trauma basics
“We pass on to others what we don’t fully process ourselves.”
If we have unprocessed pain, it will negatively affect us in many ways, including our relationships. Unprocessed pain just means we have experienced something deeply hurtful – a loss, abuse, rejection – but we’ve never taken time to understand what happened and work through the emotions attached to the event. Many of us have unprocessed pain resulting from traumatic childhood experiences. These experiences have shaped us and our belief system, our view of others and how relationships function. If we never process these events, we miss a great opportunity to heal, grow, and experience more abundant, joyful relationships.
You may have experienced trauma if you’ve gone through something unexpected that caused a deep emotional reaction. When we experience a traumatic event, our body’s sympathetic nervous system responds and we go into fight, flight, or freeze mode. When we recognize the threat is over, our parasympathetic nervous system responds and brings our body out of fight, flight, or freeze, into what we call rest and digest mode. This completes the cycle, and our nervous system has done its job. We’ve allowed the experience to flow through us, ending with a nervous system that’s in a relaxed state. Sometimes, the nervous system doesn’t function exactly as designed and it gets stuck in fight, flight, or freeze. Our body thinks the threat remains, even when it has gone away. Our body can’t move through the cycle, and therefore we continue to react as if we’re under attack.
Living months and years in this experience creates emotional symptoms like irritability, anger, and avoidance of trauma memory (distraction to keep from focusing on a painful memory). It also creates physical symptoms like heightened startled response (jumpy, scared easily), dissociation (feeling of not being present, floating outside of yourself), and sleep problems (difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, bad dreams). To alleviate these symptoms in a way that creates long term healing, the underlying trauma must be processed. Finding a trauma informed therapist to help guide you can be very helpful. She may use a combination of methods and strategies to provide a way for your brain and body to process the pain created by the past traumatic events. There are also countless resources you can find online for self-study and many helpful books to read. A referral to a psychiatrist for medication, at least for a time, may also be incredibly helpful. It can reduce symptoms allowing some immediate relief and help a person to engage more fully in therapy.
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is the Father who is full of mercy and all comfort. He comforts us every time we have trouble, so when others have trouble, we can comfort them with the same comfort God gives us. We share in the many sufferings of Christ. In the same way, much comfort comes to us through Christ.”
Trauma not only affects us emotionally and physically, but it also affects us spiritually. When something deeply wounds us, it’s not uncommon to be angry at God or have doubts about His love for us. We may struggle to forgive those who hurt us or wrestle with bitterness. We may not feel close to Him or wonder if He even hears our prayers. We know, as believers, our God is the God of all comfort; that he delights in bringing us comfort in our suffering (2 Corinthians 1:3-5). But when we’ve been hurt, and so caught off guard by pain, we can forget. It can be incredibly helpful to surround ourselves with other people of faith who can gently remind us of the power of God and His Holy Spirit, and the perfect justice of God, even when we have trouble remembering.
We pass on to others what we don’t process ourselves. It’s scary to address our pain. We don’t know how we’ll feel or what might come up that will be difficult to deal with. But it’s also scary to avoid working through pain. When we avoid, we almost certainly miss out on the joy and abundance of an emotionally healthy life and relationships.