What Was Lost: A Gentle Inquiry Into Trauma And Grief

What did trauma take from you, not just in childhood, but in your adult life? In this gentle somatic inquiry, you’re invited to notice what was lost due to survival responses like fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. With grounded awareness, breathwork, and kindness, we allow grief to surface in a safe and contained way.

This practice supports nervous system regulation while nurturing self-compassion. You’ll be guided to stay connected to your body, breath, and the present moment as you acknowledge what’s been missed, offering space for healing, repair, and deeper connection with yourself and others.

Transcript

Whenever we do a practice that's a little bit stirring up,

It's really helpful to get ourselves settled and grounded before we start.

To look around the room that we're in,

The space.

If you're in a room with windows,

You might see what's outside as well as what's in here.

Let your eyes take that in.

You could put your hands on your heart or give yourself a hug.

Notice the feeling that that gives you.

And also notice as we're coming into the practice that we don't have to come in perfectly.

We want to give ourselves room to have whatever experience we're having.

This topic,

Like many of the somatic inquiries that I work with,

It's really meant to release some of the things that might be in our unconscious.

We bring things forward into our awareness and we have a look at them.

We might have an opportunity to practice kindness for ourselves.

We might not know fully what effect something has,

Or we might have a pretty good idea of that.

The most important thing,

And this holds true for regulating our nervous system,

It holds true for working with traumatic memories,

Compulsive thinking,

Catastrophic thinking,

Is to help our brain and our nervous system know that we're here in this moment right now.

That we're doing a practice and that when we're doing this particular type of practice,

We're going to go back into memory.

And as we're doing that,

We want to be aware enough of our body and our breath that we can catch the signals that might indicate that we've gone into the past a bit too intensely.

So this is a bit of a dance.

We tend to go in and out.

We want to stay stable here in this moment.

We know that we're doing a practice.

At any moment,

We can tell I stopped breathing.

I'm holding my breath.

So I could take a few breaths.

I could just open my eyes and look around and establish for myself,

I'm not actually back in the past.

It's the real foundation of healing is to let ourselves know that we're here in this moment in time looking at something that we sense is causing us some trouble or some grief.

And the other thing when we're doing a practice like this particular one,

Where we're looking into the past and really seeing the effect that trauma has had on us is to try as much as we can to not shame ourselves or criticize ourselves for that.

We are what we are at any given moment in time.

We have the awareness that we have.

We don't have the awareness then that we have now.

Most of us are much more aware now than we were in the past.

And we also know a lot about trauma now.

It's not fair to retroactively judge ourselves.

There's something that we were probably on our own with.

People didn't really understand what we needed.

And now here we are.

We have a strong response when we sense there's something dangerous.

We pick up on danger and anxiety from other people as well.

You notice I was really in a fight response a lot of the time and I blew up that relationship.

I became unsafe for that person and I really regret that.

Or I was in a freeze.

I was kind of numb.

I didn't see what was happening.

Or I couldn't afford to let myself see what was happening.

One of the main things that is common with trauma is that we disconnect from ourselves and our body.

So we don't have an awareness often of the tension in the body,

The sensations and the energy.

And even when we have awareness of what's going on,

It doesn't necessarily mean that we can change the relationship.

It's a practice to become aware and then to start shifting things.

When we want to make a change in a relationship,

It's not always that welcome.

This is complex.

So let's start with looking around the room again.

Noticing your body.

Let your body be settled and secure.

If at any time you're feeling kind of edgy or antsy or you want to get up and do some shaking,

If you want to stop,

Pull yourself out of it and go,

That's a bit too much.

No half an hour guided practice.

It's not really the time to go into a 10 out of 10.

And if something like that's coming up,

See if you can keep yourself pretty regulated.

Stay aware of your breath,

That you're here.

Let's do a little bit of cyclic sighing.

So it's a deep double inhale through the nose,

A long exhale,

Like you're breathing out through a straw.

As you breathe out,

Let your whole body soften head to toes.

In through the nose,

Out through a straw.

To release any tension around the face,

The jaw,

The neck and shoulders,

The upper back.

So as we go through this next several minutes,

I'll keep bringing in some words to remind us that we're doing a practice and to stay connected with our body and breath.

It's up to each one of us to do it in a way that feels appropriate for you right now.

So if you're feeling pretty grounded,

You might go quite deeply into this.

If you're feeling like you're already pretty stressed,

You might want to just kind of skim along the edge of this a little bit.

We don't have to take a big bite.

We could take a little nibble.

When you think about the losses that you've had in your life due to trauma,

One of the things that might happen is right away we go into childhood.

But in this particular one,

It might be more in line with what we're doing to really look at how did that affect you during your adult life.

For me,

I had a lot of trauma as a teen.

By the time I got out of my teen years,

I wasn't really thinking about what I wanted to do.

I knew what I wanted to do,

And I just wrote it off as that's not possible.

I didn't have any support to do that,

But also I had kind of given up.

What was it for you when you think about the effect as you moved into your adult life?

One of the ways we could start is,

Were you mostly in a flight response?

Were you hard to get a hold of?

You moved away?

You didn't get into long-term relationships?

You protected yourself by not going too deeply with people?

You get activated into a feeling of,

It's not safe for me to trust people.

I've been hurt too many times,

So I'm just going to get out of here.

We might move.

We might daydream.

We might watch a lot of TV or read books.

And if that was the case,

What were you missing out on?

I wasn't able to trust enough to really stay present.

Now you left school partway through because you couldn't really concentrate.

You couldn't really stay.

Noticing the memories,

Stay connected in your body,

Notice your breath.

Sometimes it's helpful to keep the eyes open.

What was going on for you back then?

And how did being in a flight response affect the decision you made?

The relationships?

And if there's something in particular,

An image in particular,

That's kind of strong,

There's lots of ways to work with images.

One is just to tap on the forehead or make some circles and notice,

I can take my attention away from that thought into this.

You could also put it in a frame on the other side of the room.

Very helpful to have our eyes open when we're getting really pulled back into something.

Looking at that,

I have a lot of feelings about that.

I can feel my breath start to hitch.

I can feel emotion,

Sensation.

We're not necessarily trying to take all the charge out of something.

We're just trying to keep it at a low enough level that we can be present in this moment as we pay attention to it.

And maybe for you,

It was a little bit more of a numbing or a freeze response,

Which is another way of escaping.

Flight and freeze have a certain amount of similarity in terms of the disconnection,

Dissociation.

Flight is a sympathetic arousal,

So it has a bit more activation in it.

Freeze is more of a numbing or a gray state.

I have one memory where I got some really good news,

And the person who told me was like,

Did you hear what I said?

I thought you'd be happy.

And I woke up out of my freeze.

I didn't take it in.

So it's not just the things that are difficult.

Sometimes we don't take in the good either.

We're disconnected.

So let yourself kind of roam through your memories.

And if phoning or fight was more of what you were working with,

You can certainly stay with that.

Just to give us an example,

What was it like?

What did I miss out on?

I stayed in an unhealthy relationship for decades,

And a lot of it was I was just in a state of freeze.

I wasn't really able to see what was going on.

I couldn't afford to see what was going on.

I really feel a lot of sadness around that.

Be careful as you're doing this to at least be neutral,

Not to shame yourself.

We can feel regret,

And that's healthy,

But not to go into shaming.

We were doing what we could at the time,

And we're working with the effect of trauma.

So there's a reason why this was going on.

As you inhale and exhale,

Notice what's happening in your body as you're looking at these.

Stay aware of your breath.

You can always come back into holding your own hand,

Looking around the room,

Taking long out breaths,

Cyclic sighing,

Or just breathing out longer.

If we look at the fight response now,

That's a sympathetic arousal.

It's a lot of energy there.

And these are survival responses.

These are things that happen when we're fighting for our life.

Fight response,

Often people will just blow up.

They'll say things that are really cruel or that once they settle down,

They would never say that.

Someone with a fight response tends to have more volatility in their relationships.

And people can be scared of them,

Or we can be scared of our own anger,

Which is one of the reasons we tamp it down.

We're going to work with anger in some of the Insight Timer Lives coming forward.

Anger is very different than a fight response.

So we can feel anger,

We can express it.

And then sometimes we explode into a fight response,

And that's a dysregulated state.

You're looking back through some of the memories that are coming up and some of your experience.

What's your experience with either being in a fight response or being in relationship with people who are in a fight response?

And how would that have been different if we or they had known how to regulate?

Maybe there still would have been angry words,

But it would not have been fight response.

Notice what that feels like in your body.

Often heat,

There's anger,

There's heat,

There's an urgency to express something,

To back them off.

Fight can be very physical.

But without letting yourself go too far into the fight response,

Maintain awareness that you're here looking at it.

What does it feel like in your heart?

What are you missing out on?

What have you missed out on?

Because you and or the people around you were in a fight,

Fight or freeze survival response.

And then we can bring in fawning as well.

That's another social strategy in a way.

And I don't mean strategy in terms of manipulative.

That's one of the ways that we can keep ourselves safe,

Especially if we are feeling threatened by someone with more power.

Women tend to fawn more than men,

For instance.

People with less power fawn more than people with more power.

There can be a lot of shame with that one too.

Let's work with fight,

Fight and freeze,

The real physiological responses.

What did you miss out on?

And now let's narrow in a little bit.

There might be big things.

Well,

I missed out on a career that I could have gone to school for.

I missed out on a healthier relationship.

I was really checked out when I was raising my children or whatever it might be for you.

And then bring it down into something specific.

For example,

I gave before of getting that good news from my friend,

I missed out on feeling the joy of the good news.

Let some memories,

Some images perhaps,

Some video clips,

Some words,

Let it deepen.

What are you feeling grief or regret or sadness around?

What did you miss out on?

And sometimes we can have such a big paintbrush here that it's hard to even work on.

Narrow it down to something specific if you can and let yourself feel that one thing.

Notice that you're in a secure location.

You could allow your body to be settled.

If you wanna get up and move around or shake or something,

Of course,

That's fine too.

What are the sensations and the energy?

We often feel grief in our heart area,

The chest.

But what are the sensations in your body right now?

And could you attend to those?

Take a few breaths.

The thing about emotion is that they tend to come and go.

But if you're noticing there's some kind of sensation here,

What does it feel like exactly?

How do I know that this is grief or anger?

Whatever it is you're feeling.

Often it's because there are associated thoughts.

So stay with the sensation or energy for a few minutes if you can.

And it's perfectly fine to open your eyes and reconnect with the space around you.

You might put your hand on your heart.

What's it like to let yourself feel this?

Is the energy moving or is it still?

Is it painful?

What exactly does it feel like?

What does it feel like to allow yourself to have whatever your experience is?

See if you could move away from shaming.

If there's any kind of criticism or shaming going on.

We were doing our best at the time.

We were traumatized earlier in our life and as adults,

We didn't have it all figured out.

We probably still don't,

Not completely.

I can still get activated into a freeze at times.

It's not as deep,

It's not as long lasting,

But it's still there.

What could we be kind?

Maybe there's a younger self here,

20 or 30 year old,

Or at some age,

Maybe your child.

Could you connect and allow that to be a part of you?

To be welcome.

How do you feel?

What are your emotions?

Bring it down from your thoughts into your body,

To your heart.

And sometimes people will write or art or go for a walk or do something after to let that energy move through.

If you're okay for another few minutes,

Stay with this.

How do you feel?

Sensations,

Energy,

And also emotion.

And these are hard at times.

I have a lot of regret for how unconscious I was when I was raising my child as a single parent.

Certainly wasn't the way I would do it now.

We can have some sharp regret for what we couldn't do the way we'd like to have done it.

And it really affects other people.

And often we can have a repair as well.

As we do our own healing,

We're more open to healing relationships around us.

People are often willing to soften as well.

Sense into what is next.

I'm gonna spend a little bit of time with this a few times a week,

Maybe for a while.

Go back into this question,

Into this connection practice.

How do I feel?

What do I regret?

Committing to staying as soon as you notice that you're getting dysregulated,

Come back.

Few deep breaths,

Cyclic sighing,

Look around the room,

Hold your hands.

Let yourself be aware that you're here in this moment.

And let yourself feel the emotion of that.

We take it in little bits so that we can manage it and still be kind and still be present.

Put your hands on your heart if you want.

What could I offer to myself that would be helpful?

We're not pretending that everything was fine.

Sometimes in our healing trauma journey,

We focus on the hurt that was done to us.

And that's a part of our journey.

Sometimes it really lands the harm that we did to other people or that we couldn't protect other people from.

And that lands really hard as well.

We want to stay steady enough that we can work with this.

If we have a lot of inner critic,

If we have a lot of shaming going on,

That's never gonna be helpful.

See if you could come back as soon as you notice that it's like,

Nope,

Not legitimate.

I was doing my best then,

And I'm looking now at how was I affected by the trauma in my life?

I'm allowing some of that to come in.

There's a couple of reasons why we do that.

One is to let ourselves heal a little bit from the unconscious,

What's going on underground,

Because it will make our life now better.

We'll have more freedom if we're not shaming ourselves for something that happened 20 or 50 years ago or two days ago.

Then we have a bit more freedom to allow our breath and to connect with other people.

I have a lot of determination to be conscious in my relationship.

I still might notice that I'm going into a bit of a compliance or I'm not really catching things,

But it doesn't last very long.

Now I catch it pretty quickly.

So it gives us a lot more options.

As long as we know what's going on,

We have a lot more options.

There's no right or wrong answers.

There's no perfect way to do this.

Kindness will always help.

Connection with ourselves is not possible if we're being unkind.

Kindness is what opens the door to that.

Having a regulated nervous system where we're here,

We're present,

We're breathing.

That's what opens the door to compassion.

We can't feel compassionate if we're in a fight,

Flight,

Freeze.

If we're in a survival response,

We're trying to survive.

So we need to regulate our nervous system,

Take some breaths,

Have some practices like cyclic sighing that really help.

I'm on Insight Timer six or seven days a week.

So come and do things like that.

There's so much variety in how we can work with ourselves.

It really helps.

Before we go,

Take a minute to review what your experience was like during the inquiry.

Was there anything that you noticed that maybe you're a bit inspired maybe to bring that back and work with that a little bit?

Maybe there's a feeling of,

I don't wanna get too into any of this right now.

Moving in and stepping back and moving in and stepping back and allowing ourselves to be supported and nourished as we're doing this hard work.

And we make different decisions as we heal.

We're not doomed to have those same experiences that we've had early in our life.

We're different as we heal.

And then we have different things that are open to us.

We notice what's going on quicker.

We might have more ability to take that pause.

Once the cortisol and adrenaline have gotten engaged,

And that's more in the fight and flight response,

The activation,

Takes about 25 minutes for that to settle and our more evolved human brain to come back online.

Either for me or for the other people or person,

I'm noticing things are getting really escalated right now.

I'm gonna take a break.

Let's circle back in a half an hour.

I'm gonna go outside and walk.

And if the other person's like,

No,

No,

No,

I wanna keep fighting with you basically,

Then we might have to have some practice around.

Actually,

No,

I'm feeling like this is too much for me right now.

I need to get my system back into regulation and then we'll talk.

So that's a really important step as well.

There are a lot of different ways that we can do this.

We wanna be specific because when we go,

Oh,

I've missed out on everything,

That's pretty dramatic.

And it's not completely true either.

We might've missed out on some big things though.

And so how can we get into it a little bit smaller so that we're not feeling overwhelmed?

And this is all about building resilience,

Strength.

That's our work.

Reviews

Light ✨filled Lynn,
Sooooo much gratitude 🙏 to you for your neuro~scientific wisdom sharing. this empowering overview of human responses to feeling unprotected, coupled with your gentle and deeply knowing voice, offers a workable roadmap to true recovery. each time I listen closely with my heart, I uncover new jewels of wisdom to practice with myself and others. as we all move forward from our unconscious histories into the conscious doorway of the present, I treasure the deep dive daily offerings that you are curating for Insight Timer. Please know the benefits we are receiving ripple far and wide on this beloved planet. 🌏💚🌎🌈🌍🕉️🌊

Super helpful 💗I felt you were right there with me and that you understand what its like. Thank you.

Beautiful insights, beautiful practice . Much love and gratitude for sharing your wisdom
❤️❤️❤️🙏🙏🙏🕊️🕊️🕊️