Self-Care and Recovery After Trauma
Trauma, defined.
Trauma is a Greek word for wound. Literally that's what it means. Trauma is the wound that you sustained. Trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you.
Trauma is not the event that inflicted the wound. So, the trauma is not the sexual abuse, the trauma is not the war. Trauma is not the abandonment. The trauma is not the inability of your parents to see you for who you were. Trauma is the wound that you sustained as a result.
Every traumatic event is stressful, but not every stressful event is traumatic.
The Paradox of Trauma
It's strange; we use the word trauma way too much in society. People say, 'I went to a movie last night and I was traumatized.
During a traumatic event, the brain is primed to respond reflexively to ensure survival. But that same line of defense that keeps us safe can also keep us trapped in cycles of traumatic memory. The event is over, yet we are still severely impacted by the event. If the event is over (and it is), and we are still impacted to the point of being debilitated (in some way), what is the problem? Could it be our thoughts and our thoughts alone?
If you begin to understand how you respond to certain external stimuli in your normal waking day—and if you can then learn how to demonstrate a certain level of emotional intelligence that allows you to catch yourself from feeling sadness, pain, anger, fear, disappointment, and so on—then you can reclaim your power simply by changing your state of being. If you can change your state of being in these instances, then you are on your way to creating a new future where you are no longer defined by the past. You are moving from the familiar past—the known—into a new future—the unknown.
Now, because you are free to start feeling the emotions of your future before it happens, you can begin creating a new future because the emotions of your past are no longer in alignment with your new destiny. As a consequence of this process of combining a clear intention of a new future with an elevated emotion, you can condition your brain and body into a new future, the same way people get stuck conditioning the brain and body into the familiar past.
The paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the power to transform and resurrect.