Trauma

Let’s talk trauma. ⠀
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Basically explained, trauma is the response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event that overwhelms our ability to cope. Trauma can cause us to feel helpless, diminish our sense of self, make it hard for us to feel a full range of emotions and can lead to fight, flight or freeze reactions.⠀
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You could have sustained trauma and not even realize it.⠀
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It could stem from your childhood, relationships, experiences or life-events. Whatever the case, trauma could be impacting your relationships, interactions and overall functioning. ⠀
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There’s trauma in my past. ⠀
Toxic interactions with my ex were traumatic.⠀
The end of my marriage was traumatic. ⠀
My divorce was traumatic. ⠀
Infertility is traumatic. ⠀
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But possibly the worst culprit for my trauma is the verbal abuse I experienced while married. ⠀
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It’s one thing to identify the cause of trauma. It’s another thing entirely to work through it and heal. Just because I can name what caused my trauma doesn’t mean it’s fully healed. My trauma didn’t happen overnight and isn’t because of one isolated incident. It’s complex. The healing is also complex. ⠀
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I try my best. I work to identify patterns of behaviour (when I can). I reflect. I try to stop myself if I have a trauma trigger. I try to avoid trauma triggers. I have successes, but I also have setbacks. At the end of the day ...⠀
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I’m a work-in-progress. ⠀
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If you’re a work-in-progress like me, throw a comment below. We can all be in on this healing-thing together.⠀And if you haven’t, head over to the We Band Together page and listen to their podcast all about mental health! We did an interview last week and you can hear it on episode 4! ⠀