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-   -   Meaning of trauma and healing (https://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=119832)

wanchain 09-01-2018 07:33 PM

Meaning of trauma and healing
 
Hi All,

I just thought I would write about my perspective of trauma and healing.

I used to think that a trauma is an extremely shocking event, like someone jumping off the roof and landing right in front of you, totally disassembled like a meat loaf, and then you spend the next few nights getting nightmare out of it. Or being severely beaten up or tortured inhumanely with brute force, resulting in blood and scar all over you, and you are half dead and half alive.

If you accept the above as the definition of a trauma, then I don't have a traumatic experience. Once, a psychologist asked if I had a trauma before. I said no.

In 2017, I discovered that I had both physical trauma and psychological trauma, after receiving Rosen Method therapy. Now, I would define trauma as such:

physical trauma is trapped adrenaline
psychological trauma is trapped emotions

Needlessly to say, my healing process was to release the unprocessed and trapped emotions and adrenaline. Throughout this process, what surprised me was how unaware I was to these things that were held by in the subconscious or unconscious. I spent years acquiring self-awareness, even though what I was really aiming for was physical health. Now I finally understand why I started my health and healing journey with self-awareness, self-discovery, self-empowerment, etc.

It's like our education system. Say you want to be an accountant. You need four years of university. But you don't actually learn about accounting until the second year of university, and even then, not all your courses are about accounting. There are other courses you must take, such as marketing, finance, statistics, mathematics, information management system, etc. So these are the supporting courses designed to augment your accounting knowledge. But before this, you go through the first year doing general science, or general art, which is supposed to raise you to a certain platform to prepare you for your accounting education. But even before your university education, you go through 12 or 13 years of education, which is to raise you to a certain platform such that you can operate in a university environment. In such a way, my healing journey had been a series of preparation, learning about the universe through the spiritual path, only to come to a point where I am able to look inward, to see the cause of my accelerated physical deterioration.

I grew up in an environment where I was not allowed to express myself, and where I was to absorb all the violent emotional expression of others. In that environment, I learned that you had to roar like a thunder if you wish to express anger, frustration, irritation, etc. If your expression is of a lesser emotional intensity, I would not know what it means, and therefore would not know how to interact with you. Social handicap. So for a very long time, I only attract drama queens, or people who are equally handicapped.

My ethnic and cultural background also contributed to my trauma. Our elders demanded respect, even though there was nothing respectable about them. My relatives would tell me to listen to my parents, to submit to my parents. If my parents were angry at me, it's my fault. So I grew up thinking that it's normal for elders to roar at me. That was the level of my awareness about trauma and wellbeing.

It takes a village to raise a child; and it takes a village to destroy a child.

The road to traumatic healing is a journey inward. Your village does not heal you. Only you can heal yourself.

Wanchain

OEN34 09-01-2018 08:02 PM

Great post and it resonates with me a lot.

I agree 100% and am experiencing your analogy. I only started my awakening 16-17 months ago and initially it was self help books/audiobooks, reading, meditating etc - so my perception started to shift dramatically.

I then naturally went down the road of spirituality. It is only the past two months where I have noticed on a huge scale that I am now healing. I've shifted my perception initially and now it's all about healing.

The strange thing is, as my awareness is growing all the time, things become louder, so it is as though I have no choice but to heal. I literally have no option. I have been put in situations, met certain people etc, who are making me face my conditioned beliefs I have had since being a little boy, and have carried with me to adulthood.

It's fascinating.

wanchain 09-01-2018 10:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OEN34
The strange thing is, as my awareness is growing all the time, things become louder, so it is as though I have no choice but to heal. I literally have no option.


Hi,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It's good to know that I am not alone in my path.

I am particularly curious though, on your comment about things becoming "louder." I do have such experiences, but not sure if what you said is what I think you said.

My situations, events, relationships, health problems, etc., will worsen (get louder such that they require my immediate attention). For a time I thought my healing is not working, that it is making me worse rather than better. But later I realized that it is because I am manufacturing my external landscape from a deeper and deeper part of me. When I heal the current layer, the layer beneath it will rise up to the surface. Strangely, the deeper layers are the more "potent" ones. So then I have to address them, sort of like you, I cannot ignore them, because they are just too drastic to overlook.

Wanchain

blossomingtree 10-01-2018 12:11 AM

Thank you wanchain, for your sharings.

Bows,

BT

OEN34 10-01-2018 09:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wanchain
Hi,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It's good to know that I am not alone in my path.

I am particularly curious though, on your comment about things becoming "louder." I do have such experiences, but not sure if what you said is what I think you said.

My situations, events, relationships, health problems, etc., will worsen (get louder such that they require my immediate attention). For a time I thought my healing is not working, that it is making me worse rather than better. But later I realized that it is because I am manufacturing my external landscape from a deeper and deeper part of me. When I heal the current layer, the layer beneath it will rise up to the surface. Strangely, the deeper layers are the more "potent" ones. So then I have to address them, sort of like you, I cannot ignore them, because they are just too drastic to overlook.

Wanchain


Exactly what you said is exactly what I meant by 'louder'. Past emotional trauma coming to the surface in various ways, various forms, but ultimately it's all emotion isn't it.

I couldn't have written it better myself :smile:

Seawolf 10-01-2018 01:52 PM

Congratulations on healing your trauma! Fortunately today there is increasing understanding of trauma in the therapy world and we have effective methods like the one you described. You're right that it seems to start with an awareness, which for many is difficult because PTSD is a separation from the body. Yet with practice using information from people like Peter Levine we can fairly quickly start to notice the body and the trauma trapped there.

Even more damaging is emotional trauma. Soldiers have incident-specific trauma, but those raised with the lesser known emotional abandonment trauma have a much harder time healing because it developed with the nervous system as children. The feelings of fear, guilt and shame are embedded deep within and have become part of the person, but I believe healing is still possible. Luckily this is finally being addressed and is now called Complex PTSD or Developmental Trauma.

They did a study of babies that didn't cry much, which the mothers assumed were just 'good' babies, but when checking the baby's heartrate, it was very high. The mother wasn't attuned to the baby or wasn't able to care for it properly, because of stress, her own trauma, social conditions, etc and the babies just gave up trying. It realized no one cared. Many people who grew up with alcoholics or mothers with mental disorders will experience cPTSD symptoms throughout life.

Before this kind of trauma was not addressed but now it's been thouroughly researched and will be included in the next DSM. Finally people will be able to get accurate diagnoses instead of being labeled with various disorders that do not get to the real issue -- developemtnal trauma.

wanchain 11-01-2018 08:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seawolf
Congratulations on healing your trauma!


Thanks! I am not 100% healed yet, but I feel more empowered, and that the past has less power over me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seawolf
You're right that it seems to start with an awareness, which for many is difficult because PTSD is a separation from the body.


Yes, I remember my consciousness was already very much out of my body by the time I was three.

This inability to be aware is also quite difficult in the sense that if the person is not self-aware, there is very little others can do even if they are aware, because the only person who can change ourselves is us. If someone doesn't realize that they need to change or heal, there is not much you can do to get them to realize it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seawolf
Even more damaging is emotional trauma. Soldiers have incident-specific trauma, but those raised with the lesser known emotional abandonment trauma have a much harder time healing because it developed with the nervous system as children. The feelings of fear, guilt and shame are embedded deep within and have become part of the person, but I believe healing is still possible. Luckily this is finally being addressed and is now called Complex PTSD or Developmental Trauma.


Yes, I also find developmental trauma very difficult to heal. It's not just the emotional release that has to take place, but also a renovation of the neurological pathways because they were not built properly to begin with. To unlearn and relearn something in your adulthood when you should have learned it in your childhood is extremely difficult.

Wanchain

Seawolf 12-01-2018 12:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wanchain
Yes, I also find developmental trauma very difficult to heal. It's not just the emotional release that has to take place, but also a renovation of the neurological pathways because they were not built properly to begin with. To unlearn and relearn something in your adulthood when you should have learned it in your childhood is extremely difficult.

Wanchain


Yes I know that personally too from experience, it's very difficult, the damage is so deep, but I'm getting alot out of kundalini yoga, emdr therapy and internal family systems therapy right now. I have a lot of hope because there's big strides happening now in healing this kind of trauma. Fortunately we also know now that the brain can be changed because of neuroplasticity. I would say the best researcher, author and speaker on developmental trauma now is Bessel Van Der Kolk. Obviously there's a long way to go but it's exciting they're finally finding things that work now.

pluralone 12-01-2018 05:28 PM

Nothing much to add here except to say this has been my experience as well.

Good for you, wanchain, for taking the necessary steps toward healing -- and for finding your way there on your own. For me, introspective/meditative exploration and discovery provide a much deeper, more accurate focus for healing than anything coming from an external source.

I'm not knocking therapy by any means. Not everyone has the resources required for introspection and meditation; circumstances don't always allow for that, in which case therapy is a better fit. One way isn't better over the other; what works best is simply a matter of individual needs.

wanchain 12-01-2018 07:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seawolf
Yes I know that personally too from experience, it's very difficult, the damage is so deep, but I'm getting alot out of kundalini yoga, emdr therapy and internal family systems therapy right now. I have a lot of hope because there's big strides happening now in healing this kind of trauma. Fortunately we also know now that the brain can be changed because of neuroplasticity. I would say the best researcher, author and speaker on developmental trauma now is Bessel Van Der Kolk. Obviously there's a long way to go but it's exciting they're finally finding things that work now.


Oh, it sounds like you use several different methods to help remodel your neurological pathways. I thought about that recently, because I feel that my progress is slow, and there is a big mountain for me to climb, so I was thinking perhaps it's time for me to shop for some other tools or maybe my healing efforts.

Hmm ... yes, I didn't come across this term neuroplasticity until now, but I know what you mean. I started my neurological remodeling last year, and I can feel the old pathways burning away--light buzzing sound in the head, burning or tingling sensation in my body, etc.

Wanchain


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