The word trauma means wound. A trauma is a wound in your psyche, a rupture in your inner world, from a distressing event. It can be a life-threatening experience that we didn’t get to process, but more often it is an emotionally painful event that our system didn’t have the resources to deal with.
Where we went into a survival response, often shut down or fawn, rather than responding to the event with agency and being present with emotions. So instead of this experience being passed on to our long-term memory, it’s stuck in our brain, nervous system, physical and emotional body – and if something reminds us of that event, we’re right there in that experience again.
Most of us have trauma. Unprocessed emotional wounds. They show up in our relationships to BE processed, but they will look like a big problem unless we’re aware and have the tools to meet them. I truly believe that this is important work of our generation and lifetime.
That’s why, in this episode, I talk about three common ways that trauma shows up in our relationships, and how we can navigate them in a way that heals. Instead of re-enforcing the trauma, and all the beliefs and habits that come with it.
