Clearing trauma effectively requires addressing all its aspects. Getting some kind of context behind what’s happened is often important, but it’s not enough sometimes just to understand or get reasons why something’s happened and then expect the brain to reset itself and the trauma to disappear. This is why many of the therapies used to treat trauma on a purely conscious level are, in my experience, less effective.

          Traumatic events are recorded in the subconscious and it makes sense to reach into it in order to clear them out.

          Another aspect to trauma is the way it becomes stored in the body as feelings and emotions (or how I like to call it – energy). These feelings have to be properly acknowledged and felt in order for the body to process them. This does not mean we have to trigger someone into re-experiencing an event, just that we properly feel through our body’s response at the time.

          There are also aspects of ourselves that we may have to change in order to release ourselves from trauma’s grip. We have to take charge of ourselves and accept what’s happened, rather than continually thinking we’re just unlucky in life or that fate has dealt us a ‘bad hand’. This requires taking responsibility for ourselves and lifting ourselves out of any mindset where we feel sorry for ourselves or where we continually blame our situation on something outside of ourselves. When we’re stuck in this mindset, it keeps us trapped in a cycle of negativity as we’ve given up having control over our lives. It leaves us almost waiting in hope for our lives to turn around and get better – which in turn prevents us from being able to release the trauma.

          We need to back take responsibility for ourselves and our situation. Part of this requires us to be open so that we can learn and, if necessary, grow from our experience. It requires us to be able to recognise any maladaptive beliefs which we formed as a result of the trauma. We need to gain some context in terms of  what we’ve experienced, so that we don’t see it as some unfortunate event or as something personal, but something that we can learn from in order to raise our conscious awareness.

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