Episode 35: The Tentacles Of Trauma

Trauma has a main root but over time, that root grows and is fed by more and more layers of trauma that have energetic tentacles that reach and twist and build their own unique matrix within your body and psyche. This matrix is as real and alive as any other entity. It becomes you and you become it until the real you, the true you, is buried so deeply beneath the heavy weight of that matrix, that you have become the expression of that trauma. Your actions, reactions, fears, beliefs and how you vibrate or not vibrate within your various relationships, are all reflective of that deeply buried trauma root. In today’s show, I go into detail about how trauma expresses itself in your life. Some are obvious; some may surprise you. I also dig into what it requires to take that first courageous leap off the proverbial cliff and begin to heal. 

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Transcript

            Welcome to Episode 35. Today’s topic is “The Tentacles of Trauma.”

            I was planning on this episode focusing on the Dark Night of the Soul. However, when I starting reading through my notes and taking the time to reflect on the triggers that often sit just outside the beginning of the Dark Night of the Soul, I realized that I needed to first do a comprehensive show on trauma which will lead into the next show in two weeks on the Dark Night. 

            So with that understanding, let’s dig in. I called this show the ‘tentacles’ of trauma because trauma has a main root but over time, that root grows and is fed by more and more layers of trauma that have energetic tentacles that reach and twist and build its own unique framework or matrix. This matrix is as real and alive as any other entity. It becomes you and you become it until the real you, the true you, is buried so deeply beneath the heavy weight of that matrix, that you absolutely cannot believe that you have become the expression of that trauma. Your actions, reactions, fears, beliefs and how you vibrate or not vibrate within your various relationships, are all reflective of that deeply buried trauma root. Many people go to their grave and are buried not as who they are, but as the result of a lifetime where trauma dictated their every move or non-action. Perhaps the only people who have an inkling of what the person could have been if it weren’t for the trauma, are those who witnessed their innocent and open personality as a child before they were destroyed by whatever trauma they experienced. But often trauma occurs at birth and even pre-birth in the womb, depending on the health and mental wellbeing of the mother. So in a case such as this, the child comes out of the womb already compromised on an energetic level. As for so many children, some of the worst trauma occurs to them between the age of birth and six years old. This is the trauma that most people cannot remember from a mental point of view. However, the body stores all of it and keeps the records of that trauma in the tissue, the muscle, the bone and so on until the trauma is, ideally, allowed to be slowly released and transmuted. 

            Another visual I have used to help explain how trauma builds within and around an individual, is the image of a tumbleweed. As the tumbleweed bounces and rolls across the prairie, it picks up whatever matter is one the ground. The tumbleweed represents you and the matter on the ground represents your life experiences. So not everything the tumbleweed picks up is negative or traumatic. However, if it’s picking up more trauma than it is positive, life-affirming experiences, those aspects will dominate the structure of the tumbleweed. And as it rolls and rolls over the decades of one’s life, it grows and expands to an incredibly large structure. It’s picked up hard matter like rocks which translate as hard, resistant traumas that become embedded inside the matrix of the tumbleweed. So after decades of rolling around, this metaphorical tumbleweed is extremely entangled with the debris of its “life” and that weight makes it difficult for the tumbleweed to roll, bounce and move. Until finally, the weight of all the hard matter that represents trauma, brings it to a halt. And there it sits unable to be a tumbleweed. And so it, (which is you), is at the mercy of whatever the environment throws at it. Until that tumbleweed can release the massive dross it has accumulated, it cannot move forward. In other words, when you are weighted down by a life of trauma, eventually you can’t roll in your life anymore and you come to a point of stalling out with no ability to extricate yourself from this predicament. The only way to create movement is to consciously and with great purpose and focus, disentangle yourself from the embedded traumas and release yourself from anything within that matrix of “you” that no longer serves your highest and greatest good. 

            That’s the ideal plan to move forward. However, there are a lot of hurdles and internal obstacles you hae to jump over before you are able to begin the healing process. 

The first thing is acknowledging you actually have trauma. For a lot of people, especially those who are over the age of around fifty, there is a strong resistance to acknowledging that they were traumatized. I come from a generation where we didn’t have any comprehension of abuse or trauma. It was just part of the tapestry of our lives and we didn’t point at it and say “that’s trauma” or “that’s abuse.” We accepted a lot and took on a lot of debris inside our tumbleweeds, but that doesn’t mean what happened to us and around us was right or not traumatic. And that’s why a lot of the people I grew up with and around who are now late forties, early fifties and older, have a very hard time wrapping their around “I went through trauma.” I’ve had this conversation countless times with others in that generational timeframe. And they’ll rattle off all these things that happened to them, including horrible sexual abuse and often a very violent home life and shrug their shoulders and say “Yeah, so?” And when you say, “That’s trauma,” they get very uptight and very resistant about it. “That was life!” they’ll say, followed by “and I got over it and it didn’t affect me.” But all the projections and reflections of that experience that was indeed a traumatizing event, that they have always put out into their world, demonstrate that they are indeed still reacting and acting from their trauma. Most of these people I’m referring to used temporary trauma modulators such as booze, cigarettes, drugs and pharmaceuticals. And work. Lots and lots of work. Anything to pretend that what happened in their early years didn’t insult their soul. 

The other bone of contention is that a lot of people who have gone through horrible life experiences that left severe marks on their psyche, don’t want to give power to that trauma because they perceive traumatized people as “damaged goods.” Or broken individuals. Or vulnerable human beings. And to conflate themselves in that group is beyond their scope. It’s very important for people like this (and I was one of them, by the way, so I’m not picking on anyone, okay?) to not be seen as weak or defenseless. That’s terrifying. So when someone is unhealed, they build fortified armor to protect them against life. They can’t allow weakness to infiltrate that hard armor. If they allowed that, they feel like their friends would abandon them, their partners would stop loving them, their family would turn against them and so on. So in their mind, it’s much better to pretend they are okay rather than face the truth.  Because who could possibly love such an imperfect, broken human being? Many of these types, including myself, were always looked upon as “the capable one” in all their relationships because it was that superpower that got us through our childhood. And we often attracted or were attracted to similarly capable friends, many of whom, also happened to be living a quiet life in hell. We were able to handle multiple problems and rise above the storms. We can be eerily calm in the middle of a real traumatic event. We may share keen negotiation skills in the middle of that storm. But when that storm passes, we retreat and self-isolate but, until you heal, you aren’t aware of where that pattern started. If you are able to remember back to your childhood, you could recall the comfort you felt in self-isolation after the many storms that flooded your formative years. Instead of gentle or loving human touch that comforted us, the four walls we retreated to were our comfort. And the quiet within those four walls was our blanket of warmth. 

Anyone who has experienced moderate to severe trauma in their formative years, has been to war. I’ve often asked people who are engaging in trauma work, “What battles did you fight in?” I fought in the battles of 1962, 1967, 1970 and onward. The battlefields where those wars were fought for all of us are different, but every single one of us has fought, sometimes to our own peril, on a battlefield that has disconnected us from our true selves. And that battle will continue to be waged within us until we acknowledge and heal it. As long as you continue to fight, no healing, no true growth or awakening can germinate and grow within you. 

The other big issue to healing trauma is the palpable resistance to what healing trauma requires of the individual. And that is, in a nutshell, feeling the pain of the original deep wound and all the tentacles of that wound that continue to resonate throughout one’s life and patterns. To someone who is deep in trauma and maybe doesn’t know it but is open to the suggestion, they put up a wall when it comes to the energy it will take to heal themselves. It’s an immediate, “No, thanks. That sounds like a lot of work.” And they are right. It IS a lot of work! The issue is that they are already working themselves into fits of anger and rage and however else their internal struggle is projecting outward. So it’s kind of use that energy to continue to destroy yourself or funnel that energy toward your healing. Because the energy carries the same power. The one that seeks to hide from it, is a resisting energy. But when you take the brakes off that resistance and direct that into healing with the same fervor you’ve used to protect or guard yourself, you have a good potential of becoming your greatest healer and ally. But you must get over the perception of how hard this is going to be for you. At first, it’s absolutely overwhelming. It feels impossible, like a butterfly lifting a rock. But if you gather your courage and your willingness which are the two cardinal traits that are needed to begin the work, you can indeed move what you see as an impossible boulder to move. 

Now, while you may think you are very clever (I know I did) and that are you keeping it together and not showing your trauma cards, I assure you that to the trained eye, you are exposing your trauma within your world and outside it. However, to the untrained eye, you may characterized as erratic, unstable, overly controlling, hyper reactive, unnecessarily aggressive in situations that don’t require aggression and just basically what’s known as “acting out.” You may be so deeply out of control because your trauma is bubbling to the surface and trying to find a way out, that you sometimes appear “crazy” at times. But trauma rising to the surface of your psyche can look nuts. I know this because I experienced it. And I look back on those moments, because they weren’t extended periods of time, and I realize, damn, wow, I’m glad I wasn’t put on a 5150 hold because I wasn’t crazy, I was in the process at that time of finally waking up and that can appear “crazy” to the untrained eye. 

 That’s the trauma projecting out of you. With trauma, you are not presenting yourself to the world and to yourself as who you truly are because who you truly are and never got a chance to experience is buried deeply within your tumbleweed. The trauma is doing all the fronting for you. You’re presenting as how the trauma dictates you present. Nobody is seeing who you really are, but, instead, how the trauma requires you to be seen and experienced. You don’t even know who in the hell you are. So, with decades of unconsciously honing and inhabiting this fronting personality, inevitably distortions are born within the matrix of your tumbleweed. Distortions within the false self are like kinks in a hose that reside in the energetic framework of one’s false personality. They create further chaos and traits that are sign posts to the observant eye that trauma is evident within the individual. 

Over the years and during my own trauma healing, I compiled a list of traits (and I’m sure I’ve left some out) but I did not copy these from a book or from notes in a lecture. I did do some group trauma therapy and I learned a lot through that. But this list of traits is either what I have personally experienced or what I’ve personally observed and found to be a point of reference that circles back to trauma. It’s important to talk about this not in any judgmental way, I want to be clear with that, but with a comprehension that these traits or a combination of them (which is always the case) do tend to illustrate the signs of unhealed trauma. And it’s important to remember that you cannot heal what is not first made conscious. You got to name it and claim it before you can create a strategy to resolve it. Or as Carl Jung wrote: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” 

So the first traits are obvious if you understand how trauma is seen in others. The other traits may or may not surprise you. 

The first one I wrote down is chronic depression and chronic anxiety. Two of the most obvious. Put the word ‘chronic’ in front of anything, and you are establishing an energy that is anchored hard into the psyche. Just like a physical anchor on a boat or ship, anything chronic is a heavy energy that is dense and weighs you down physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Because remember, what affects one of those, affects the others. So whether it’s chronic inflammation or chronic depression and anxiety, the same anchoring energy is involved. 

            Next outward trait is also obvious. And that’s hypervigilance. People who carry a constant, often manic awareness of their surroundings that becomes incredibly intrusive. Hypervigilance is absolutely born from trauma and is a hallmark trait of PTSD. One’s nervous system is on overload and attempts to process what is going on around you in such a fast, chaotic way that you appear totally unhinged to most people. Hypervigilance is very common with war veterans who obviously have dealt with tremendous trauma. 

            Dissociation is next and absolutely a clear sign of trauma. This is checking out for a period of seconds to minutes or longer where you shift out of your body and freeze and hang there until you either come out of it or someone gets your attention. I did this multiple times and I didn’t understand what I was doing when I did it. But it was always triggered for me by reaching a level of stress and overwhelm where I checked out. It’s akin to giving yourself a moment in the void where this soft, cushioned envelope of protection engulfs you and it’s very seductive in the sense that you have a momentary escape from your life. It’s very common for sexual abuse victims or violent crime victims to dissociate while they are being attacked. You often here about how one floats above themselves and often watches their abuse while feeling nothing. And it can become a learned pattern that while oddly comforting to the person who is traumatized, it’s very dangerous because once you agree to that pattern of dissociation, it can become chronic and you will disappear at will and just stare off to the side in a daze until somebody taps you on the shoulder or says something. The longer you give in to the dissociation, and it’s very easy to go there, the harder it can be to come back to yourself and stay there and be present for facing whatever it is you are in fact detaching from. 

Next up is the inability to be present and in the moment. This is definitely part of dissociative behavior but you can still answer a question or acknowledge someone if necessary. This one has more of a quality of coming in and out of the scene rather than completely divesting yourself and hovering outside yourself. Not having the ability to be present means that you lose the ability to listen to whatever is being said, and because of that, you simply do not hear what is said to you. Thus, you have no memory of what was said to you or even what you may have said to the other person. Listening requires the nervous system to be calm. Listening is taking in information and you have to be present to do that. This trait creates a lot of problems because you can easily miss what was said and even what you may have agreed to while you were drifting in and out of the conversation. Someone might say, “So when do you want to meet for coffee?” And you have no reference point so you say, “Are we meeting for coffee?” So this creates a lot of awkwardness in social situations and if it happens too many times, it can appear to others as memory loss. If this is happening in someone over the age of 45 or 50, they may be concerned whether they have the beginning signs of dementia or worse. I have a controversial theory that I can’t prove but I do wonder about after being around a lot of traumatized people who later were diagnosed with dementia. And my controversial theory is that dementia, not Alzheimer’s, but the symptoms of some people’s dementia might, in fact, be a comfortable, dissociative, coping mechanism for those who have dealt with a lot of extreme trauma that they never healed or even acknowledged, and because they don’t address their trauma, as they age, they have taught themselves a bad habit of not being present and regularly mentally escaping. You practice that dangerous pattern for enough years and you will find that the comfort of the escape is too great to resist. And so you begin to live within the confines of your own mind and that’s a dangerous way to function. Your thoughts become myopic and very distorted and eventually that distortion leads to a cluttering of one’s mind where you go off on tangents that lead nowhere and have a hard time coming up with words and having no memory of what transpired within a conversation because you trained yourself to not be present. Essentially, you begin to live in the prison of their own mind. I watched this exact pattern happen to several of my family members over many years, and because I knew about their severe traumas growing up, I observed how they all preferred to live in a La La land that began to make zero sense to the rest of us who were trying to communicate with them. 

            Next trait is the driving need to express yourself continually in an overly dramatic manner that turns every story, every event, every encounter into an exaggerated, drawn-out performance that is not required for the story being told.  Again, this is not an occasional dramatic telling of a story. This is the normal way in which one expresses themselves. 

Piggybacking onto that one, the next is being highly reactive. Like over the top reactive. This also moves into the territory of being highly defensive, and I emphasize highly. Having continual knee jerk reactions and responses to everything whether it is minor or major. Essentially being easily triggered to the point where everything is triggering. It destroys any social life you may have because you’re constantly aggressively jumping on people’s comments and not allowing them to finish what they’re saying and you often misinterpret what is said or the way someone looks when you talk. This is a learned reactive pattern that carries extreme defensive posturing that has been well honed over the decades and was often established in one’s formative years as a way to protect themselves from the wrath of family members who were verbally attacking them or accusing them of doing things they didn’t do. I definitely did this, not all the time, but if I felt fenced in, I easily turned into a little pit bull. 

            Next on my list is when you ask someone a question and when they begin to answer you, you immediately interrupt them and continue to do this, so that the other person can never answer any questions because you’re peppering them with more questions and not allowing a word in edgewise. If you’ve ever had anyone do this to you as I have many times over the years, it is nothing short of frustrating because the other person’s response is either to shut up and allow the covertly traumatized individual to talk and talk and talk or to say something to them such as “let me finish” or “let me speak” and they may begrudgingly allow you to speak but while you’re speaking, they become like a race horse in the stall, waiting for the bell to sound so they jump out of the stall and start volleying more questions at you. Conversations with people who do this are never cohesive and tend to ostracize them in social settings. 

            The next one you may not know about but it’s reacting to most comments or questions or situations with a biting sarcasm, including situations that are tragic, such as when someone dies or is involved in a terrible accident or when someone loses a loved one. And I’m not talking occasional sarcasm. I’m speaking about a dominant response pattern where sarcasm is a constant. This is a known sign of trauma that I’ve had to endure in my life but it’s often not understood by the casual observer as a trauma response. It’s certainly observed as incredibly rude and often tremendously inappropriate in situations that call for a more somber approach. There’s often a belittling or mocking tone that fills the sarcasm that can be incredibly off-putting. I did some digging and learned that some therapists consider this type of sarcastic communication as a way to mask not just their suppressed anger, but the buried grief that hides beneath that anger. And when I read that, it made sense to me because when I’ve had the unfortunate experience of being around people like this, there is a seething and simmering anger that hovers under the surface of every sarcastic retort. 

            The need to control and manage everyone and everything in your life is another trait of buried trauma. It doesn’t matter how many times the person is told that control is an illusion, they reject that idea completely. Of course, people who do this can’t control everything and when that happens to someone who is traumatized and doesn’t recognize it, they become unglued. Because the traumatized individual perceives control as the only way to manage their life in order to avoid being hurt or having something going terribly wrong. So when life doesn’t allow that control they demand, they experience that as a threat to maintaining what they see as order because ‘being out of control,’ is felt as ‘being inside chaos.’ And that’s because chaos was the backdrop for their upbringing and they will do anything to not have to live in that space again. What they don’t understand until they heal, is that control is truly an illusion and the more control you go for, the less control you have. A lot of this controlling traumatic trait is seen with people who insist on being insanely regimented all day, every day, where they don’t allow any variations in their pattern and when that strict order is disturbed by life events or life in general, they become unhinged. Because, once again, their tight control has turned to chaos. And I’m not referring to being disciplined in how you carry out your daily life. I’m speaking more about a rigid quality that does not allow for any variations. 

            Shallow breathing is certainly a sign of trauma because shallow breathers do that to conserve their breath in case they need to exert energy to run and get away. Stuttering is obvious. Picking one’s skin, often unconsciously, until you bleed. Gastritis or inflammation of the stomach lining is a stress reaction but with deep trauma, it can resolve and then return unabated and create a lot of digestive issues. Same with chronic constipation. And chronic insomnia. That’s a big one. It’s not so much that you can’t sleep it’s that you are afraid of falling asleep and being vulnerable to what might happen to you while you are asleep. 

Always being busy is another one. Always running. Always going. And always in a manic manner. And it is exhausting to inhabit that energy and to observe it. This is not necessarily the same thing as being productive although a conscious or unconscious need to “be productive” is certainly baked into the cake of ‘being busy.’ But you can busy all day long and get nothing productive done. It’s the busy, whizzy, constant movement I’m referring to. And that energy is highly electrical in its nature. Lots of energetic sparks coming off the person who engages in constant busy movements. They just can’t sit still. Because they perceive stillness as a trap. This is a learned behavior typically from a parent who mirrored the same busy quality and who imparted within their child a sense that when you’re busy you don’t have to dwell or face the things that are bothering you. So it’s a classic evasive tactic. 

            Saying “I’m sorry” constantly for things you didn’t do or had no power to do. You know, it’s raining and you say, “I’m so very sorry it’s raining.” You just feel in your heart of hearts like you should have been able to do something about that. 

            Morbid obesity and on the other extreme, anorexia are two very serious trauma responses. Obesity is doing whatever you can to create a cushion or distance between you and the world and anorexia is multi-faceted and too involved for me to get into right now. But both extremes are certainly trauma driven. 

            Hoarding is big sign of unhealed trauma. I used to hoard the weirdest things. And I didn’t use any of it so it would eventually expire and I’d have to reluctantly throw it out. And it was pointed out to me, quite cleverly, that, “If you don’t use, you’ll never run out.” Wrap your head around that one. Hoarding can be a trauma around lack or security or safety. Many possibilities. When it becomes extreme, to the outside observer, walking into someone’s office or home who is a hoarder, it’s just chaos and dysfunction and creates a total lack of mental and visual clarity. If you have to move something and stack it somewhere in order to put a glass down on a table or take a seat, that’s a problem. If you purposely or unconsciously create blockages to where you tend to sit or rest, blockages that don’t allow easy passage to you, without having to walk over or stumble over various items, you are using the blockages as a way to make it more difficult for people to connect with you. Because not a lot of people want to walk through piles of debris just to talk to you and if there’s nowhere to sit when they get to you, you’ve done a good job making sure you’re unavailable. 

Now on the flip side of that, we have those who live in a highly sterile environment where cleanliness is taken to obsessive places. I grew up in a home where I joked that we could do brain surgery on the kitchen floor because it was that sterile. The question on this is what are you trying to make right or cover up? How filthy were you told you were? Or who taught you that if you agreed to create a sterile environment, you would be given love in exchange for that? So keep cleaning and maybe you’ll earn some affection. And getting affection because your kitchen sink glistens is a twisted pattern to teach anyone. 

The next one I’ve noticed as I’ve observed individuals over a period of years. This trait is about continually being drawn into and participating in anything that has an extreme quality attached to it. This can be extreme detoxes, extreme diets, extreme fasting where you keep pushing the bar more and more, extreme supplement ingestion, extreme exercise, extreme working out, extreme plastic surgery, extreme body modification, in the sacred plant medicine world, people who insist on taking extreme doses of psilocybin and other entheogens such as Ayahuasca and scream from the rooftops that everyone should take huge doses so they too can experience a spiritual breakthrough just like you have! Except, you haven’t. This extreme pattern of behavior is something I’ve witnessed my whole life in the alternative healing movement. People who take diet, fasting, colonic and enema therapy, exercise, and more to extremes. And the problem is that a lot of these people often end up in positions of authority within the alternative field and they promote these extreme therapies and dictate that if you want to heal, you too have to adopt this pattern and if you don’t agree or question the extreme nature or say, “hey, I need a break,” you are told that you to need to continue pushing the envelope. The word, “moderation,” is never contemplated. This pattern becomes very dangerous and never establishes any lasting healing or sense of wellbeing because nobody can heal in a state of aggressive, unrelenting therapies. There is also this mind/body element within this of always feeling this need to purge yourself of what you feel is “being dirty.” With extreme diets, it is built on restricting yourself from joy, fulfillment, happiness and contentment and that often circles back to a traumatic, visceral need to self-punish. This behavior is something I absolutely dealt with growing up and it really took a mental and emotional toll on me. And since I’ve done a lot of trauma work, I now reject anything that even has a whiff of an extreme quality to it. I don’t care how great you sell it to me, I’m all about moderation and taking breaks from anything that becomes too much or too overwhelming. Because I’ve never been able to heal when I became entangled in any therapies that were excessive or had the potential for creating unintended consequences that could complicate my healing journey. 

So that’s the list of traits and again, it is not a final complete list. But it gives you some context as to what trauma looks like when those internal distortions emerge. 

So the next level would be okay, I have trauma and I want to address it and release it. I want to feel peace and contentment. Sounds like a plan, right? Well, take it from someone who spent years engaging in various types of trauma therapy that, yes, mentally you say that you want to be unburdened from the weight of the trauma you have carried for many decades if not your entire life. But when you edge closer to the proverbial cliff and are asked to metaphorically jump into the unknown, don’t be surprised if you suddenly retreat from that edge. Sounds counter intuitive, right? Well, there’s a solid reason for this. Remember what I said at the top of the show about how trauma becomes you and you become it. That’s entanglement and if trauma is all you’ve ever known and that trauma is so powerful within your psyche that it feels as if it carries its own heartbeat, what is removing it little by little going to create within you? But then at the same time that you feel this resistance, you also realize, especially when you are working with a trauma therapist, that to not release it is to continue to subject yourself to a mental, emotional and physical hell that you know will eventually destroy you. So this powerful conflict often arises within a person when they are on the precipice of agreeing to release and let go of whatever trauma they are focused on at that time. That tumbleweed that has grown into a fortified field of chaos and hell is familiar to you. You’ve learned how to navigate that hell but what lies on the other side of that hell is an unknown experience that is oddly terrifying when one is asked, “Are you ready to liberate yourself from this trauma?” And suddenly the reality hits and you think, “Well hang on there, Chief. Not sure about that. Can I get back to you next Tuesday. What’s your need need need to know date? Because liberation? Wow.” That’s a big concept. Free of restrictions. Free of burdens. Free of what you’ve always known and been chained to and those chains have grown into your energetic flesh and even though they dig and bite into that flesh, they are part of you and you are part of them. 

Then the thoughts may go from are you ready to be liberated to “Do I deserve to be liberated? Can I stand that much freedom? Can I handle and contain that much relief, and subsequent joy and potential happiness that could follow? Do I deserve to give this gift to myself? Have I earned the right to not feel this pain any longer? Or do I still need to suffer just a little bit more?” It's apprehension more than fear. What will be the result of this liberation? What does that even feel like? To not self-punish anymore. To grant myself forgiveness. What lies beyond the vast unknown, unexperienced, unfelt, unlived reality that I am being asked to take part in? And so you ask yourself again, “Without the burden of this trauma, who am I?”

You can’t destroy trauma. You can’t kill trauma. Obviously, you can’t bury it. Burying it only makes it stronger as it grows more tentacles. You can’t cut through it because any sword will be deflected by the armor that has formed. Trauma can only be dissolved and then transformed into wisdom, courage, strength, compassion, empathy and eventually love. What is the solvent that dissolves? What is the alchemical energy that melts it and allows you to take the first step over that cliff? It’s a mix of strong desire, courageous willingness, a steady and consistent agreement to become one’s true essence liberated from the drum beat of trauma. It’s the curiosity of what lies beneath the hardened layers of terror, grief, betrayal, abuse and more. It’s hard to believe that anything good resides underneath all that. It’s difficult to fathom that there could be a life worth living beyond it. But with trust, you finally agree to step over that cliff and into the void.

You fall into the abyss of your own experience. Into your own reflection. This is the dark night of the soul. This is the alchemical purge of everything that no longer belongs to you. This is the tempering of your soul and your first initiation that allows you to understand that you are, in fact, not powerless. That you are notat the mercy of what happened to you, but in fact, what happened to you brought you to this point. And while it may appear dark and terrifying at times, when you gather your courage, you will see that everything that happened to you no matter how unforgiving and brutal, can be transmuted into something greater. This is where your true power resides. This is where the eventual transformation of self takes place. And when you stop fighting it and swim in that fire of transmutation, you are eventually reborn into the individual that is in harmony with your true self. 

In time, you learn that you can swim through the fire of releasing trauma and do it again and again and again. As you begin to dissolve it, you discover parts of you that you never knew existed. You thought you were broken but you were only separated. Little by little, you discover within yourself a combination of strength and gentleness. It’s this great dichotomy that begins to operate subtly at first when you heal. And the first gentle action is toward yourself. It’s the grace you gift yourself within the storm of your own resurrection. It’s meeting the child within who never got to play or be seen and accepted or belong. It’s all the fragmented parts of you that finally feel safe to reconnect and eventually become one again within a new being of consciousness and understanding. 

What lies on the other side of all you’ve ever known will welcome you back home, your rebirth begins to take hold. What’s on the other side, is a clarity, a smooth operating system that isn’t full of glitches, calmness doesn’t fully describe it. It’s beyond calmness. It’s a steadiness that continues to build over time. It’s being grounded within yourself but also free from the weight you’ve carried for a lifetime. It’s a lightness around you and within you. You walk differently. You talk differently. You communicate differently. It’s cohesive. It’s body, mind, spirit coherence. Where separation no longer exists because trauma creates that lack of coherence in your energetic field. It’s the ultimate harmonization of all parts of you. It’s the reconnection with your soul. 

No matter where you are on the path at this moment, there is a way through this. There is a life that can exist beyond trauma. You are not sentenced to a life of hell. But it’s up to you to carve your path forward because nobody can do it for you. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and no, it’s not an oncoming train. Perceiving that light as an oncoming train, is a shared trauma response. But I assure you as someone who has done the work and one by one, pulled all the rocks and debris from my own tumbleweed, that there is indeed a wonderful world that exists beyond the trauma. It’s a world that’s worth the risk of taking that first brave step into the unknown. Because once you become tempered by the flames of your own deconstruction and eventual resurrection, the ‘you’ that was held hostage by a lifetime of trauma ceases to exist. The ‘you’ who emerges discovers that they always had the power to return home to themselves. And in that home, you finally remember who you are. 

That’s all for this week. Thank you for choosing to listen to this show. If you like this show, help me get the word out. Share this show or any other episode you like with someone right now who you feel needs to hear it. Check out the notes for this episode where you’ll see the links to find me on Instagram and X @laureldewey or thealchemyofnaturalhealing. On the show notes, I’ve included the companies I support and have helped me in my healing process, so check that out and look for the discount codes. Join me in two weeks where I will discuss “The Dark Night Of The Soul.” Until then, remember that “Awareness is a demanding mistress. Once she wakes you up, she won’t let you go back to sleep.”