Have you noticed that there has been a lot of disaster around you? The weather, foreign affairs, the news about town, all creating an environment of alert especially for someone who has a history of traumatic experiences. As hard as you try to go about your daily business, as if everything is just fine, there is a nagging voice in the back of your head that won’t go away. Perhaps it sounds something like this:
“Get away from me” said the woman.
“ I am a memory from the past. I want to come back and haunt you, especially since you seem vulnerable and afraid. Suffering is one result of the secrets you carry” said the trauma
“Get away from me. Leave me alone, please!! I don’t want you here anymore. Why are you here?” said the little girl.
“ I am here to remind you to be careful and not to trust anyone. I am here because of the hurt and pain and trauma that you are seeing in the streets, on the news and hearing from others. I am here to remind you to never forget me” said the trauma.
“ I am done with you. Go AWAY!” as the woman shakes, and cries, tears streaming from her face.
“The only way I can back-off is if you acknowledge me and understand that you can’t hide from me. When you try to hide, I get bigger” said the trauma.
Does this scenario seem familiar? Do you fight your internal voice, a reminder of a memory that you want to force away, yet are unable to do just that? When the memory of trauma hits, people who have experienced trauma tend to re-experience the fear, the agitation, the anxiety and the dread associated with memories that resurface.
Why does this happen? The body remembers. What you see, what you hear, what you smell and what you kinesthetically feel can bring you back to a time when things were out of control. When disaster hits close to home, residual emotional and physical trauma, come into the psyche like uninvited guests. They take up space in your mind and in your soul. All you want to do is shed the intensity of the feelings. Like shedding skin. The voices, those internal ones, the flashbacks, both in color and black and white, get louder, more vivid and urge you to pay attention. The more you want to ignore them the louder the internal voice becomes.
- What would happen if you simply acknowledged the memories that emerge, talk to them, give them an audience of your time?
- What would happen if in the speaking to these memories you told them that they can not hurt you anymore?
- What do you imagine would happen if you soothed yourself by sharing some part of your story with the part of you who has survived and can listen without judgment or a critical voice?
I have a magnet on my fridge that I have had for years. It looks like a pirates chest, it is covered in faux chains, and on it there is a button that when pushed, allows the broadcast of someone shouting “Let Me Out Of Here” bellow throughout the kitchen. It is in the moment of pushing that button that I feel ready to explode. How does your child need to come out of hiding, out of the hidden treasure of your soul, being released through the voice and the secrets of the inner child who remains, as always, your safe keeper and witness to the pain and often stark realities of trauma?
Isn’t it time you let yourself out? Allowing yourself to play out the story that stops you from being you. Learning to soothe the soul from suffering opens the pathway to a soul soothed.
