Emotional Trauma can be the most difficult thing to overcome yet can be one of the most pervasive problems we can deal with. Wildly misunderstood, some people think it is something you should just get over – like you can snap your fingers.  I assure you it is not that simple.  Most of us have experienced a traumatic experience in some form.  Many of us do resolve those feelings on our own or with help.  Resiliency is common for some people and allows them to recover more easily than others from trauma.  However, many people cope from that painful experience by suppressing those painful emotions.  They didn’t learn how to feel their feelings. Thus, most feelings are interpreted as an adult as bad, due to that emotional wound and memory. This emotional response is trauma and you are thrown off balance.  If these emotions are not resolved, it can carry on into their adult life and affect all aspects of their personal and professional life.  This can take shape as lack of understanding why we react emotionally in certain circumstances.  The trauma is trapped in our bodies and the emotions are robbing us of living our best life.

This trauma is not only an experience but is also an actual rewiring in the brain.  It is imprinted in the body in not only an emotional manner, but a physical one too. It has activated fight, flight or freeze mode internally.  Excess cortisol is produced by your body, causing a circuitry change in your brain.  It can cause a repetitive state where the person is reliving the issue continually and either being numb to feelings or having an overreaction to feelings.  This reptilian part of the brain is overwrought with terror, rage and a lack of hope.  Someone who has endured a lot of issues, especially at a young age, is less resilient and their own insecurities can play a part in holding on to this trauma.

The age we are when we experience emotional wounds is the age we are emotionally, stuck in that age until we resolve those issues.  A pattern can develop where people hurt the people they love most, and they don’t even realize they are doing it, yet are living with the consequences of doing it.  Living with those consequences can cause shame.  To address this is to create a new reality, a new story in your head, that doesn’t encompass the trauma.  Trauma therapy allows you to separate the wounded child from the adult you are.  Feeling the pain, working through it, is the only way to heal from it.

Feeling the pain, working through it, is the only way to heal from it.