What Causes Trauma ~ Serenity Wellness Podcast E88

Trauma is more than you might realize and impacts the lives of many.
Join me in this 3-part series and gain awareness of areas that can change how you move through life with yourself or someone you know.

Transcript

In the past,

We would often think of trauma as individuals really in the battlefield.

Veterans,

Individuals who went to war,

Many of them have trauma.

But trauma is also more than that as we continue to learn more and more about our system,

The way that we function,

And now that we are more collectively as a society accepting our emotions,

Recognizing the importance of them,

And actually processing and moving through them in a way that helps us to see ourselves,

To value ourselves,

And to create boundaries,

We start to also identify and understand more of the things that have impacted us in ways that may have been traumatic.

I'm going to be breaking this information down in most likely three different parts of the series here for information about trauma.

Trauma now includes individuals who have fought in wars,

People who are in very violent communities,

Gang ridden areas where individuals may feel very unsafe even walking down their street,

Homes that individuals grow up in who have abuse,

Physical abuse,

Sexual abuse,

Mental abuse,

And emotional abuse.

Emotional abuse is now even part of the standards of what we report to try to get help for families when there's emotional abuse.

In the past,

It would be very difficult to be able to identify that in a family system and be able to get the resources in there to try to help the family system.

But since the,

I'm sure there's many factors that played into this,

But with the whole Catholic church and everything that happened there in terms of sexual violence towards children,

As well as the Jerry Sandusky situation,

I worked at Penn State at the time.

I'm not going to get into all of it here,

But I'm sure many of you are familiar,

Even though I know that I have listeners,

Many outside of the United States,

Pretty big story there of what went down.

So since then,

Laws have changed.

They've made it more mandatory for many individuals to receive the information every two years for our licensing cycle.

Now it's just not for therapists.

It's for individuals like chiropractors,

Attorneys,

Anyone who's working with people one-on-one that they may talk about or share abuse.

Now those individuals are also receiving training to understand the many layer dynamics of what that looks like.

It's not just the individuals who were in those severe situations that I just mentioned.

Now we understand how trauma can impact us through experiences we ourselves have gone through,

Whether it be as a child,

As an adolescent,

Or as an adult,

In any of those ways of violation towards us.

It also can be from us knowing of a severe traumatic experience that a friend or loved one or family member has gone through.

That processing of that information can also create trauma for the individual processing the information as the loved one.

So if you have a loved one you know who has gone through a traumatic situation,

Maybe you've held space for them,

They've shared it with you,

You've been a part of their emotional processing of the situation,

You yourself may also experience some trauma in your body and in your system.

It may not be at the high levels that I'm going to be explaining in this series,

But even if you don't experience this,

I 100% guarantee you that you know someone who does.

And so if you get to understand about what I'm going to share with you about trauma,

It's going to help you to understand more about the people who are around you and moving through life with you.

Whether they are in that close microcosm or spread out through the more macrocosms that we live in.

We have our family,

Unit,

Whatever that looks like.

We have our community and then we have within that community different layers,

Different levels,

And then we have societal things.

Another area where trauma can be identified,

Indicated,

And experienced for an individual.

That is when they are collecting information and the information is about people they may not know at all,

Never know anyone even close to them or different states or towns,

Countries they've never visited.

They may never even go to those places,

But we may learn this information through media download,

Through social media,

Through sometimes people really get into the news.

I'm not going to make this about that right now because I'm trying to really stay focused on the topic here,

But sometimes in terms of like the layers of situation around that.

If you're one who is like over downloading,

Over watching news for yourself,

You wake up,

You watch the news,

You look at your phone,

You're checking the news,

You're checking the news at lunch,

You're looking at the news in the evening when you get home from work or you know after dinner,

Before dinner,

You're watching it before you go to bed,

Maybe you're falling asleep to the news.

All of that can create trauma.

What's the purpose of tapping in at that level?

Yes,

Stay informed,

But think about download.

Think about what you're doing to yourself and be on the lookout for some of the things I'm going to cover over the next three episodes here.

Make sure you take a second here to hit that subscribe button and the bell and that way you're going to stay informed of when these episodes come out.

It's going to help you stay on track with this and it's also going to help me with the whole algorithm thing and getting more people to the channel which as a collective you know we ripple out change so let's help each other get well.

Thanks for taking a second to do that.

I really appreciate it.

Back to the information.

Individuals will often just associate trauma as looking like something very specific.

Looking at it like it looks like a very specific type of situation someone has gone through,

Community maybe someone lives in or even sometimes people like think they know by looking at a person if that person like they will stereotype what trauma is.

Perfect example right here.

I have complex PTSD.

Layers and layers of trauma.

Childhood,

Adolescent,

Early adulthood and sometimes people will think oh you you can't have trauma.

You have no idea what anyone in your life is going through or anyone you run across,

Meet,

Happen to be behind in a car,

Behind in line at a store when we like push and rush people and have judgment.

So I hope you find this information helpful.

I'm going to cover even with that.

It's going to help you maybe remove some of that auto subconscious judgment you have or expectation or attachment to how another should move through life.

You don't know what they're going through.

Even if they share,

How much do we really share?

This is about situations,

Experiences and events that maybe we have experienced now in life,

Earlier in life that we have stuffed down,

Not processed and avoided or maybe something that we know of a loved one,

Family member,

Friend or something broader in society and other communities that are going on.

Individuals who have trauma in their body system.

Body system can be the mental,

Emotional,

Physical,

Spiritual parts of self.

If you haven't already checked out episode 84,

Where Can I Land?

,

You might want to check that out as well at some point.

It's going to break down the four different segments of self and you can decide where the best place to land there is for you.

Individuals who have elements of trauma in their mind,

In their body,

In their system in some way,

They are often very good at tapping out.

They're real good at putting on masks that they're okay.

Often not intentionally,

It's not even like an intention to fool another.

It's they're so skilled,

Like their body system is real skilled through probably years sometimes of practice of this.

Sometimes,

You know,

Individuals,

You know,

Those of us who have childhood trauma,

We taught ourselves as children to tap out emotionally,

Disassociate from the body experience of emotion.

Well,

We can keep carrying that into adulthood,

Maybe because we've experienced more trauma or maybe because it became part of our system of emotion tap out,

Which helps those memories and that trauma go deep into storage and that's okay.

You can leave them there.

They don't always have to come out to get the healing.

When we start learning about our emotions,

We start setting boundaries and not accepting toxic behavior from others that is abusive and sometimes those boundaries are hard lines.

Like,

Yeah,

You have to just cut the thread of connection because otherwise it creates trauma in your own life,

Which can be extremely destructive.

People lose their jobs.

People destroy themselves in relationships.

People destroy themselves in choice behavior sometimes with addiction.

So this information is super helpful because it's going to help avoid further catastrophe when we start to understand ourselves and it doesn't mean you have to open up the trauma folder and see it all,

But know as we move through this,

You might have some awareness that comes to surface.

So remind yourself,

You're just watching me.

You're just talking to me.

Well,

You're not talking to me,

But you know what I'm saying.

You're listening to me right now.

You're safe in your space and whatever comes through is not now.

It is in a memory of the body and the mind and anything that comes up allows you to look at it,

Heal it,

And move through a different direction in life.

Thank you for sharing space with me.

I appreciate each and every one of you and I look forward to seeing you again real soon.

Reviews

Excited this series finally dropped here! It feels like I just keep working on the same traumas that just keep showing up. I’m ready to get to the root problem which I thought I’d already done. Maybe it has something to do with acceptance for me? I’m ready to completely heal all my trauma so let’s do this! 💜