Understanding trauma?
Trauma is the mind and body’s reaction to an event. It’s an evolutionary mechanism which can play havoc with our lives, stopping us from experiencing our lives as we did before. It often leads us to change our perception of how safe we view life around us. It can also cause us to change our behaviour as we attempt to avoid re-triggering past memories.
It’s not just any event which causes trauma. The event needs four main aspects to it, often described as an ‘UDIN moment’. It has to be:
Unexpected – that it’s out of the blue and we weren’t expecting it
Dramatic – that the event is completely overwhelming
Isolating – that we feel we have to deal with this on our own and often cannot tell anyone else
No strategy – where we feel as though we have no strategy to deal with it
Trauma is not just an event that’s stored as a bad memory, it’s also stored in the subconscious and body as feelings and emotions (or as I refer to it – as ‘energy’).
After experiencing trauma many people become vulnerable to triggers. These will be things like: the sound of someone’s voice, a certain smell, a location or witnessing a similar scene. This not only reminds us of the event but, puts us right back in it, as if we’re experiencing it all over again. We feel it in our bodies, sometimes it’s like we’ve been hit by a ton of ‘bricks’ or parts of our body tense up or may feel sick or queasy.
Most of us assume the effects of trauma somehow diminish over time but in most instances the opposite is true. As we age our capacity to suppress trauma within the subconscious diminishes and, it often starts to encroach on our lives and those around us. We don’t notice it at first dismissing our quick temper, rage, sadness or general melancholy as a passing mood. We’re often the last ones to see the obvious pattern.
It’s important to note that avoiding the triggers or seeking to suppressing our instincts through medication or other substances, offers no real solution in itself. That’s why it’s important to clear trauma and, in order to do this effectively, all its effects on both the mind and the body must be addressed.