Trauma Was A Lock On My Heart
Taking control of my emotional state around my trauma has changed my life and it can change yours too.
I have had a fracking amazing life. Granted, if you have read any of my previous stories, here is a link, then you know it has been far from easy, but is life supposed to be a breeze?
Life Is Amazing When You Take Responsibility For It
The thing about me is that I blame no one for my life but myself. I have never been the kind of person looking for nor accepting sympathy. I have believed from a young age that I chose to be here. That my Soul chose this incarnation and the events leading up to me venturing out on my own.
Life to me is like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel. For the first few years, our stories are laid out before us until sometime, I believe somewhere between 11 & 13, we face a situation from which point we take control of our story.
This situation is purely personal to the individual and no two could ever be the same. Same scenario perhaps but not the same details. For myself, it was when my stepmother swung a 2x2 at me and I decided to fight back. My decision to fight back was not instinct or fight or flight.
You see I have had a lot of dissociative episodes in my life due to trauma where I have blocked out entire chunks of my childhood that I have yet to unblock. I have also had some pretty traumatic timestamps in my memory where the feelings associated with it made the event so clear and memorable that I don’t think I will ever forget them. This was one of those events and I will never forget it.
Deconstructing a wall can be a daunting proposition
It took me 33 years to build a wall around my heart and it has taken me the past 8 years to begin to tear it down. The thing is with walls of this nature you never really tear them all the way down. Just as you will never exercise your demons completely. You will never be rid of the darkness that lingers inside of you. How could you, the darkness is you. Just as you are the light that radiates from you.
All trauma can be healed. Whereas a broken bone, if it isn’t set right, will need to be rebroken to be properly healed. So to do we need to be willing to re-visit our trauma. To re-open old wounds, to re-visit old events and see them for what they really are. To sit in the darkness of our hearts and psyche and make nice with our demons. This will probably be very difficult. I wish I could tell you different but it has been my experience that the most valuable lessons are those that cost the highest, no matter the toll.
I like to use the analogy of the “Monster in the closet”. We all know this scenario, either through our own experience or another. A child can’t sleep because there is a monster in the closet waiting to get them. So they call Mom or Dad and the parent turns on the light and the monster is revealed to be something mundane, an article of clothing or a collection of athletic items or whatever else it may be.
The point of my story is this: As long as we avoid our trauma and let it just sit in the dark, the bigger and scarier our imaginations will make it. When we are willing to be uncomfortable, to be brave enough to just be with our hurt and forgive those who have wronged us, we will never evolve. And in this world, you Evolve or Die.
We are imagining it all and can stop it as soon as we decide
Do you know what memories are? They are an emotional reconstruction of an event. At least this is what Dr. Joe Dispenza says and he is a neurologist. He has been a huge help in my understanding of how to heal my trauma. I’ll put a link here to a short video of his of him explaining it in more technical terms.
I can only speak from my personal experience or relate anecdotal evidence as it has been shared with me. When I began to understand that I was the one who had been making my trauma worse it felt pretty crappy. It didn’t feel good to know that I had held the keys to my freedom the whole time. Then a new narrative started to form. I began to look for my way out and when the day came that the key was revealed it crushed my Soul.
The key I held was forgiveness
How could I ever tell my abusers that I was ok with what they did, that all was forgotten and that’s it? Well, I quickly had to re-learn what it is to Forgive. I will not go into detail on that story but will leave it here for you to read at your leisure.
To forgive is to take back YOUR power. It does not mean to forget or to absolve of any wrongdoing. It is simply You getting up and turning your own light on and revealing it for what it is. This is why therapies such as EMDR and others are so effective. It is because you are re-wiring your brain and removing the overwhelming emotions related to the event.
When a traumatic event, or any event good or bad that elicits a strong response, happens our emotions spike and our brain takes a snapshot at the peak of the event. It’s not the event we remember, it is the emotions attached to the event that is cataloged.
So in my journalling, I try to isolate the emotions surrounding an event and examine them. The thing is though that our surface issues are rarely the real reason behind our anxieties or our fears. In my experience, there is always an underlying issue. It is also my experience that there are never more than 3 or 4 root events.
What if forgiveness isn’t enough?
To be honest, it’s not, you have to keep going. In my upcoming articles, I will be exploring more into the steps that I took to be free of the shackles of Trauma and the techniques I used in Healing and still use to grow. For now, let me just say this, forgiveness was only the beginning. I have done a lot of Shadow work to reach the level of meaning I have in my life.
I say meaning and not happiness because happiness is fleeting. To strive and seek happiness is to chase the transient. Instead, I have chosen to seek meaning and strive for purpose. This is my wish for you and me on this journey of prose, for us together to find a way for us both to heal and grow and take this healing into the world.
Until next time my fellow seekers,
Namaste
