Most everyone experiences traumatic events in their lives. Sometimes that might look like one specific scenario, a series of events, or repeated exposure to distressing occurrences such as poverty or emotional or physical abuse. In the wake of trauma, it’s common to absorb the experience into your mind, your body, and your soul as something that is a part of you.
Trauma is often expressed through an emotional reaction although it can have physical symptoms as well. The American Psychological Association explains it as follows:
“Immediately after the event, shock and denial are typical. Longer term reactions include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea. While these feelings are normal, some people have difficulty moving on with their lives.”
American Psychological Association
Personally, I think if something feels traumatic, then it is. There’s no reason to try to see if your pain fits into anyone else’s definition or if it’s distressing enough to deserve attention. If it affects you, it affects you. It’s really that simple. There’s no need to judge your experience and your reactions to it.
Even if someone else went through the experience with you, every single person processes things differently. And each one deserves respect and nonjudgement.
Coach Misty
How does your mind, body, and soul store trauma?
“If you don’t make peace with your past, it will keep showing up in your present.” – Dr. Wayne Dyer
Trauma can you make you question everything you think you know about life, and about yourself. It can make you feel unsafe, unstable, unlovable, untrusting, etc. To protect yourself, you might develop habitual emotional reactions, experience ongoing stress, or lose a connection with who you are and your place in the world.
Your brain and your emotions will store the memory of a traumatic experience in more ways that you might realize. For example, with significant trauma, a touch, a sound, a smell, etc. can all trigger memories, which then flow into emotions and possibly even a physical response.
“Here’s the problem (and this is important): your body cannot tell the difference between physical and emotional danger. … We need to address the physical in order to solve the problem. So the issue is twofold: we need to bring the body’s response down, calm down the hormonal messengers who are telling you that you are in danger and then we can work on the mental and emotional aspects.”
– Jennifer Sweeton Psy.D., To Heal Trauma, Work with the Body
Going another layer deeper, memories, emotions, and stress are all energetic. Everything that is energy is processed by your soul because your spirit is the energetic essence of who you are. Even if you took my mind and body away, my soul, and all of its experiences, would still exist. This is why I adamantly believe in looking at the problem holistically.
How can you move forward?
Please keep in mind that this list is not exhaustive. It’s meant to be a starting place.
1. Enlist the help of a professional.
First and foremost, I think it’s extremely important to work with a licensed mental health professional who can help you revisit past trauma. It is nearly impossible to process something so extraordinarily impactful on your own because you can’t really be objective about something that is still haunting you. There is also the clinical side to treatment that a therapist or psychologist can bring to the healing process. Finally, sometimes the trauma produces serious issues such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which in my opinion should only be processed with the help of a professional due to a number of safety variables.
Sometimes we need more help than we think we do because we can’t fully recognize the layers when we are in the middle of living it.
Coach Misty
2. Recognize the stages of emotional healing.
There are many different schools of thought on the number of stages of emotional healing and also what those steps actually are. Here is a basic list of what I have found to be the most important as a foundation.
- Self-awareness: How do you really feel?
- Non-judgment: Do not judge how you feel, what you need, and how it’s impacting you.
- Allowance/Acceptance: Allow yourself to put the ego that’s protecting you aside to embrace what your truth is. Accept that you are safe now and are no longer in the state of a victim.
- State of flow: Remain in a state of flow knowing that healing doesn’t have a timetable. No one likes to go through discomfort, but sometimes you have to walk through the fire to come out on the other side. Your plan may shift and change based on whatever it is that you discover and what your needs are.
- Patience: Be patient with your process.
- Trust: Trust that you can and will heal. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re doing your best to smooth out your edges. You may have days when you feel like you’re going backwards. This is when it’s even more important to trust your process.
- Practice being unattached: Develop a mind, body and soul practice to help you mindfully navigate your day-to-day. Just because something has always been one way, it doesn’t mean that it always has to be that way. Detach from the pattern mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually by choosing to let go of what you’ve been holding on to.
- Retrain your mind, body and soul: Reframe negative thought habits by reminding yourself that you’re safe and that the thoughts that feel distressing are a part of past experience; they not who you are now. Take a few deep breaths (or as many as you need) to help release that energy and calm your nervous system. Imagine your mind, body, and soul coming into alignment in a safe place, literally feeling the steady ground beneath you.
3. Mind, body, and soul healing meditation
There is a traditional Hawaiian meditation for forgiveness and release called Hoʻoponopono. It’s simple, but it can be powerfully impactful.
Hoʻoponopono is a series of four mantras. They can either be repeated in a loop or you can work on healing something by envisioning a person or an event. If you choose to envision a specific person or event, take your time with each mantra sitting with each one for as long as you need allowing whatever comes up to flow. This is a time to be free of judgment and resistance. Allow your body and your thoughts to relax just as you would in a typical meditation. This is a space to heal.
Note: Use this meditative exercise with a professional if you wish to use it to work through something exceptionally traumatic including anything that you feel you may have PTSD associated with. Please, never process something like that on your own.
- I’m sorry.
- Please forgive me.
- Thank you.
- I love you.
Again, I want to reiterate that trauma and healing look different for every single person.
The best thing you can do for yourself is to accept your process because that non-resistance alone will help ease your mind, calm your nerves, and free your spirit.
Coach Misty
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