When we hear the word “trauma“, we usually associate it with major traumatic events like natural disasters, sexual abuse, assault, extreme neglect, wars, etc. But that’s just acute trauma.
Trauma, like everything else, seems to fall on a spectrum. Those who we label as sufferers of trauma have merely crossed some arbitrary threshold that is used to categorize those that exhibit the most severe symptoms of trauma (then labeled as PTSD).
You are Traumatized
The reality is that almost everyone has suffered minor or major psychological traumas throughout their lives, and more detrimentally, in their childhood. Physical punishments, isolation, bullying, discrimination, emotional abuse, neglect, parents getting divorced, financial hardships, being stalked, public humiliation, death of a loved one — you and probably everyone you know has gone through at least one of these at some point. Even acute trauma is far more common than we think. (If the word trauma feels a bit loaded, feel free to replace it with “psychic wounds”.)
The reason why childhood trauma is particularly damaging is that as children we’re like sponges — absorbing everything around us, trying to relate to the world, and trying to understand the meaning of things. Also, the younger we are, the more incomplete is the development of our mental resources (i.e. self-esteem) that can help us cope with trauma. And so traumatic events get internalized into the self, fracturing our sense of self.
Here’s a list of some of the common symptoms experienced by people who have suffered major trauma —
- Difficulties with focusing and memory
- Difficulty sleeping and relaxing
- Cultivating a sense of confidence and personal agency
- Fear and anxiety around taking risks
- Learning new information and changing behavior
- Chronic fatigue and exhaustion
- Maintaining motivation and a sense of purpose
It’s not a coincidence that a lot of these symptoms play out in all our lives, just at different intensities. Since most of us are “functional” (by society’s standards), minor traumas tend to get overlooked. But repeated exposure to minor traumas can potentially cause even more emotional harm than exposure to a single major traumatic event.
Trauma and Addiction
Not only is attention-deficit a common symptom of trauma but so is hyperfocus. Both are a form of dissociation — an attempt to escape from the present moment and suppress emotions. This need to escape from reality forms the foundation for addictive behaviors. Research actually shows that substance abuse has a strong correlation to trauma.
“The root of addiction is not weakness of character, an ethical lapse, or a failure of will, but psychological trauma.” — Dr. Gabor Mate
Most addictions are obviously harmful. But some of them are covert and a bit respectable. One predominant “respectable addiction” is the incessant drive towards some goal or self-improvement. We see this time and again with artists. So many world-class performers who struggle with addiction. And so many have lost that battle. Their trauma fueled them to reach incredible heights. Before the inevitable hard fall.
The Perpetuation of Trauma
Trauma also forms the basis of much of the evil we see in the world. Wounded adults in our society unconsciously perpetuate their trauma, either directly or through social structures. They project their trauma onto people and everyday situations, seeing risks and dangers where there are none. This sense of insecurity then triggers physical and psychological violence, repeating the cycle. So remember, disturbing words and actions of other people mostly originate from a place of fear, not malice. Hurt people hurt people. Trauma begets trauma.
(Where did it all start then? Well, evolution was a long and hard journey. I guess you could say that as a species, humanity is still processing its evolutionary trauma. Perhaps it’s nobody’s fault. But we all need to take responsibility and heal ourselves to break this cycle of transgenerational trauma.)
Becoming Aware of Our Trauma
A lot (if not all) of your psychological hang-ups can be traced back to certain traumatic memories. But these memories either get repressed or get fuzzy over time. The traumatic experiences give birth to certain implicit beliefs which then become invisible forces behind your behavior — shaping what you think about yourself, how you react, how you approach life.
For instance, if you were bullied in your childhood, you’ll unconsciously operate under the belief that confrontations can put you in danger. So you’ll either avoid confrontations or get anxious when you’re forced into them. You basically continue to “relive” your psychological trauma in the real world without consciously acknowledging the memory at its root.
Obviously, the first step then is to access those memories in a well-developed context and integrate them into your conscious awareness. In the process, you’ll also be able to identify some of the underlying beliefs that run your life. This is a good starting point. But here’s the thing — it won’t do much for you.
“Okay I used to believe X because this happened to me, but now I’ve seen the light. It all makes sense. And I’m going to start believing Y instead” — This does not work. You cannot change your beliefs propositionally. It’s not about what you tell yourself, it’s about what you experience and have experienced. Your mind believes that which it has evidence for, an experiential felt sense of, and a lack of contradictory evidence against.
A stutterer does not stop stuttering because of his insight into the fact that he doesn’t vocalize properly. Pinpointing the nature or origin of your problem may give you insight into your psyche, but will usually fail to change the way you act and feel. I’m sure you know this from experience.
The Body Keeps the Score
Why can’t we integrate and process our trauma by simply becoming conscious of it? Why does it stay with us, deeply embedded into our psyche? Because trauma is not just “in your head”. It leaves a real, physical imprint on your body. The idea of trauma being “stored in your body” is not some mystical woo-woo. A lot of scientific research now validates that. Our brain and body are intricately intertwined.
When we experience a traumatic event, the flood of stress hormones subverts the part of our brain that encodes memories and makes them explicit. A split occurs in our awareness. The mind then reverts to a simpler method of recording signals and encodes traumatic memories as fragmented pictures or body sensations. These implicit memories are somatic in nature and stored in a state-dependent manner. This makes them very difficult to access or verbalize, and that’s why we can’t simply integrate our trauma by becoming conscious of it. And after trauma, the world is experienced with a different nervous system that has an altered perception of risk and safety. (Again, this happens to all of us, just at different intensities)
In general, when you’re stressed or anxious, your muscles tense up, storing up all the stress. It’s your body’s way of guarding against injury or pain. The idea is consistent with Chinese medicine, which says that repressed emotions, things that we can’t deal with, become stuck chi. Emotional trauma creates dense, energetic forms in our bodies. Perhaps this explains why some people randomly experience an emotional release and start crying during a massage or acupuncture session.
Symptoms of traumatic stress can also become somatized — ailments for which no clear physical basis can be found are ubiquitous in traumatized children and adults. This includes chronic back and neck pain, migraines, digestive problems, autoimmune disorders, chronic fatigue, and asthma.
Thinking can only take you so far
For the reasons we discussed above, rationality won’t help you much when it comes to dealing with your traumas. And that’s why top-down methods like cognitive therapy are not very effective when it comes to PTSD. At least, not as a standalone treatment. (Only about one in three PTSD patients who finish CBT research studies show “some improvement”.)
Thinking can only take you so far. Like, I know I won’t be bullied anymore. I know that I can now stand up for myself. Then why do I get anxious about confrontations? Because I don’t actually “know” those things. We have reduced “knowing” to one thing — having justified true beliefs. But knowing goes beyond that. (Our culture is very belief centric and that’s why we are so focused on ideologies)
There’s a kind of knowing involved in how to catch a ball, in knowing what it’s like to be in something you are participating in (like a relationship), knowing what your body is capable of. These kinds of knowing do not originate from beliefs. They arise from sensory experiences. We need to recover this sense of participatory knowing. Because healing depends on experiential knowledge. (Btw, that’s why psychedelics have high therapeutic potential — they enable these other kinds of knowing)
Healing your Trauma
The way to truly heal trauma is through bottom-up methods — physical experiences that deeply and viscerally contradict the helplessness, rage, or collapse that resulted from trauma. Your mind needs to experientially realize that the “threat” is gone. That you are not the same person living in the same time as when the traumatic event happened to you. That you’re now safe and capable of holding your own.
This can be done through treatment methods that integrate awareness with breath, movement, and touch. The idea is to draw out the sensory information that is blocked and frozen by trauma in a safe and controlled environment, allowing the mind to release the repressed energies and fully process the traumatic event. Somatic Experiencing and Psychomotor Therapy are two treatments that are specifically based on these ideas.
[…] more open to the value of other age-old, nonpharmacological approaches to health that have long been practiced outside Western medicine, ranging from breath exercises (pranayama) and chanting to martial arts like qigong to drumming and group singing and dancing. All rely on interpersonal rhythms, visceral awareness, and vocal and facial communication, which help shift people out of fight/flight states, reorganize their perception of danger, and increase their capacity to manage relationships.
Kolk, Bessel van der. The Body Keeps the Score
When one experiences a stressful situation repeatedly, they get trapped in a state of learned helplessness. Their mind comes to believe that they are unable to control or change the situation, so they stop trying — even when the opportunities for change become available.
Learned helplessness manifests as anxiety. And one of the things that’s very effective for treating anxiety is exposure therapy — becoming comfortable with the feared stimuli through small repeated exposures. Note what we’re trying to achieve with these exposures — making the mind and body experientially realize that the “situation” is safe.
You can resolve a lot of minor traumas this way, by putting yourself into uncomfortable situations. You may even fail at whatever you were attempting and still make progress because your mind realizes that the fears and imagined catastrophes in your head were irrational. These experiences provide contradictory evidence against deeply held problematic beliefs, allowing you to reconsolidate your belief system.
What can also make a big difference is changing your relationship with your body. You see that meme going around about how “men will literally join a gym and get jacked instead of going to therapy” ? Those men, inadvertently or maybe even intentionally, have the right idea. Speaking from experience, getting stronger helps you realize your ability to influence the physical reality, which then rubs off on your sense of self. It helps you develop the self-belief that you can use your will to control or change the situation.
But here’s something that can be even more effective — bringing about a more functional change in your physical abilities, like learning how to fight. Something like this can help people get back in touch with their ability to keep themselves safe in a way they might not have been able to choose in the past. It can then also help them develop the ability to assert themselves and set boundaries. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, perhaps the foremost expert on the science of trauma says that it’s possible that martial arts “maybe be among the very best treatments for traumatic stress” because they can reinstate a sense that the individual “is not a helpless tool of fate”.
Given what we have discussed so far, it should not come as a surprise that yoga is particularly effective when it comes to healing trauma. It integrates everything — movement, stretching, awareness, breathing — in a powerful way. A lot of the people who take up yoga for the first time have an intense emotional and physical experience. Because all that repressed energy comes to the surface. Over time, yoga helps people restore their interoceptive awareness — the ability to be perceptive of the inner sensations of the body. Trauma numbs this awareness. But as it returns, it brings hidden bits of personal knowledge into our conscious awareness.
Our sense of self is anchored in a vital connection with our body. We cannot truly know ourselves unless we can completely feel and interpret our physical sensations. The goal of all these “alternative” treatment methods is to re-establish the mind-body connection, allowing us to integrate our traumas and get more in touch with our true selves.
Transformation
As our visceral connection to our body is re-established, there is a newfound capacity to warmly love our self. We naturally begin to care for our health, our energy, and our time in a non-coercive way, as opposed to the feeling of “ugh I have to do this”.
This sets the stage for re-discovering and strengthening our sense of agency — the feeling of being able to control one’s actions, and through them, events in the world. If you remember, this (self-efficacy) is also one of the fundamental pillars of self-esteem. With that, what also comes back is our self-confidence and the capacity for playfulness and creativity, opening up many doors.
I used the words “comes back ” because that was our default state as kids, before our sense of self took a hit. We were naturally confident, curious, loving beings that reveled in the present moment. If it’s possible to get that back, should it not be our highest priority?
Closing Thoughts
Inner work, integrating your shadow, individuation, processing your trauma — all these ideas try to get at the same thing. I see value in the “trauma” framing because it gives us access to unique perspectives, psychological tools, and healing modalities that can unlock new levels of psychological growth.
We spend so much time discussing external achievements and how we can attain our goals more quickly, easily, and bigly. But very few people are discussing the possibility landscape of internal achievements.
Sure, if you’re mostly happy and your inner life is at a solid 7/10, you wouldn’t feel the need to dig deeper and put in the effort to do elaborate inner work. Which is fair, but also a travesty in my opinion. Because extremely amazing things are possible. Have you ever thought about what a 10/10 state of existence would look and feel like? What if it’s possible to get there? What if your idea of “7” is actually a 4?
If you’re ambitious about what you want to achieve existentially, I implore you to investigate your psychic wounds and find a way to heal them — because that’s the most powerful lever you can pull for your happiness.
Relevant Plug: Self-Esteem — The Foundation of Your Life
Thank you for reading. Most of the content on this website has emerged from conversations with readers like you. Every Sunday, I send out an email dissecting some aspect of the human mind.
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