Lately I’ve been asked to check in with my body a lot. The body doesn’t lie, The body keeps the score, it’s all in the body. Whatever way you phrase it, I’ve been asked to go into that vessel that carries us all through our days and explain what’s been going on. If you’ve followed me closely, you’ll likely have already read the article on my missing gut feelings. This is a little different from that. Today I wanna talk about the buzz word of our generation: trauma.

I was recently part of a poetry workshop which seeks to give writers feedback on their work. In the session, two writers preceded their work with a trigger warning. Warning: what you are about to read may contain content related to suicide and homophobia. I was floored. Firstly, that they had even bothered to precede a reading of their work with a trigger warning. Secondly, that other people could have reactions or be “triggered” just by reading someone else’s thoughts in poem form. The session continued on, and one girl made a mention to her “trauma” and some of the traumatic events she had been through. She generalized saying something about “all of our trauma” in reference to the pandemic and went so far as to mention that if her words triggered any of our underlying traumas she was sorry. I didn’t know how to react. A part of me wanted to laugh a little and a part of me wanted to apologize to her for what she had been through. Trauma is a conspicuous topic for me and one I have mixed feelings about. Having been through an actual traumatic event (or series of events) I am very aware of how the body can store impressions and decide that everything is too much to cope with, thereby creating a trauma response and in my case, mild PTSD. And yet even knowing that trauma is real, I hesitate to use the word trauma. I have found that in my generation the word trauma can be used to describe anyone’s feelings on a regular Monday. Whenever we perceive something as having been too much for our system, we ascribe the word “trauma” to it.

But what is trauma? Google defines trauma as “an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape or natural disaster”. According to the search engine, via the American Psychology Association, traumatic events are followed by shock or denial and can include long term reactions such as “flashbacks, strained emotions and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea”. I don’t know how I feel about this definition. In some ways it’s too general and in others it’s too specific. If you are “woke” you likely follow accounts such as the.holistic.psychologist and awake_spiritual. You have probably seen a meme or two about wanting a man who has healed his trauma and have kept up with the latest in trauma fashion (i.e what traumas are currently on trend/ what can be labelled as a trauma). And yet, what do we really know about trauma?

When I got sick with EBV over a year ago, I developed severe insomnia whereby I could barely fall asleep. The inflammation that the virus caused to the myelin sheath around my brain, coupled with a second viral attack caused me to be hypersensitive to noise and light. Every impression felt like an attack on my system, and I had to resort to extreme measures like covering my eyes in order to be able to withstand the pain. In layman terms, I guess I could say that all of that felt very traumatic. In actuality, my “trauma” was an overload of the senses. My body froze up. I went into fight or flight mode. Unneeded functions were done away with (like my period, for example) and my unconscious or subconscious took over. Looking back on this period of my life I can’t help but flinch. There is a bodily response of escape that happens when I try and process it, proof to me that the effect has not been metabolized. But trauma is different for everybody. What is traumatic for you may not be traumatic for me. I have a friend who was bullied as a teenager. In therapy she learned that this was one of the events (or series of events) that directed her persona and that shaped who she became. Her trauma ruled her life and until she learned to heal it, the events stayed with her. When she told me this story I balked. A) Because she didn’t seem like the type to get bullied and B) because I did not associate the idea of bullying with trauma. All of this is to say that trauma can come in various shapes and sizes. You may look alright on the outside, but no one really knows what’s happening inside.

In the U.S more than 70% of people have suffered from some kind of traumatic event at least once in their life. This is no small figure. It shows us that trauma and trauma healing are definitely an under-researched area of psychology. In homeopathy, we often look at the traumas in a person’s life in order to be able to treat their symptoms. Traumas can start from birth and childhood. Your mom leaving you for a significant period of time may perhaps have been perceived by your system as a trauma. Your older cousin hitting you could also have that effect. You may have previously heard that there are different types of trauma. Acute, chronic and complex. In acute traumas we look at a specific incident that triggered a trauma response. Chronic traumas are repeated, as in the case of domestic violence and complex traumas merge the two, in a varied and multiply occurring way.

I don’t know what type of trauma you suffer from. I don’t know if you even suffer from trauma. What I do know, though, is that trauma is hard to get over. A year after my ADEM diagnosis, I began to experience similar symptoms again. My body, freaked out, completely shut down and went into overload mode. It took me a good month and a half to get out of it and begin to function normally again. The repeated incident made me severly question how I had handled things the first time around, and so I began to take apart my fears or “traumas” and deal with them one by one. It was grueling work. A lot of it consisted of an SE (somatic experiencing) practitioner asking me to go into my body and tell her how it feels. I am still in this process, although it has gotten easier.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any cool or interesting insights about healing trauma. What I have learned is that every person chooses a different approach. From therapy to homeopathy to acupuncture, depending on your belief system you will find what works best for you. The key, I believe, is to not let the trauma win. To not let it define you and everything you do. If you ask me now if I have been through a traumatic event I would probably answer “no”. In learning to heal my trauma I have learned to make it smaller. I have learned that I am a person who has been through some events that don’t define me. That I am larger than the trauma. I am still taking apart some of the things I have been through, but I am learning to do so slowly and determinedly. I hope that you too are dealing with whatever issues have affected you. I hope that soon we can laugh about this word “trauma” together and find a greater meaning or path for all of us.

Untraumatizedly yours,

Girl With One Earring

Photo Credit: Marcelo Leal