When I use the word “trauma“, you may think of the effects of an accident or assault. However, we now know that trauma isn’t what happened, it’s how we responded to it. Anything that causes overwhelm that we’re not able to process gets stored in the physiology. As we may not have had skills to process it later, to cope, we suppress and hide this baggage. The result is a gradual buildup that causes dysregulation of the nervous system. That results in a lack of calm, insecurity, reactivity, and more. It is a rare person who isn’t carrying some trauma.
Spiritual practices can help resolve the reactivity, bring calm, and help with regulation. However, even if the charge is gone, there can still be somatic impressions that remain, carefully long-hidden.
It’s all about awareness, so the impressions can be out of awareness while deep recognitions take place. We can awaken while still carrying residues of trauma.
However, these residues can interfere with embodiment and a full expression of the benefits. Divinity can’t move into held shadow.
We may still get triggered by certain circumstances or people, even if nothing sticks. Systemic health issues may plague us. Or there’s a lack of clarity in certain parts of our life.
Curiously, even when we recognize everything as consciousness, we can still be blind to what is not conscious. These are operating on different levels.
This is where somatic therapy can shine. It helps us bring awareness to what is not yet seen by noticing the effects of our remaining contractions and patterns.
The deeper the healing, the deeper the embodiment, the greater the light in the world.
Davidya
Hi D, I think for what I call early childhood trauma, it’s useful to have a more objective definition of trauma just as there is wrt stress. A very young child probably doesn’t know the word “trauma” and their body might not even register some event or circumstances as traumatic. But on another level of individuality, it is traumatic, or way too much for the young and thus very undeveloped brain and body and energy field. I think it’s extremely important to recognize that some very harmful events and circumstances ARE objectively traumatic. It has to do with the nature of the event or circumstance as well as the undeveloped state of the young child.
Hi Sharon
Yes, that’s commonly called developmental trauma. But the topic of this article is about realizing there can be trauma after enlightenment, including developmental. The opening is a brief mention of what trauma is as I’ve defined it in more detail in prior articles (linked). And yes, a child doesn’t know what trauma is.
And yes, some trauma arises related to challenging events. But if we’re going to understand it, we have to know it’s not the event that creates the trauma, it’s how we respond to the experience. I don’t mean to assign blame but to help understand the mechanism, as this informs our healing.
When we place the cause on external events, we give away our power to heal. When we recognize it was how we coped with the event, then we take back our power.