I was debating on writing this post. But my spiritual team said yes you must. So, I dreamed about this all night.
Trauma
What is trauma?
How the body filters the world around you after trauma.
This word gets used a lot and has different meanings to everyone.
Trauma at the core is about the nervous system being overwhelmed. Something has happened too fast or intense for you to handle. It’s not just the event it’s how your nervous system responds and everyone is different.
Trauma is not about being weak, the nervous system is doing the job its designed for: To Protect you! The brain will go into survival mode~fight, flight, freeze or fawn~ and sometimes get stuck there.
Trauma can be emotional, physical or complex. The effects can range from being easily startled to PTSD. Some examples: abuse, accidents, loss of loved ones, unsafe home, medical emergencies, war, violence, neglect. These can happen once or a long-repeated experience.
I like to describe trauma as a kaleidoscope filter between your trauma and the world. All these pieces that are fractured but still function.
When information comes in, when people say things to you. It doesn’t land on a neutral surface. It passes through, stored emotional memory, body sensations, old survival responses.
Information gets altered before you even consciously touch it: a neutral comment can feel loaded, feedback can feel like an attack, ambiguity can feel like danger, even good news can feel destabilizing.
The TRIGGER isn’t you being dramatic. It’s your nervous system saying…..This resembles something that once hurt me!
I was talking to my son about this, and he said it was like the body indexing. The trauma is stored away and when key words are spoken. It finds the trauma and then the trigger happens.
The Kaleidoscope metaphor is that depending on the internal state, the same input can look totally different, small shifts (stress, fatigue, hunger) can change the pattern.
The trauma filter is not broken perception, its protective perception that never got updated.
How triggers differ from intuition.
Triggers are memory driven and intuition is present driven.
Both are fast and protective but come from different places.
Triggers are sudden intense spike 0-100, tightness in the body (chest, stomach, clenched jaw), urgency I have to act now!
Intuition is clear not frantic, grounded, calm. It informs it doesn’t overwhelm.
Triggers fade but intuition says consistent.
3 things you can do to help:
1. Pause the story, see what your body is saying
1. breathe, inhale, exhale
2. name 3 things you can see
3. ground yourself through your feet
2. Ask 2 questions
1. what does my body think is happening?
2. what is actually happening right now?
3. Wait for the second signal
1. Intuition comes back after regulation
2. triggers soften, fragment or flip
Healing happens at many levels over time. It’s not an all at once kind of thing. The first step is recognizing the triggers. I’ve been on this healing journey for 5+ years now and I still have a few triggers.
Words, events, people will trigger your wounds. It’s important to recognize it (trigger) and WHY it’s triggering you. Dive deep into the root cause of it. This is where TRUE healing happens. Not projecting on the person, place or event that caused the trigger.