The Reality of Trauma

Increasingly, humanity is recognising how pervasive trauma is. We’re starting to understand we all carry trauma in some way. This could be from some event that happened in our lives, or from disrupted bonding with our caregivers that didn’t allow us to establish a secure, safe attachment with them. Both of these forms of trauma – event-based and from disconnected relationships - can produce trauma that causes great challenges in adult relationships. And we are starting to understand how much our lives and relationships are deeply influenced by unprocessed trauma in our bodies in deeply painful, degenerative ways.

Whether it is from an event or broken relationships in our earliest years, for me, trauma can be defined very simply. Trauma exists in places in us where there has been a fundamental break of trust. These are places that live in constant states of anxiety and dread that what they fear will repeat itself. Because these parts of us contain feelings and needs that can seem very intense, often they are cut off from the rest of our conscious self. This creates a fundamental split in who we are. Often we’re operating without much issue from our regular conscious self, and then suddenly we are triggered and a flood of pain, terror, anxiety, or dread is activated in us, and we are consumed into states of paralysed or over-activated suffering.

Trauma has a big impact on our relationships because it fundamentally affects our ability to feel safe. Feeling safe in our relationships is crucial to being able to feel connected to each other. Of course it is true that absolute safety can never be guaranteed in the relative world. But as long as we don’t feel basically safe in ourselves, in our bodies, and in connection with those we are closest to, we will struggle to be able open our hearts, express the truth of who we are, and feel truly fulfilled in relationship. This can lead us feeling deeply disconnected, isolated and suffering around the basic human need for stable, consistent, loving relationships with others.

If trauma exists in places of us where there has been a fundamental break of trust in our being, then what is needed for its healing is the repair of that trust. That is possible when we create enough safety to return to the traumatised parts of us, slowly, and at a pace our nervous systems can handle, to open to and integrate their feelings and needs. This releases the tension in our being stored up in their repressing, and allows us to enter into an amazing journey of building a new, creative relationship with ourselves that can take us on a profound journey of self-discovery and self-connection.