Trauma is hidden behind Protectors

Think about what it means to be protect yourself. As a society we spend so much of our time protecting ourselves. If you look around your home, many of us design the inside of our home to be what we want, then we set about protecting it. We use cameras, alarm systems and other mechanisms to protect what we have inside our home.

When we are in the process of putting our home together, we enjoy every minute of it, yet sometimes, while we are building our home, something breaks. Maybe it’s a dish we truly loved, or it’s a couch that broke. Our house is a place that is a representation of who we are, as an individual, as a couple and as a family. Each part of our home is known to us; which matters because our home is also part of who we are. Why does this all matter?

The reason for considering our home as a whole is quite simple. When parts of your home go missing or get broken, we tend to try and shrug it off, and most of the time we can, yet sometimes, we just can’t. That broken dish, broken couch, hole in the wall or even when a thief takes items from your home, all of these actions can have the potential for becoming a trauma in your life. In order to make sure this does not happen again, we as people tighten the protections around us, and we focus more protection. To the point, that our society spends much of its time protecting itself from the fear that may or may not be real. This protection occurs because the reality in our brain has setup a trauma which needs to be protected.

Trauma can be better understood as an experience that we go through which remains with us long after the issue has since passed. To the point, a trauma is not always an event that is so significant we know it is a trauma. Trauma is unique to each person and is a separate experience for each person. This means that each person is protecting their own house and are doing so by protecting situations that are unique to each other.

We do need to know what trauma is. The reality of the world we live in has many traumas for us throughout our life that we deal with. Sometimes we are able to work through a trauma ourselves, yet most often, the difficulty of a trauma is that the actual event causes our mind and our bodies to react. You may feel that you have depression or anxiety, which is causing your life choices to be questioned. You may find that you are over eating and or spending too much money, which alone are not symptoms of trauma, yet when we are doing things to hide our pain (alcohol, drugs, over working….) and adding in doing these actions whenever you find yourself up against a proverbial wall, you are more than likely helping yourself to hide from the reality of a trauma that has affected you.

To this point, anxiety is a psychological reaction to actions that are occurring around you. The anxiety itself is a protector from something that is hiding. You tend to freeze, or you rush ahead to get away from what is coming toward you. If you find yourself not able to deal with a situation, this is not just simply anxiety, this is by definition a trauma that is being activated. You may have heard of PTSD. The reality of PTSD is the reaction (Anxiety) from an action (trauma) that is being recreated. Your reaction is quite simply you reliving the experience. The reason you replay the experience is as much of your brain trying to make sense of the action, as it is you trying to deal with the guilt and the shame of the situation.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation that you have broken up with someone, and then you see them in public. Do you go up to them and say hi? Or do you try to sneak away, sharing with your mind that its easier to just slink away than face this person? The reality of this interaction can then get replayed in your mind, which is the trauma reintroducing itself. This is a mini trauma. This is not a major issue in your life, yet it is one that you may feel guilt over, or even angst that you broke up with this person. Consider the same situation and you married this person. What happens if you get divorced? There are many reasons for divorce, which most often leaves at least one of the people in a trauma. Assuming the people get divorced and have children, then each phone call, text or interaction could be a reminder of a past that the traumatized person has to deal with. Each phone call, text or interaction is an anxiety which triggers the trauma. The traumatized person carried on with their day, yet in reality they do so with a part of their fear brain extremely active.

Trauma does not always shut a person down; instead it activates part of the brain and the body and signals to the person systems of fear, pain and anguish. The more the anguish and pain activate the faster a person moves toward a full on meltdown trauma that we as people believe trauma to be.

Trauma, as I shared above is protected by the brain so that we can continue to move on with our lives. The question you may be wondering could be, if the brain is protecting us from the trauma, why should we care about it and do we need to deal with it. The simple answer to this, is the reality of where we are now as a society. The world went through a trauma (Covid). Many a person has shared that this had no affect on them, which may be the conscious truth. Whether its political, emotional or psychological, the reality for each person is that Covid was a time when trauma was at its highest. Each of us hid the trauma and carried on living. You are not aware of the trauma in you, yet you may see someone couch and turn your head that much faster, or a sneeze, does that do it? Do you see someone else with a mask and you question their life choices? What about someone who shares with you that they are or are not vaccinated, do you feel that deep within your mind. If the answer to any of this is person, then covid trauma found its way into your psychology, and may have setup camp with protections around it.
The divorce I mentioned earlier. Did you get divorced after realizing the person you are leaving is not the person you married. As you move through life after the relationship has ended, do you question your own actions, do you wonder where you went wrong, do you question the honesty of others? All of these examples are people who have taken on a trauma. Then you say, none of this is me, I am over them and looking for another person to be with. You need time to heal and move through the stages of grief, and if you are not working on healing, then you are still dealing with a trauma, yet you are dealing with denial, which is another system of anxiety and trauma.

The point of this article is to share with you that life is filled with trauma within you. Some of the trauma is easily managed when you look internally and work on the these trauma’s (mini trauma). The trauma’s that have occurred which are buried deep within you and are affecting your every day (most days), then you need to work with someone who is able to guide you through it all. Learning to be vulnerable is very hard to do, and the more there is trauma within you, then the more you will find yourself buried in traumas, and the more you will create protections around you, yet your reality will be filled with shame, guilt, anguish and pain.

As you get through reading this article, consider to yourself; am I living a life of anxiety, depression, fear and or guilt. Why not take care of your protectors, why not find ways to honor them, and move through the darkened forest of anguish and pain. Working on healing your protectors who will then help you to heal your trauma, will leave you living a life that is filled with more vulnerability, happiness and honesty.
Consider the power of healing your trauma’s, for they are typically the part of your life causing you the most pain.