The first step to healing from trauma: ADMIT YOU HAVE SUFFERED TRAUMA AND YOU ARE POWERLESS OVER THE TRAUMA.
If you have ever lived through physical or verbal abuse, neglect or abandonment, you may have told yourself “I will never let that happen again”. Your need for control in all aspects of your life is fueled from the out of control feeling your childhood left you feeling. You also want to feel safe, and if anyone threatens that safety, the powerlessness you feel is so deep and profound, you start to push them away convinced they are just like your abuser.
When you believe that you have control to prevent further trauma from happening, then you are also subscribing to this idea that the trauma was your fault to begin with. Abuse is NEVER the fault of the person that is being abused. I repeat, ABUSE IS NEVER YOUR FAULT!
Trauma survivors are victims and very much powerless over the abuse. People who have suffered trauma are powerless to change the events surrounding their abuse and do not have the ability to change the past. The powerlessness we are left feeling makes us hypervigilant about staying in control because we want to make sure it never happens again!
Manifestations of Trauma
Some of us become vocal, loud and proud (this is me). We make sure nobody ever “takes advantage of us”. We make sure everyone takes us seriously. We were never heard or understood as a child. We don’t like being dismissed or ignored. We desperately want our voices to be heard. Anytime we feel “unheard” or “unseen” as an adult, we are teleported back to being that scared, sad, hurt child who just wanted to be seen as being innocent and worthy of love. Little comments throughout the day, comments that are seemingly inconsequential, can take someone suffering from the impacts of trauma back to their war zone, armed and ready to fight. We are trying to control every situation and want everyone to know “we will NEVER be made to feel that way again”. You lose a sense of reality between what your brain tells you is the truth vs. what you’re being told is a lie. “You’re not good enough. You don’t deserve nice things. You are a bad person”. You respond explosively during conflict to those you are closest to because you cannot separate the trauma from the past from the events of today. Your reflex becomes responding to all situations as a threat to mitigate any opportunity for you to ever hurt like your abuser hurt you. We are prepared for danger to hit at any given moment.
You learn to silence out the trauma from your past and become numb to the pain of it all. Your ability to numb the hurt & pain also prevents you from experiencing real peace and joy. And then comes the guilt. You know you are blessed. You have a wonderful husband, wife, partner, etc. You have beautiful children, grandchildren, amazing friends, a great job, a house, a car, food on the table, etc. Your life isn’t bad. But why do I feel so sad, depressed, hurt, enraged, anxious, etc.
Fellow trauma sufferers, hear me when I tell you, it’s not your fault. The feelings you have in your brain are not your fault. The worry, despair, anger and sadness is not your fault. Trauma is caused by the result of a natural system. It’s not that your system is broken; rather it’s functioning perfectly based on the circumstances in which you were raised. My husband made this very clear to me. “Your brain is not sick, Abigail. It was just wired to think that way due to your environment”. A brain that is submerged in trauma is changing to adapt to high stress situations which is NECESSARY for your survival. Brain scans show childhood trauma can cause shrinkage in the hippocampus, the area linked to memory storage and retrieval. Severe trauma, like PTSD or complex trauma, can leave children in near-constant fear and anxiety, always on the verge of fight-flight-or freeze mode. The result can be a constant release of stress hormones in the body, harmful enough to alter architecture in the developing brain. The constant state of high-stress can alter the amygdala, the brain’s fear-processing center, and affect the endocrine and immune systems. The amygdala can become hyper-sensitive because of all the cortisol being released, and the pre-frontal cortex works less hard than usual. This change can be seen on brain scans by showing high levels of activity in the amygdala and low levels in the pre-frontal cortex in the brain that has suffered complex trauma or PTSD. It is not surprising therefore that you are unable to think clearly, and your brain feels foggy because the pre-frontal cortex is not firing normally. Trauma affects our memory making our mind and body feel as if it is still under threat. When you are trying to sleep your mind and body still thinks and feels as if it is trying to fight off a potential threat. This can result in fatigue caused by the stress or fight or flight response being permanently turned on.
It took me a long time to admit I suffered trauma. My husband was the first to point it out. He is a big part of my journey to healing. My husband lost his father in high school and was told “he wasn’t dealing with his death in a healthy way”. His goal was to become a high school guidance counselor so that he could help kids understand there is not 1 right way to process a trauma in your life. He did go on to become a high school counselor before becoming Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the Kentucky Department of Education. Because of his background, he is well versed on trauma and teaches others about being “trauma informed”. He was able to see something that I couldn’t. I believe he was able to see me through the eyes of Jesus and he saw beyond my trauma.
Even though my husband pointed out my trauma, I didn’t admit or really subscribe to being a trauma sufferer until a therapist, a man who I know was given a spiritual gift to help others dealing with trauma, told me “Abigail, you have PTSD.” When I finally admitted to myself that I am a trauma sufferer, and I am indeed POWERLESS over the trauma, I was able to really start to heal.
By accepting the trauma of my past, I was able to work with my therapist to process the deep traumas that I had experienced. Instead of being stored as a complete memory, trauma usually plays in the sufferers heads as a flashback(s). Traumatic experiences are thought to be stored as fragments of pictures, which my therapist called “snapshots”. Our brain, as a coping mechanism, locks these “snapshots” of our trauma deep in our brain to avoid processing the emotion associated with the trauma. However, you can never be free from the catastrophic effects the trauma have on your life until you process the emotions associated with your trauma. You must free these trapped fragments of the traumatic memories by tapping into your right brain, the hemisphere dominant for processing negative emotions, like anger, fear, disgust and sadness. Until your trauma is fully processed on an emotional level, you will never be able to give yourself grace which will prevent you from really healing. And, you can never fully process that trauma until you have admitted your are powerless over the trauma!
We cannot change the past, no matter how desperately we want to. Stop fighting the trauma. Accept it. Process it. Grieve it. This is the key to helping unlock the impacts trauma has on your brain. If you don’t admit you are powerless over the trauma, you will re-enact it in your head over and over again, leaving you with feelings of loneliness, depression, anxiety, worry and feeling like the “victim” all the time.
Say it with me:
Hello, my name is ____________. I am powerless over the trauma that happened in my past. I could not prevent it. I cannot go back and change it. I take my power back by realizing I am safe now and it wasn’t my fault.
By accepting the powerlessness of our past, we can start to heal and learn to LIVE in the present! With a therapist, the right medical intervention, digging into the word of God and being blessed with a community of people who have had the ability to see past my trauma, I am learning to live and enjoy the present.
I leave you with this:
Let the Healing Begin!
To all the souls that are hurting, God will bring you grace.
To all the souls that are searching, God will show His face.
To all the souls feeling trapped, freedom will soon come.
To all the souls who’ve lost their map, the Spirit will bring a new one.
His face, His hands, His feet, His heart we are all designed to know.
His lap, His hug, His laugh, His caress we can all begin to show.
Join the movement; join the song of freedom from our pain.
It’s Christ who’s come, it’s He who was slain to break EVERY Stinking Chain!
Colson, Denise C. (2016). Break every stinking chain! Healing for Hidden Wounds. McDonough, GA: TraumaEducation.com.
Leave a Reply