The Importance of Understanding Your Trauma and How It Can Help You Heal
It's all about how you react to what happens to you.
The Greeks used to think the gods created us to suffer.
But we are not here to suffer, we are here to grow.
People that face the most challenges tend to become role models. They’ve learned hard lessons that didn’t stop them from achieving their dreams. They healed and grew to become examples for the rest of us to follow.
Our growth as a species depends on one fundamental aspect, which is healing. The medical industry is one of the biggest today because we’ve noticed how much need there is to heal.
The best way to grow is from making mistakes. Whether they’re small, big, caused by greed or plain ignorance, mistakes are always made. And they happen so we can do better next time.
Our traumatic experiences are not mistakes we made, but ones that society brought into our lives as a collective.
If you had a difficult childhood, your mother, father or both, brought their traumas into your life. They do this unconsciously because they either never bothered to change or worse, they never knew what needed to change.
You are here today to heal your bloodline from the past. To turn yesterday’s mistakes into tomorrow’s triumphs.
The problem with how we heal
Healing happens on all 3 levels. Body, mind, and soul.
The most advancements we’ve made in medicine are physical. The other 2 aspects are barely understood. Our modern techniques are experts at finding ways to treat symptoms, not causes. Blame that on capitalism and a few greedy families.
This is part of the reason we say that we’ve separated from our spirit.
We neglected the mind and the soul, focusing only on the body. As generations evolved, we accumulated more diseases, bad habits, and mental illnesses.
This neglect happened because we ignored root causes.
If you visit a doctor, they have a bunch of questions that lead them to understand your symptoms. Based on that, they tell you to pop a pill that will make you feel better, along with a regular visit to refill your prescription. But what about what’s causing these symptoms?
In a way I understand them. Finding the cause of any disease requires a lot of work, attention and time, which we never have enough of. Real treatment would mean the loss of customers. Let’s not forget that the medical industry comprises corporations.
How can trauma be a cause?
In recent years, some brilliant work expanded our understanding of the effects trauma has on our 3-fold nature. It turns out that trauma often sits at the wheel of our illnesses.
It’s been passed down from generation to generation, turning us into slaves to bad habits. If you want to take a look at what a real pandemic is, here are some numbers that show you what we’re dealing with:
- 26% of Americans over 18 years old suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.
- Anxiety affects 25% of children aged 13–18
- More kids are diagnosed with childhood conditions such as ADHD
- An estimated 1 person every 40 seconds dies from suicide, twice as much as homicide.
We relate trauma with terrible events. Most of the time, they are little things that we grew up with or without:
- Not being held enough as a child.
- Not being praised for accomplishing tasks
- Not getting the grades our parents wanted
- Not finding friends
- Getting beaten up for punishment.
These events are so common that we've normalized them. Ignoring them accumulate over time and affects our emotions.
Suppressed emotions we fear experiencing come from trauma. If you've faced a certain situation, you remember how it made you feel. The visuals are the least part you remember. Emotions sit at the core of your memories.
"Trauma is what happens inside of you as a result of what happened to you."
— Dr Gabor Maté
One of the easiest ways to detect symptoms of trauma is to look at your addictions. Here’s a list of addictions that are linked to traumatic experiences:
- Drugs
- Alcohol
- Nicotine
- Sex
- Gambling
- Shopping
- Eating
- Pornography
- Gaming
- Internet
- Work
- Relationships
I tick at least 3 of these and I assume you do, too.
In contrast, there’s something good here. These habits are part of your healing process. Depression and addictions are mental responses that help you overcome a traumatic experience. Think of it like a defence mechanism your brain pushes you towards to deal with whatever caused you pain.
These addictions come from a powerful emotional response. The mistake we make is rushing to treat them as separate, pretending to know how to deal with most of life’s punches.
When looked at from a scientific perspective, these habits show that there is a deep underlying issue. The issue not being the habit but the trauma that caused it.
How to heal from trauma
For the sake of examples, let’s consider that your trauma is your website. You need to bring in all that healthy traffic to get yourself noticed and self-sustained. Without a doubt, the best growth is organic.
Of course, that takes time, but we’re always in a hurry for everything.
Real growth is slow, organic and applies to every part of you.
It goes as far as the food you eat, the information you consume, the thoughts you have and the emotions you go through.
"Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens."
— Gebran Khalil Gebran
We’re afraid of gaining a deeper understanding of why traumatic events happen to us. Their effects are so powerful that they affect everything about you. Your mood, your appetite, your energy levels, the way you walk, talk and behave.
Learn from the past that shaped you who you are. What are the things you can’t let go of? Why?
We know how out of tune most of us are with our emotions because let’s face it, it’s not easy to look deep into ourselves.
Whatever it is you’re going through, the reason is always what you should look for. The worst you can do is play the victim and blame everything else for how your life is going.
References and further learning:
