What is Trauma, and How Do We Begin to Create Positive Futures From it?
As you may know, my third book goes deep into trauma within three areas: heartbreak, loss of a loved one, and interconnected family dynamics.
So, what is trauma?
As the grandfather of trauma, Dr.Peter Levine defines trauma as anything that emotional causes disruption. When you think of this, we all have been robbed of our peace at some point in our lives. We all have been emotionally disrupted during the past two years of not going to work, seeing loved ones pass away, having friendships dissolve due to different ideologies, feeling isolated, having anxiety about the unknown of how the future will be with government regulations, many countries not being able to travel freely between states, etc. And if it wasn’t from the past couple of years, then at some point in our life, we have been emotionally unwell or will be, it’s part of being a human.
However, what is sad is most people go through an emotionally challenging event, and they sadly never get over the event. It becomes part of who they are. Because they didn’t take the time to offer time and attention to heal the wound. So, the pain ended up molded itself within the person, and the person is walking around with this internal pain radiating outside of them. Think of this as having bad debt, and if you just ignore the debt, it will pile up more and more with interest. No one will know externally to you about the debt or your lack of savings. Yet carrying debt and lack of savings will pile up, and it impacts your confidence; it will influence what decisions you make in your life of having opportunities or sharing you cannot do things because of money struggles. Over the years or decades of this being ignored, you would become bitter, hate money, and think everyone around you can live an extraordinary life and you cannot. Well, the same thing happens from emotional and physical trauma. If we ignore the past experiences that have caused discomfort, avoid them, leave these experiences in the dark, we will rot into a darker person because we aren’t attending to ourselves with love and care for what we have endured in our life journey.
So, trauma cannot be avoided; going through heartbreak, experiencing pain is something we will all go through in this life. We will all go through money troubles; we will go through heart pain; we all want to achieve a particular goal we may feel nervous about; we all feel uneasy about hoping our life turns out how we desire it to. Yet if we just avoid this feeling and never begin to build the practice of moving through the discomfort, learning to dance with the unknown, be okay with asking for support because we cannot do it all alone; we will never become free. Only when we face the traumas, the emotional disruptions, we meet the darkness head-on with courage and love; this is our key that begins to set us free to become the warrior and champion over trauma and our emotions instead of them ruling us.
As I share in my third book, An Uncompromised Life — begin to accept that NONE OF US have it all figured out — if we did, that would be a boring life. Trust me, just as you have crazy days wondering how on earth this will sort out, I do too. We all second-guess ourselves. However, the difference is those of us who constantly do the inner work to align towards our desired future instead of staying lost in the now. That is what makes some truly happy, healthy, and wealthy in all areas of life.
I used to think that famous people; rich people had no problems; they walked life on this incredible zero problem fairytale. Yet, in truth, that is an illusion and would mean everyone we admire is living with unhealed trauma and doing the world a disservice. What happens is the more you live into your purpose, the more you become who you always were, you learn to navigate and dance with the full spectrum of emotions. You begin to trust yourself that no matter what you’ve got you. Then before you realize it, you have a community of people who’ve got you through the crazy, the insane, the good, the beautiful, all of it because you have learned to walk through life with the trauma instead of it living inside of you and the darkness ruling you.
You become the light and the dark.
The yin and the yang.
The moon and the sun.
You become all of it — because you realize to have it all you get to accept the fact you must BE IT ALL.
And to me, this is what it means to liberate yourself from trauma, to liberate yourself from darkness living within you, to stop avoiding the pain, to stop allowing the poison to live within you. Instead, become the gardener who is blooming, dropping seeds of wisdom with every step you make so others can come to join you at a seat in the garden right next to you. So together, we live in a community knowing we are never alone, and we never were. It was always up to us to set ourselves free; no one else can do it for us.
Join my new three-day workshop on learning to overcome heartbreak and forever attract love.
I love you,
Colleen