How Trauma Reveals Our Truth
This article is part of our weekly TGIF newsletter series. To get these in your inbox weekly, sign up below:
Hi, community:
I’m so excited to share with you this week’s content. I’ve been mulling over this for some time. I also wanted to share an update that these newsletters are going to become less frequent. I’m prioritizing some immediate relationships and deeper study.
As I’m inspired, I will share with you. But as my 2022 word prompts me (integrity), I only want to create and send out content that I am deeply invested and proud of. Thank you, as always, for being here.
TOOLS
One of my favorite doctors in this field, Gabor Maté, came out with a new book last month - The Myth of Normal. This may be his most important book yet, as it combines so many insights from previous publications of his. An important thing he says is, “The more you see the truth, the more compassion becomes a natural attribute of how you move in the world”.
One of the truths we must realize, painfully, is this: When we identify ourselves as the problem then we don’t to see the failing of the environment we’re in. To see the toxicity of our environment, would crush us.
In the Myth of Normal, Dr. Maté helps us understand how the pace of this world and our lack of sincere connections has resulted in prolific on-going, chronic trauma. Trauma, can be described in two ways: Big T Trauma and little t traumas.
Big T Trauma is stuff that is simply egregious and tragic: abuse, neglect, death of a caregiver, family conflict, even natural disasters, severe medical events, and intergenerational trauma caused from oppression, genocide, or war. Little t traumas are actually quite universal in nature. These are the subtle, chronic events from bullying from peers, hostile work environments, microagressions, conditional love and criticism.
Furthermore, renown somatic practitioner Peter Levine says, “Trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled, denied, misunderstood, and untreated cause of human suffering.”
Both types of trauma have a singular result: a feeling of a lack of safety. We feel this in our bodies, psyches and manifestations through thoughts, actions, personalities and psychological disorders.
GRATITUDE
Due to some traveling and conflicting meetings, I hadn’t seen my therapist in over a month. Those familiar with the process know how that can feel when you walk into a session ready to burst with things to talk about due to the length of time it’s been. Oftentimes, I’ve found myself carrying on thinking, “I’m fine, I can stretch out sessions”, only to find myself at the point of unraveling just before my next session.
What I always remind myself in these situations is that even if on a day-to-day basis I am fine, what I am missing when I miss therapy is a safe, unbias place to talk and process things. It can get lonely to reflect independently for weeks on end. Many times what I need to process is not appropriate to share with my spouse, best friend, or family.
I’m grateful for my therapist’s flexibility to meet me where I am. She holds my spot even when I have conflicts and is ready to hold space for me when I come back. In a world that is quite unpredictable, she is one of my constants. It’s a tremendous relationship that I feel so lucky to have. I hope everyone can find that constant, supportive, UNBIASED (this is important!) support in their lives. It’s so important.
So in therapy this week, we circled back around to my own little t traumas. I had a few situations come up that made me feel really vulnerable, unsafe and mistrusting myself. I was beating myself up. Punishing myself. I was looking at myself as the problem instead of the environment. Now, it doesn’t mean that I was not at fault. I could have done better, absolutely. And with awareness, reflection and therapy, I can see opportunities to do better.
However, what had come up was that the behavior I was punishing myself for was some of my early embedded trauma-informed traits. These Parts have been protecting me by overcoming feelings of disconnection, unworthiness and insecurity by in that moment, allowing me to feel like I belong, loved and safe.
Dr. Maté consistently references back to his mentor, A.H. Almaas’s quote, “Being yourself is the greatest gift to mankind”. However, when we are acting in response to our traumas, we are not ourselves. And so how can we locate ourselves? How do we find out how to be ourselves? What is our own truth?
INNOVATION
One effective way to find our true nature, as A.H. Almaas touts himself, is using the gift of the Enneagram as a method of self-inquiry. This is a tool we use at Reset as well. Through understanding our personality traits through the Enneagram, we see the Part of ourselves activated out of our basic fears and most of us have the same deep fear: that we are not enough.
As Enneagram researcher, Russ Hudson says, “The enneagram does not put you in a box. It shows you the box you are already in without realizing it and how to get out of it.” See, due to our fears, traumas and disconnection from our true essence of Self, what personality have we cultivated to feel safe and loved?
When we start to dismantle this protectionary system of personality traits, we start to see ourselves as we really are. Sandra Maitit, another Enneagram author states, that the work of the enneagram is “Finding a way to you get out of it, above it, beyond it, into the nondual reality of Being.”
As we understand our traumas and acknowledge the legitimacy of our traumas, we can begin to shed light on the ways we have continually put ourselves in our own little box. We all have a deep down feeling of not being good enough and we’re forever trying to overcompensate for it. But as Dr Maté famously says, “Trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside of you.”
FEELS
So here’s the thing: presence is our true essence. I am not my body or mind, I am me. I am my present nature and that is completely resilient, completely indestructible because it is not this physical form or what has happened to me.
Unfortunately, 90% of humans are not liberated that way. We get stuck to our traumas as defining our personalities, ways of interacting in the world, with each other and reacting to situations. We embody our traumas so deeply that we see no separation.
However, there is a way out of this. As we cultivate presence, we use the power of resilience to get us there. Resilience through presence is the ability to ride the waves of discomfort, pain and challenge without losing our ground or being destroyed. This is a quality of fluidity that allows us to experience non-attachment to what is happening so we can maintain our integrity, compassion and wisdom.
The most powerful way to ride these waves is to be in lovingness. Love is never, ever conditional. Love, in it’s truest form, is an essence of complete support, tenderness and grace. And yet, most of us only know conditional love - towards ourselves and others - received from ourselves and others.
Unfortunately, it makes sense. Human beings are born with the drive of instinct to survive, to relate and procreate - the primary instincts to survive and create more life. And then, throughout our lives and early childhood our instincts are channeled in different ways. Sometimes helpful, healthy and loving, or sometimes fear based, anger, envy, comparison based, and power based. Our culture is based on the ladder.
The progression is to cultivate a way of going through this world of true love. Mindfulness is a wonderful way to practice this as it challenges our auto-pilot (societal normed) behaviors and instead allows us the space to act from a place of true love - gratitude, kindness, compassion, patience, joy. In doing this, we are present to our own true self.
The more we operate this way, the more we learn to love and appreciate all of us and all of those around us for who we are totally. We see the preciousness of ourselves and those around us. Without true present, lovingness, we wouldn’t care. Which is why living mindfully present as our true loving selves is so vitally important, especially right now, when we’re in such a fragile state in this world.
I believe we’re also at an inflection point. We all have an opportunity, an urgency to turn inwards. For it is the turning inward toward the truth that reveals our true selves. Love.
And true love, changes the world.
Click here to learn more about trauma therapy.
