Have you ever talked to someone who references the same old memory or time in their life in every conversation?
“When so-and-so was alive, I used to...”
“Things haven’t been the same since my surgery / physical injury / car accident in such and such year...”
“During pandemic we did things this way... and now everything is different... I wish things were the way they used to be.”
“I remember in my childhood, every summer we used to...” (blah blah blah, same old story)
These references to past events and experiences are a good indication that trauma is trapped somewhere in the system.
What is trauma? My definition of trauma is an event or series of events that changes one’s perceptions of their physical, emotional and sensory reality and relationship to their external environment. It can be sudden or gradual, conscious or unconscious and experienced either first-hand or vicariously through another’s experience.
The internalization of trauma is a process by which the energetic imprint of the experience or memory of the event is trapped inside the cellular memory of the physical body. This distorts one’s ability to regulate their nervous system and maintain hormonal and organ homeostasis. It also creates some really interesting habits and coping mechanisms that are often unapparent to the person doing them.
External triggers like certain places, circumstances, sounds, smells, images, words or phrases related to the trauma can consciously or unconsciously elicit an over-exaggerated perception of fear and feeling unsafe. This leads to a cascade of physiological dis-regulation that causes brain fog, lack of focus, dread, anxiety, systemic inflammation, weight gain, hormonal imbalance, high blood pressure, muscle tension, the list goes on and on. As a result, one can also develop avoidance behaviors or maladaptive responses to external triggers.
Trauma that is internalized emotionally can cause someone to feel blame, shame and responsibility for what happened, and oftentimes re-perpetrate the trauma onto themselves or relive the felt experience through their physical bodies. This is the body’s way of trying to complete the cycle of release of that trapped energy from the traumatic event. Unfortunately, this physiological response oftentimes ends up recreating a hamster wheel effect of limbic system looping that keeps someone stuck in the old nervous system reactions and felt emotional experience.
Internalized trauma can cause a deep distorted belief about the inherent goodness or self-worth of the person. What I’m referring to specifically are thoughts like, “What did I do to deserve that? What if I did things differently that day? Am I worthy of love? Am I inherently good?”
First off, if you are in a place of relating to any of these questions, I can give you a straight answer to all of them:
You didn’t do any thing to deserve what happened. It just happened. And it’s OK.
It doesn’t matter if you did things differently that day. What happened happened then. You are living in this moment now. Cherish your life in this moment... Because
You are inherently good, worthy and lovable. That is your birthright.
I’ll give you two good examples from my own experience of how trauma can get can trapped in the system.
• Experience 1 •
At the end of 2019, the house that my partner at the time and I were renting burnt down, along with my acupuncture and herbal clinic, car and all our belongings. Six months after reorienting from the shock of the fire, we started to travel across the United States, camping, house sitting, visiting family and friends in at least 20 different states and spent six weeks in Costa Rica.
The freedom of escape from Colorado and our experience during Covid was so exhilarating on the one hand, and we have many great memories from our travels. Over time, however, it became clear to me that I didn’t have a sense of home. Moving from place to place without any rooting felt exhausting.
After finally deciding to land in Asheville, North Carolina, I had an eye-opening conversation with a family constellations facilitator that blew the top off my understanding of my unconscious desire to move and escape.
The facilitator brought up a story of a middle-aged woman who came in for a constellation. The woman said that she moves every 10 years, and this was year 10, and she was afraid of what might happen. After a period of sitting in silence and allowing her words to seep in, the woman suddenly blurted out, “I never felt loved.”
In that moment, a deep remembrance and acknowledging brought through chills all over my body. I realized that this pattern of moving and escaping was not new post-house fire. I have been moving on an almost annual basis my entire life, but I always created some excuse as to why that was.
The potency of the words “I never felt loved” made me realize how important self-love is; how home is where the heart is, as cliche as that may sound; and how my desire to move really stemmed from my search for love outside of myself. My conscious awareness of my own internalized trauma has started to bring about some radical shifts in my life.
• Experience 2 •
After experiencing a traumatic brain injury as a high school senior, I lost my ability to create short-term memories. I could remember everything prior to the car accident, but following it, I had the memory of a gold fish (which, as it turns out, is actually not three seconds, but at least one month).
As time went on, the duration of my memory elongated. When I went to study journalism at Marquette University, almost every conversation started the same way, “Hi, I’m Melanie. I’m experiencing post-concussion symptoms, and I will most likely not remember you or your name by tomorrow.”
In those years post-TBI, I defined most of my experiences through the lens of someone who was wounded. Having poor memory recall, chronic migraines and sleep disturbance was a spinning hamster wheel throughout my first few years of college. Furthermore, the cellular memory of hitting the break petal on my car turned into numbness from the knee down every time I felt fear.
A breakthrough moment in my healing journey occurred about four years later when I noticed that I went an entire day without talking or thinking about the car accident. I remember going to bed that night and the thought hitting like a bolt of lightning. I immediately started crying out of joy.
While I may have chosen a longer and more arduous healing path than others might, I have learned so much along the way that I’d like to share so that others can learn from my experience.
• Breaking Free from Internalized Trauma •
I’ll start off by saying that there is no magic pill to wiping the slate clean from internalized trauma and abuse. And that’s actually a really good thing. Because if that were the case, one would have such a healing crisis that they would go insane.
Everyone on the planet has experienced trauma in one, two, or 10,000 forms or another.
When trauma is released at the cellular level, it is felt and expressed. Everyone’s way of doing it is different. In my experience, movement, writing, singing, toning, screaming, crying and expressing through any medium of art helps.
There is no requirement to relive trauma in order to release and alchemize it. The physical alchemy is still uncomfortable, however, so many of us choose to avoid the discomfort until we can’t anymore due to physical, emotions or psychic distress. I recommend taking baby steps.
From my experiential learning, I have a few key tips that I think are essential in being able to successfully move through to the other side of life without trauma.
1) Recognize that no matter how uncomfortable and distressed you may feel, there is nothing wrong with you. Holding a space of observing what is active and alive for you without judgment is imperative. That means even holding the parts of you that feel blame, shame and guilt in a space of deeper compassion and acknowledgment. Your body is a bank of memory and wisdom, and each physical sensation and stored emotion is a message that, if listened to with gentleness and compassion, holds the wisdom of your personal medicine.
2) Every choice of self-love counts. Self-soothing and gentleness make a world of difference. I know from my experience what it feels like to just want to get rid of something, clear it or catapult it to the end of the universe. What I’ve learned over time is to embrace all my parts, even the ones that feel fractured, broken or hurt. They’re the ones who need your kindness, gentleness and loving attention the most. Because you’re the only one who can welcome them back home. When you create a space for them in your heart and ask what they need, over time they change form and hold sources of inner power and wisdom that you could have never imagined unless you spent the time to be with them without judging them.
3) Consciousness illuminates old wounds. Like both of my stories in relationship to looking for home within and recovering from a traumatic brain injury, the pivot toward healing in a greater way came through my conscious awareness. These personal breakthroughs or ‘aha’ moments can’t be predicted or calculated. Being self-aware of your own thoughts, words, actions and habits and making a conscious effort to listen to your body creates the space from which personal evolution becomes apparent.
4) Energy that has been trapped in the physical body’s cellular memory needs an exist on a physical and emotional level. That is why self-expression is so important. Again, this can be through movement, art, sound, writing or any form of self-expression that gets you out of your head. Trying to understand trauma by pathologizing it through the thinking mind only keeps it trapped in the nervous and limbic systems.
5) Having a witness is imperative. When you are able to speak and express your pain, suffering and truth to another human being, it’s like the energy is allowed to release from the hidden and secret department of your psyche. If you ever felt like you were alone in your suffering and the universe wasn’t listening, having a conscious witness seeing you alchemize and release the energy creates this inexplicable connection to your ability to transform in a much bigger way. There is a resonance of compassion that occurs between people that leads to deeper energetic harmonic and coherency.
Much love and respect to you and your journey.
~Melanie Adrianna
In my 1:1 work as a facilitator of deep inner transformation, I am honored to be a witness of your inner and outer journey. To learn more about me and the types of support I offer, please visit MelanieAdrianna.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment