15/11/2020
As a psychologist, I was trained to believe that 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 or depression. Low self worth. Chronic fear of others think of us. Many were in toxic relationship patterns + had so much confusion around why they felt stuck.
I noticed the same patterns in myself. Yet nothing ‘big’ happened to me.
The next few years, I spent studying the patterns I saw + realized trauma is so much more than what we’ve been told. Trauma is an event where we are chronically denied our authentic nature as children, + are left to cope with our emotions without guidance in how to process 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 the connection to self. 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 was just not feeling well) we have no trust in our own perception. We choose partners + situations where our reality continues to be denied. Unconsciously, we learned this as part of what relationships are.
Our path to healing begins with an understanding that all of our behaviors, thoughts, patterns, + beliefs are simply our conditioning. They are not who we are. They’re a reflection of the past. Nothing is wrong with us. We are not damaged, or ‘mentally ill.’ As we become more conscious, we can make choices beyond our conditioning—in alignment with who we actually are.
We are resilient humans who have learned how to cope. Humans who can now learn how to become empowered to thrive
