Trauma is in Everyone’s Lives

I used to think the word "trauma" was something to be avoided. Growing up, trauma was one of those topics that were never spoken about. I'm sure the majority of us felt the same way.

As a highly sensitive person, this really resonated with me, as I discussed with @kimvkeane in one of our podcast episodes. We talked about the difficult times in our lives as well as the light at the end of the tunnel.

The Stories We Tell

We all have stories to tell and just like Kim, there are moments in our lives where it feels like we’re organically flowing from one thing to another. Kim has always wanted to be a teacher growing up and has never thought that she’d be an entrepreneur and be the person she’s meant to be. All her traumatic experiences and the burnout she experienced in her career brought her in alignment with being a coach. 

It's like, sometimes those lowest moments like hitting rock bottom end up setting us up for some of the highest moments. 

Knowing Our Traumas

It’s truthfully hard to get to the point where you feel fulfilled. 

A lot of us are probably in some places where we feel that we’re just partially getting what we need from all aspects of our lives. Eventually, these events in our lives will wound us up into realizing we’ve obsessively done a lot of things that don’t really satisfy us. We seek validation by working out every day. We became obsessed with doing things that we don’t really need as a whole person. 

All these things are sometimes caused by our childhood traumas or past traumatic experiences. And sometimes, LIFE takes us to rock bottom to realize what these traumas that we feel ashamed of, made us do.

The Need to Break Down for an Exit

We might need to break down first, to feel the rush to look for an exit. What we experience in life will just play out for us. It will help us start to untangle the web of mess we got ourselves into. 

For a lot of people with trauma, negative thoughts are not a new thing. Oftentimes, there is this negative storyline that we’re always gonna be this low, that we’re corrupting everything, and that some people might despise us for something we thought we’ve done. 

Hitting rock bottom will lead us into seeking help. Only by then will we be able to realize what’s wrong. Knowing that everything our trauma caused us to think is untrue, feels freeing. 

Don’t be too hard on yourself and be ashamed of your traumas. We all experience it. And we don’t always get stuck low. There is a place for us to breathe and unload the crap we’ve been carrying all this time. 

Redirect Your Stories

Redirect your stories and look at yourself in the mirror through them. Taking a look back at our lives in detail will help us notice these patterns that we do all the time. Instead of beating yourself up and invalidating the negative patterns caused by trauma, tap into that. Is this a pattern? Why am I always doing that? What can I do about it? 

Ignoring these patterns will just make them stay with you longer. You can let go of the stress by identifying the pattern and being kind to yourself about it. 

Accept the good and the bad. Recognize these negative patterns and stop the loop. Change might happen and it might feel unusual and scary, but keep in mind that it’s just like how nature works. Nature eventually changes, adapts through time, and grows. 

I used to think that trauma was scary, but after joining the healing community, I realized that "trauma" might be something we could use to change the world. 

You may listen to my podcast episode with Kim V Keane here, to discover more about our journey.