abandoned any parental role. This is an extreme case, however it doesn’t need to be an extreme case for it to have a lasting impact.

Rape almost always results in emotional trauma.

The attacks we are seeing on Asian members of our community will result in emotional trauma.

The commonality in these examples is that a stressful situation has cost us our sense of physical and emotional peace and security. We are subjected to circumstances not of our choosing and beyond our control

How Do I Heal From Emotional Trauma?

It starts with acknowledging your feelings and that it is perfectly ok to feel them. This is about honoring yourself.

Then recognizing that it is not ok to live there in perpetuity.

Write your story and separate out someone else’s story. You do not own that.

Using the rape story as an example . The fact you were raped, everything that physically happened, all of your emotions and what your rapist looked like and smelled like are part of your story.

Anything he said about you is bogus. That is a part of his story. The statements he made are a part of his story.

Your reactions to those statement is a part of your story.

Healing starts with owning your story and releasing his story.

Healing continues with looking at the impact that experience is having on your life today. It does not matter whether it was 30 years ago or 30 days ago.

This is an example of an emotional trauma. We all have a variety of emotional traumas of varying severity. We tend to react to them in one of two ways. We stuff our feelings and memories about them in the closet, but that is a failed long-term solution. They are still there and as much as we try to deny it, they are impacting our life today.

Alternatively we claim victimhood as a result, and look at that as a lifetime pass to remain comfortably stuck with no responsibility to get unstuck.

The choice to heal is the road less traveled but it is the one that leads to emotional freedom, empowerment, and unimaginable success. It will require you to revisit all of the memories and feelings you have shoved in the closet.

Think of a serious abrasion you received falling off your bike when you hit a patch of dirt and loose gravel. That dirt and gravel are embedded in the abrasion. You apply hydrogen peroxide. It hurts. It bubbles up as it removes dirt and gravel so infection won’t set in. If you don’t do this you know the wound will fester rather than heal. You choose the short-term pain of applying hydrogen peroxide because it is clearly a smart trade off long-term.

We are talking about emotional hydrogen peroxide. Your emotional trauma has been festering in all probability for years. Applying emotional hydrogen peroxide to a festering emotion wound will be painful in the short term but it starts the healing process. You can heal from a physical wound without a scar. When you embrace the appropriate process you can heal from an emotional wound without a scar.

Be it physical or emotional, why would you allow a wound to fester painfully when healing and freedom from pain is possible?

Learn about more strategies right here.