Are Suppressed Traumas Causing you Pain?

Do you experience the symptoms of anxiety or depression? Do you have any physical health challenges?

If I were to ask you if you had experienced trauma, what would you say? Many experts in the field define trauma as an event that left you feeling disempowered.

If that seems like a really large spectrum…it is.

Trauma is, indeed, on a spectrum. And yet, we collectively try to minimize most traumas—only really acknowledging certain ones. But, just because we write off traumatic experiences as “no big deal” or “it happens to everyone,” does not actually minimize the impact of these experiences on our life.

So, instead, we have a society that walks around with a shit load of suppressed, unresolved trauma…and guess what happens—we continue to perpetuate cycles of trauma, by projecting our own pain onto others.

That doesn’t make us BAD people. It just makes us people.

But, if you truly desire a planet with less suffering, I invite you to first take responsibility of your own pain.

Often, we think that by acknowledging trauma, it will be MORE painful…and I’m not going to lie…sometimes it can, indeed, be painful. But, the MORE part is questionable. It’s usually just a different form of pain.

Because, suppressing trauma may be contributing to the pain you ALREADY experience in both your emotional and physical body. There is scientific evidence that shows that adverse experiences impact our physical health. This is not woo.

So, just because YOU may not connect a trauma (or traumas) with your anxiety, depression, diabetes, heart disease or cancer, doesn’t mean that there are not connection points. Pain creates pain.

So, what can you do?

Start, or continue, dealing with the traumatic events that are already conscious. Examples may be a break-up, an accident, a bankruptcy, death of a loved one…or childhood traumas, if you are already aware of them.

Not sure what impacts you the most? Make space for reflection. Ask yourself the following questions:

Where am I still hurting? (physically or emotionally)

What traumatic experience(s) is this pain related to? (and believe your first answer)

What have I done to process this specific trauma?

If the answer is nothing (or not enough), I invite you to consider a therapeutic method that can support your process. For some that will be traditional talk therapy. Others may need a more somatic process, like what I offer, that can release trauma held in the body.

Even those of us that have done a lot of work, in this arena, benefit from an occasional dive into what still keeps us stuck.

I am so, so tired of the notion that vulnerability is weakness or that we should all have the capacity to “handle life” without professional support or therapeutic intervention. If we all still lived in the types of close-knit villages and communities that supported one another, this may be true.

But, we don’t.

Most of us have to create our own village. I am happy to be a part of yours.