06/03/2020
As a psychologist, I was trained to believe trauma was a singular “big” event. Something that involved severe abuse or neglect.
When I started my practice, I noticed a pattern with people who had “normal” or “supportive” families yet they struggled with severe anxiety for depression. Many were achievers, yet they were functional addicts. They found themselves in toxic relationship patterns. There was so much confusion around why they felt stuck.
I noticed the same patterns in myself. Yet nothing big had “happened” to me.
The next few years, I spent studying the patterns I saw and realized trauma is much more than what we’re been told. Trauma is any event where we are denied our authentic nature as children, and are left to cope with the emotions without guidance in processing them.
This is where we learn to betray ourselves for love. This is where we learn that who we are is not acceptable, + the ego comes in to create a sense of self based on the unconscious desires of a parent.
We start to chase external approval because we’ve lost a sense of connection to self. So we seek relationships that mirror our earliest childhood experiences. If we had a parent who denied our reality (ex: an alcoholic father who we witnessed drinking, + our mother, in denial herself, told us he was just not feeling well) we have no trust in our own perception. We choose partners and situations where our reality continues to be denied. Unconsciously, we know this as part of what relationships are.
Our path to healing begins with an understanding that all of our behaviors, patterns, thoughts + beliefs are simply our conditioning. They are not who we are, they are a reflection of our past. Nothing is wrong with us. We are not damaged or “mentally ill,” we are resilient humans who have learned certain ways to cope.
What we learn can be unlearned.
Our parents + caregivers do the best they can with their own level of awareness.
We heal by raising our level of awareness to objectively observe ourselves. Then, we begin to make conscious choices that are aligned with who we actually are
