Most of us have events in our lives that we cannot process at the time, especially when we were younger. Children can be resilient, but it doesn’t mean that they can handle or process or resolve what happens to them at the time.

Thus most of us carry trauma – even if we find that word too strong for what we are aware of about ourselves. It can be called many things, these parts of ourselves that are still dealing with unresolved issues, memories, patterns and experiences.Many therapies try to help people to get over, get past, ignore, replace, talk it out, change or transcend such experiences.

These can help, but wouldn’t it be even better and finally freeing to get to the cause of the trauma and resolve it. Processing it from your current capacity with support and resources – in ways that you couldn’t at the time?

As Dr Albert Wong, an expert in Somatic Psychology, puts forward:

“From a somatic perspective, trauma occurs as a result of emotional, physical, or psychological overwhelm — when the external stimulus presents itself as “too much, too fast, too soon.”

Importantly, trauma is not something that exists in the event itself. A single event is not inherently traumatic or not. Trauma emerges as a result of the way in which our body and nervous system respond to the external stimulus.

According to early somatic pioneers, Wilheim Reich and Alexander Lowen, the experience of bodily overwhelm results in a disruption in psychosomatic unity. The body and mind split apart during trauma.

These early conjectures of somatic pioneers — of a split that occurs between body and mind during trauma — have been backed up by recent findings in neuroscience wherein certain parts of the brain which are essential to maintaining a sense of coherent experience become dysregulated during trauma. Consequently, trauma creates a sense of experiential fragmentation. Our internal sense of coherence is disrupted by trauma.”

Because there is a split, we often don’t realise what the traumas are…until we begin to explore why we are feeling awful, why we are sick, why we keep repeating the same relationship patterns, why we feel so depressed or anxious or lonely, why we can’t decide on our career, why we keep being overlooked for promotions, why our children are running away from home or any number of problems that arise including just plain confusion or overwhelm.

To bring ourselves back wholeness, to reintegrate the split parts, to process the emotions, to reclaim ourselves and our wellbeing can take time, it can even be an exploration of one felt sense at a time.

However it works, it brings lasting results, it can change your life for the better and release you of the burdens that you carry. It is worth doing the inner work and we can help

***

If this post resonates, you may wish to explore some of Innate Wisdom Connection’s other offerings.