Is Trauma a physical wound? Is Trauma just a bad memory? Is Trauma energetic dissonance? Is Trauma the same thing as bad karma? What is Trauma?
The Buzz Word in 2022: T-R-A-U-M-A
In the spring of 2022, many countries worldwide re-opened or lifted the covid-related restrictions, and many of us felt enormous relief. But something else was not quite "lifted" from us: the trauma of dealing with the intense fear of the unknown and uncertainty. Also, many of us experienced past trauma surfacing during the pandemic, largely triggered by the fear we experienced during the 24-16 months period.
I started my hypnotherapy practice only a few months before the first lockdown/self-quarantine was initiated in the U.S. in the Spring of 2020. So, I was surprised by the number of inquiries coming through my website looking for solutions for their anxiety. And what was more surprising to me was that everyone was experiencing childhood trauma of fear of not belonging, feelings of losing control, helplessness, and lack of love and support.
Traumas come in many forms and shapes, but one thing is certain: everyone has traumas.
What is Trauma?
In short, trauma is our survival mechanism, not the event itself, but it is far more than just a survival tool. Trauma also means the trapped and unprocessed energy in the body. Trauma is formed by strong emotional experiences such as seeing or hearing a terrifying incident, feeling or experiencing danger or threats, and feeling intense fear, anger, or sadness embedded in the subconscious mind as the baseline data later to create the personalized protective alert system for better survival in the future. Trauma could stem from a simple experience, such as not receiving the attention you needed when you fell down when you were 5 years old; maybe your caregiver completely neglected your needs for assurance, comfort, support, and care. There is no greater or lesser trauma than others; all traumas equally affect one's life. Have you seen an angry or frightened cat with his/her
back hair standing up, pupils dilating, mouth wide open, and showing teeth being ready to attack? But once his/her safety is confirmed, shake it off and walk away as if nothing happened. This is a normal sympathetic nervous system response to danger and threat and the right way to release the strong emotional and physical energy charge immediately after experiencing the event. But let's say this cat decided not to shake it off to release the energetic charge running through his/her nervous system? It has to go somewhere for the moment until it gets the chance to be released. Can you imagine this cat being like this in the image for hours, days, weeks, months, and years even after his/her safety is confirmed? That's crazy, you might say. But that might be exactly what you are doing to yourself: Keep living in the traumatic event even after your safety was confirmed over and over.
Is Trauma Always Visible?
Not always, however, it shows up in life in various forms such as personality, relationship patterns, health issues, or mental inabilities. From the esoteric or metaphysical perspective, trauma looks like a highly charged energy ball. The energy ball (of trauma) resides inside of your gut-lining tissues, muscles, fascia, and the membrane of cells. As life goes on, this energy ball gets flattened, spread out, and stored even deeper into the emotional bodies, and every time you experience similar emotion, now you're familiar with the energetic signature; therefore, your mind and body quickly react to the (potential similar) threat, either by further suppressing and avoiding it for all costs, or expressing your fear negatively. The more you experience this particular suppressed energetic charge from the past, the more your conscious mind attaches negative meaning to the emotional/energetic experience. Now your trauma is operating from inside at the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind levels. The invisible, highly charged fireball is now showing up in your reality, whether as stress, anxiety, depression, weight gain, repeated relationship patterns, lack of confidence, addictions, diseases, or negative habits. That’s trauma.
Should I work on my stress triggers first? Can I avoid traumas?
Sure, the stress management skills are important and helpful, but that’s only the surface level, as the tip of the iceberg, and the trauma is the large part of the iceberg under the water, and as long as you don’t process the traumas, they will resurface by stress triggers caused by different people or situations over and over again. So the shortcut to eliminate your stress triggers is to deal with the deeper work, process and transform traumas and be free from the past.
So needless to say that avoiding facing the traumas is avoiding the opportunity to transmute them to transform your life. And here's the answer to why avoiding traumas would not serve you. So, there are 2 phases in experiencing a trauma; the first phase is obviously when you are experiencing and surviving through the trauma, the second is when you're reliving in the past, which happens again and again mostly all your life. The first phase could be a short as 15 seconds. But the second phase of revisiting and reliving the traumas could go on and on for 10, 20, 30 years, or perhaps for the entire life. Why would we waste our precious lifetime dealing with past traumas and get stuck in the same place? If we understand that both traumas and Karma are our opportunity to transmute the energy and frequency of trauma and Karma, so that we can empower ourselves with the new and transformed energy and frequency to start a brand new wave that brings you health, happiness, love, and abundance into your life. Then, why not face it now? Also, if you did not transmute your past traumas before you get married or having children, they will most likely show up in your relationship or family dynamic later on.
How to Release Trauma:
Step 1: Understanding your traumas; If you don't know what you're dealing with, you can't have the solutions for the problem you'd like to solve.
Step 2: Recognize that you're responsible for your life. You cannot transform traumas or stop Karma if you're in the victim mode. As long as you are blaming someone else, you are giving up on your powerful healing abilities. "But he cheated on me" "But my mother abused me" "But my ex-wife was a bitch" "But the government screwed me," whatever that might be, you cannot hold anyone accountable for your healing paths. This is your life, you own it, claiming the ownership of your life comes to hand to hand with taking the responsibility of owning your life. If you want to be free from the past, you must own the past as a part of you, so you have the power to transmute it. If you’re making others accountable for your pain, you’re giving the opportunity to heal yourself. Start owning your past, start claiming your ownership of your life, become a sovereign owner of your life by educating yourself, understanding how life works, what was that you did to attract what you attracted, learn how to listen to your own needs, and most importantly, practice to be kind, understanding, acceptable and supportive to yourself.
Step 3: Practice forgiveness by expanding your view and observe yourself, your emotions, other people's perspective, the karmic cycle in your life in a panoramic view. Try to expand your peripheral view to see your life from a wider view. When you're stuck in the narrowed viewfinder, all you can see is what's in the right front of you, not behind you, not above you, not below you, not around you. If you're not seeing your life from the 360-degree view, you're only seeing a portion of your life. Having a wider view allows you to forgive yourself and others because you can see more. You can see the person who hurt you was also hurt. You can see who humiliated you was also deeply wounded. But more importantly, you can see yourself with better understanding, more kindness, and love. Forgiveness is not a giveaway, actually quite the opposite; it's an act of empowerment to bring your power back, forgiveness allows you to bring the power back that was given away to someone or taken away by someone.
Step 4: Work with a professional of your choice to understand what unresolved trauma you hold in your heart and start the journey of processing it, releasing it, transmuting it, and transforming your life in a safe and supportive environment. A skillful professional can assist you to make sure you are going to the right passage in the most sufficient manner so you can start living the life you always wanted as soon as possible.
Step 5: Be friends with your emotions and learn how to process any emotions in the most kind, supportive, understanding way so you can release past traumas and prevent creating new traumas in your life.
For more information and tools for Traumas and Karma, tune in to my new podcast with my dearest hypnotherapist friend, Conny Cruz, on Anchor.fm (you can tune in from Spotify, Breaker, Google Podcast, Sound Cloud, Apple Podcast as well). Comments and questions are welcome at 2NHpodcast@protonmail.com
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