I’m about to make a really odd statement…I love trauma. I love trauma because it can heal. If you have depression, anxiety, OCD, bipolar, etc… we understand that more or less, that is a life sentence. However, when we start to realize that all of those things are actually just symptoms of the trauma we experienced, we can heal. We can shed those labels, those expectations for ourselves and our lives. We can find a new version of ourselves which isn’t so much new but the authentic version of ourselves we lost. I have yet to have someone walk through my door that hasn’t at least begun to find the other side and realize that they aren’t broken. Instead they have responded to their life in a way that when you think about it, makes sense. If I don’t think I deserve love, I will push people away or accept relationships that are less than fulfilling. If I think I’m not good enough, I will see my failure everywhere and be afraid of every misstep. If I feel out of control, I will try to control whatever I can. If my feelings never mattered, those feelings will come forward in moments that don’t necessarily make sense (there is a neuro biological reason for this I will discuss in a later post). If I’m afraid that people will see me how I see me, I will hid who I am.
The first step is being able to honor that what you have experienced is trauma and it doesn’t matter what others have gone through; your story is your own. It is okay that you are not okay. I can also tell you that, in my experience, the day to day, so called “small” things, have a greater impact than the “big” things. In the world of trauma, we talk about the day to day things as “little t” trauma’s where as the events that we all recognize as trauma (car accidents, assaults, etc) are called “big T” traumas. Take a moment to look at my weird illustration below (I know my artistic skills are something to be reckoned with 😉 ). Which looks harder to fight off?
Yeah, Big T is big, but you can see it, you know which direction it’s coming from. The little t traumas surround us. I also hope that in realizing and validating your own experience that I can challenge you to do the same for others. As easy as it is to discount our own experiences, it can be easy to look around us and think “man they have it so good, they have no reason to be upset, they just need to get over it, I’ve been through so much more”. This makes sense, if we don’t get to have our experience, if it isn’t big or bad enough to matter, then how could someone else have the right to something “not as big” . When we realize pain is pain, it is a lot easier to be compassionate to ourselves and those around us. One broken leg, one broken finger, a sprain, a headache…they all cause pain and ignoring it, only causes the pain to get worse.
Give yourself grace in your struggle, you are and have been doing the best you could do with what you had. What you have been through matters. Let yourself feel what you feel because that’s the beginning of our journey to healing.