Making peace with yourself and starting the healing process.
Trauma and ego. We’ve all heard these 2 terms at some point in our lives, and you might even have an idea of what they are. In this article we will talk about what they mean, how they affect you and how they work hand in hand with each other.
The subconscious mind and you
Your subconscious mind is a fascinating tool that exists to keep you safe and to help you make sense of your experiences. The primary job of your subconscious mind is to ensure your safety: physical, mental, and emotional.
For example, it will do so by activating your fight or flight if you are in imminent physical danger, so you can get the heck out of a situation or fight your way through it. In order to anticipate what situations might be dangerous or not, your subconscious mind keeps files of your past experiences that it can use as reference for the present in order to create some sense of safety and predictability.
Of course, all of this happens without your conscious awareness, in order for you to be able to focus on the tasks at hands while your subconscious mind does all the work in the background…
With that in mind (no pun intended), your subconscious starts to fill in these files as soon as you open your eyes after you exit you mother’s womb (perhaps even before that). Each situation that you find yourself in is analyzed and judged so you know whether it is safe, or something you need to fight, flight, freeze or appease for. It is then stored in your mind’s files as points of reference for the future.
After the first few years of your life, your mind has almost all the points of reference needed to refer to any new event or situation to because it generalizes information. Which is why the foundation of your subconscious mind is said to be created and developed between the ages of 0 and 6 to 8 years old. Anything after that is filtered through the foundation that you have created in those early years.
Trauma
As a child, when a situation carries a heavy, negative emotional weight (in the mind of the child) that the child does not have the tools to deal with, it is called trauma. It is stored in the mind’s files with an alert symbol on it, because the subconscious knows ‘if this is happened now, it is likely to happen again… And when it does, I’ll need to be ready!’ It then generalizes information, for it to be easier to use and access in the future.
For example… If you were hit by your father as a child, you might have a file titled ‘men cannot be trusted’ and this has you act and react in accordance with that, as a way to attempt to never feel the kind of pain that you used to feel as a child. Because of the generalization, your mind cannot make the difference between your father and other men, in this example.
Most of us have been taught about trauma as a big bad event, or series of events, that happened to you. As the science and research moves forward, we are finding out that trauma is much more complex and much more vast than that. ALL of us have experienced trauma and carry sequelae from it.
If trauma is described as a situation that carries a heavy negative emotional weight, in the mind of the child, then there is no way to tell what is traumatic for someone and what isn’t. Because something that might have been traumatic for you, might not be for your neighbor and vis versa. Anything can result in trauma (as we will discuss below) and it simply depends on the person.
The deeper the trauma, the more alerts and defense mechanisms are put in place to ensure that we never feel the pain that we’ve experienced, again.
Trauma later on in life
The trauma that we experience earlier on in our lives shape and define the foundation of our psyche. Anything else in life is then filtered through that foundation. So, if/ when we experience trauma later in life, we experience it through that filter.
When we have a highly sensitive file in our subconscious that is classified as dangerous, we are then on the lookout for it in our lives. We unconsciously look for proof in order to re-enforce it and to validate it so we can stay on our toes about it. More than look for proof, we will purposely create life circumstances and situations that re-enact what we already believe. This serves two purposes, as we will discuss below.
Let’s say as part of your past experiences, you carry the following self-limiting beliefs: ‘I am a bad boy’, ‘I never have enough’, ‘happiness never lasts’.
Later in life your wife leaves you, you lose your job and your life savings. Even though this can be a traumatic experience, you will experience this trauma through the foundation that you have already created as a child. In fact, in this example, your subconscious mind might even say ‘See? I knew it … I am a bad boy, I never have enough, and happiness never lasts… I deserve what I got.’
Triggers and defense mechanisms
As discussed above, trauma is stored in your subconscious and in your nervous system for you to be on guard for and to use as a point of reference later on in your life. In order to utilize the information efficiently, your mind will generalize the information that it has and create trigger points that will activate your nervous system when and where necessary.
Once a trigger has been activated, your mind signals your nervous system and you have what we call a trauma response. The intensity of the trauma response will depend on the severity of the trauma and how deeply it disturbed you when it happened.
As part of the trauma response, your subconscious mind and nervous system activate defense mechanisms to attempt to minimize the damage or danger that it thinks you are in. It activates your fight, flight, freeze or appease response.
As we have discussed, most of the time when it activates a trauma response, you aren’t in fact in danger and your mind is simply re-enacting a repressed memory.
A trigger can vary from someone saying something a certain way, to looking at you a certain way, certain smells, sounds, certain actions from a loved one… There is really no way to tell what can be a trigger as it can vary so wildly. Again, the deeper the trauma, the more triggers and defense mechanisms will be in place. We will converse about the various defense mechanisms below.
The friendship of trauma and ego
Aforementioned, trauma happens when an event or situation carries a heavy negative emotional weight as a child, that the child does not have the tools to deal with. When you lacked the tools to deal with what was happening to you, you were left completely defenseless. As such, your subconscious mind stepped in and called on a trusty protector: Ego.
Trauma can happen, even if the event had ‘nothing to do with you’. Part of your subconscious mind’s job is to help you make sense of your experience. As a child until the age of 8 or 9 (the ages that the foundation of your psyche is created) the world revolves around you. You are the center of your own universe because that is your stage of development at that time. So, when something traumatic happens and you try to make sense of it, guess what is going to be at the center of that explanation? ‘Me’. ‘This must be happening because of me.’
As a child, you usually stumbled onto trauma being your authentic self. When the shock of trauma seeps in and you are left vulnerable, a part of you registers that being your true authentic self is not safe and as such you start to lock up certain parts of you so they can stay ‘intact’. If your true authentic self is no longer safe to be, then who and what IS safe to be?
That is when ego steps in as your trusted protector.
Ego says ‘It’s okay, I will help you. Let me tell you what is good, bad, enough, not enough, who and what you should and shouldn’t be. Since being YOU is no longer safe, I will tell you who and what to be.’
Ego is who you think you out to be in the world in order to receive love and acceptance. As a consequence of trauma, a belief steps in that being yourself is no longer safe and can no longer provide what you were looking for the most in this world: Unconditional love and acceptance. You now believe that love and acceptance is conditional, and you slowly teach yourself about what those conditions are.
Ego is the mini-you on your shoulder whispering that you as you are, isn’t good enough (since it isn’t safe and cannot give you unconditional love and acceptance) and telling you who and what you should be in the world. It starts weaving a mask that you end up wearing on display for the world to see, attempting to get that unconditional love and acceptance. Ego is how you want to portray yourself in society, it is how you want other people to see you.
Over time, we get so used to having parts of ourselves locked up and wearing our ego mask that we start to forget. There is a disconnect from our authentic self that takes place and we begin to think that ego is who we truly are. We get so used to listening to that voice inside of our heads telling us ‘not good enough’ ‘too much’ too little’ ‘should be like this’ ‘shouldn’t be like that’ and we start to feel like there is something inherently wrong with who we are on a fundamental level.
Defense mechanisms and your fight, flight, freeze or appease response
When a trigger is activated, your subconscious is on hyper alert that a dangerous situation is at play and as a part of its job to keep you safe, it needs to keep the vulnerable (and authentic) parts of you that you have locked up, hidden, and protected. In order to do so, it needs to scare off any potential assailants away and distracted from those locked up parts. And it will do that by activating your nervous system into a fight, flight, freeze or appease response.
Defense mechanisms can look like lashing out in anger, making ourselves smaller and quiet, retreating inwards and disconnecting from our surroundings, physical violence, emotional manipulation and blackmailing, lying, not saying what we want to say, saying yes when we want to say no (and vis versa), violating other people’s boundaries, letting our own boundaries be violated, among other things.
All of these defense mechanisms can be categorized in one of the fight, flight, freeze or appease responses.
Each of these responses will look different but are the same on a fundamental level. The message that activates them is ‘I am in danger, and I need a strategy to stay safe.’ And they will create a mild to strong (sometimes debilitating) physiological response. Depending on the situation and the trauma that you carry, your nervous system will choose which response is the most appropriate.
The fight response
In the fight response, the body produces the following hormones: cortisol, dopamine, and adrenaline. Emotions such as anger, rage and aggression are present. The muscles will tense up, especially in the hands, feet, and jaw, and you may feel an impulse to scream, bite, shout, punch, kick, push, etc.
This, of course, varies in intensity. Let’s say that a loved one says something that you are triggered by, and you feel boiling anger and feel the impulse to shout, snap or verbally jab in order to ‘defend yourself’, that is your fight response being activated.
The flight response
In the flight response, the same hormones are being released, dopamine, cortisol, and adrenaline. High sensations in the limbs and extremities are present, such as shaking and trembling, and a certain restlessness is present. Like an impulse to run away, leave and flee with a sense of urgency. Emotions such as fear, anxiety and restlessness are present.
This might look like needing to get away from someone who’s said something hurtful to you or that you feel is verbally ‘assaulting’ you.
The person may or may not be excessive in what they are saying. Regardless, the experience of being verbally assaulted and needing to get away is entirely your own and is present because your flight response has been activated.
The freeze response
During the freeze response, the body releases endorphins, adenosine, and dopamine to create a time-limited freeze state to preserve survival. The body locks up and there is a paralyses that takes place that feels like you are frozen in place. The impulse to hide, get smaller or disappear are present. There is also a state of numbness and emotional dissociation in that moment.
The appease response
In the appease response, the chemicals endorphins, adenosine, and dopamine are released. The need to appease the person that is in front you and that you perceive (consciously or unconsciously) as dangerous is present and is done so by avoiding conflict, being over-accommodating to your own detriment, the inability to say how you really feel or what you really think. The state of numbness and emotional dissociation from self is also present.
Often, with years of being familiarized with our go-to trauma response, we start to think that it is who we are and that it is a defect and something that is fundamentally broken or wrong with us. We are not taught about trauma, what it looks like, how to recognize it and how to deal with in within ourselves. It also hasn’t been normalized, even though we ALL have trauma on some level, shape or form, as we will discuss below.
Your mind, body, and spirit
Your mind, body, and spirit are constantly working with you to try to bring you back to a state of equilibrium and wholeness. When you get a cut, for example, one of the ways that your body attempts to work with you is by signaling you with pain! The pain says ‘hey, look at me! I need your attention, so this doesn’t turn into something fatal.’ And indeed, if not looked at – if ignored – the cut may get infected which can result in amputation and even death.
Your mind and spirit operate in the same way! Except we are not taught about it. When trauma occurs, engendering self-limiting beliefs, delusions about ourselves and others, low-self-esteem, etc. Your mind will warn you with mental and emotional discomfort and suffering (pain). When left unchecked, this mental and emotional suffering will start to manifest into your life, in the form of unhealthy relationships with others, dissatisfaction at work, unhealthy habits, addiction, inability to create what you want in your life… This can lead to a deep sense of hopelessness and loneliness and can even manifest in dis-ease in the body in the form of physical and mental ailments.
The reason a trauma response gets stuck in your subconscious and nervous system is because your mind, body and spirit want you to operate in a healthy way and want you to be in a state of wholeness. Therefor, each time your trauma response is activated or its companions (self-limiting beliefs, being hard on ourselves, talking down to ourselves, etc.) are present, it is an opportunity for you to look at what is out of balance for you. Just like pain with a cut, it is your body’s way of saying ‘hey! Look at me! There is something wrong here that needs to be looked at and resolved!’ Each time your trauma response or its companions are present, it is an opportunity for resolution.
Unfortunately, because we aren’t taught to look within ourselves, and because mental and emotional suffering has been demonized by our society and labeled as ‘wrong’, when that kind of pain comes up, we look outside of ourselves. “I had that reaction because this person is a bully!” or “I am dissatisfied at work because our culture is crap!” or “I have unhealthy habits because I don’t have enough money to have healthy ones!”
Instead of looking at it by saying ‘Huh… My internal experience is creating suffering for me. Only I create my own internal experience. So, what is going on?’
Your mind, body and spirit are constantly communicating with you about what is working and what isn’t. It is our job and responsibility to slow down for long enough to hear it.
Inevitable trauma
Part of our responsibility on this earth is to make peace with ourselves and to learn to connect with our inner most truths, passions, and messages. Trauma gets in the way of that AND, trauma is inevitable. Birth in and of itself IS a trauma.
Think about it! You live in this state of pure comfort, all the time. You are never cold, never hot. You are never hungry, never thirsty. Your needs are always met! There is no danger, no effort, no thinking that needs to happen on your part and it’s all you have ever known.
All of a sudden, the world in which you have always been a part of pushes you out to a new world you have never seen before! All of a sudden there are bright lights shining everywhere, loud voices and sounds assailing you. You are cold which you’ve never experienced before. The link that connected you to your mother and the source of all of your needs is severed from your body. You have never been touched in your life before, but some unknown hands grab you by the feet, slap you on the back and you take your first breath. It’s harsh, it hurts, and this is your first experience of being your own human being and separate from the source you have been relying on and living with up until now.
On top of it all, you are completely helpless. You start experiencing needs such as hunger, frustration, cold, heat, etc. You can’t see out of your eyes yet, you can’t express yourself, you can’t provide anything for yourself, and you have no idea when or if you ever will. You are completely dependent upon someone which you do not even know from this new perspective.
You went from the being the King/ Queen of your own universe, never in need, always taken care of without needing to seek or ask… to being in need, helpless with no means to express yourself or even put into word that you can comprehend what is happening to you.
Welcome to the first trauma of your life!
Trauma is inevitable. It has been and is a part of our experiences as human beings. Especially in a society that is not trauma informed and where people unknowingly project their traumas onto others, their spouse, children, etc., creating generational trauma. The burden is a lot heavier to carry! Not only are we not taught the tools to recognize, deal with, and heal our own traumas, we end up carrying other people’s traumas as well and repeating the vicious cycle ourselves of projecting our traumas onto others.
Let me iterate something here… Trauma isn’t inherently wrong. In fact, trauma gives us an opportunity to get to know ourselves on a much deeper level. Through exploring our own traumas and where we have created suffering in our lives, we get an opportunity to come out on the other side much more grounded, much more connected and with much more compassion, authenticity and love for ourselves and others.
Just as trauma is inevitable, the opportunity that healing trauma gives us, is, without a doubt, one of the most powerful ways to become our truest, brightest, strongest selves.
Trauma isn’t something you have to ‘carry’, it is something you get to transform and alchemize into personal power, authenticity, truth, and compassion.
How to deal with our own trauma
As part of our trusted protector’s help (ego), we start to think that ego and trauma is who we are, and that there is something inherently wrong with us for it. That we are simply damaged in that way, and that it’s too bad but hey, everyone has their own demons and burdens. And while this is true that everyone has their own burden to carry, anyone can choose to stop at any time to drop that burden and unpack it.
The truth is that there is nothing wrong with you because trauma and ego isn’t who you are on a fundamental level. Trauma and ego aren’t even here to trip you up and get in your way! They are here to help you become who you were always meant to be, should you choose it. You, at your core, are a powerful, expended, whole and complete human being with a unique flavor and message for the world.
Trauma is simply something that you picked up along the way to help you cope with a certain set of circumstances. Reminding yourself of that on a daily basis will help you detach from the identity that you have falsely mistaken as you for so many years. That, in and of itself, will go a long way to help you settle into a peace of mind that you might not have experienced in a long time.
Making peace with our trauma
Our whole lives, we have been listening to ego telling us that we aren’t good enough as we are. That we need to change in order to be worthy of love and acceptance. That we need to work on this or that, that we are too much of this and not enough of that.
Learning to approach trauma from a completely different perspective will do much to lift some weight off your shoulders. Think about it. If you approach trauma from the perspective of ‘this is wrong and I need to change’, this is just more of the same and the message is ‘You are not good enough as you are, there is something wrong with you.’ And will only perpetuate the same vicious cycle over and over again.
There is an incredibly healing and genuine connection that happens when you approach another human being and embrace them JUST as they are without trying to change them. When you see and treat them as whole, perfect, and complete. Whether it is a homeless man addicted to drugs on the street, someone who’s lost or doesn’t have the use of their legs, someone whom you see as a bully or whoever the person in front of you is. The thing is that we constantly project how we feel about ourselves onto other people, so if you see yourself as broken, not enough and not whole and complete, that is how you will see those around you.
The same magical healing and genuine connection that can happen between two human beings, two complete strangers, can also happen within you when you learn to approach yourself that way. When you learn to see your trauma (and ALL of you), not as something that is defective, broken or something to be fixed or changed, but as an entity who is already perfect, whole, and complete just as they are. An entity who isn’t missing anything and doesn’t need anything in order to be whole.
“But if I don’t try to change, how can I ever heal?” You do not need to change in order to heal. First comes the healing, and then change becomes a natural and effortless by-product of the healing process. Part of that healing process is to accept ALL of you and to see yourself for who you really are: A perfect and whole person.
Slowing down
There is a dissociation from self that happens when trauma occurs. It is especially felt during strong trauma responses when it feels like you have no access to your own reasoning anymore. However, there is a constant milder dissociation that occurs on a day-to-day basis when we got the idea as a child that life is dangerous and that it is too risky to be our most authentic selves.
As a way to help us cope with this dissociation, ego comes in, telling us who and what to be so we can keep ‘protecting’ these vulnerable parts of us and keep them locked up.
There is a natural occurrence that happens when we slow down long enough within ourselves. A reconnection to our core, to our emotions, to our vulnerable, authentic truths.
As a way to protect us from this, since our subconscious and nervous system deems it no longer safe, there is a restlessness that takes place in us to keep us from slowing down long enough to connect with these parts.
The restlessness says ‘Nope, can’t slow down. Why should we slow down? Keep going! We have places to go! Things to accomplish! We have too much to do to slow down. Later, we’ll slow down later, not right now.”
Learning to recognize it
The beauty of being able to be with yourself and seeing yourself as perfect, whole, and complete without trying to change yourself is that you start to notice things about how you work and operate that you wouldn’t have otherwise. You are able to start to see yourself, your thoughts, your emotions, and your reactions objectively. You know they do not mean anything about who you are on a fundamental level so all of a sudden, they become an interesting thing to notice!
When I first became aware that some of my ways of being were simply a trauma response as opposed to anything that was wrong with me, it gave me the space that I needed to BE with my responses without panicking, without trying to change them or myself, and it allowed me to really learn about them!
All of a sudden, instead of the whirlwind of thoughts and panic that would usually accompany my trauma response, it gave me the space to detach from it enough to go ‘Okay, right now my nervous system is activated. My hands are shaking, my heart is beating fast, and that’s okay. It’s just trauma stored in my nervous system.’ I could be with it and even communicate it in the midst of it. I would tell the person in front of me ‘Look, right now I am experiencing high sensations, I am shaky, and my heart is beating really fast. I have a hard time thinking straight and I can’t quite be present with what you are telling me right now. I need to revisit this with you when I’ve had time to settle back into myself.’
Before, because I believed that it was something that was wrong with me, I would try to hide my response at all costs! And I would project my own internal experience onto the other person. “I am reacting this way because THIS person is broken and defective.” I would try to show up as if I wasn’t experiencing all of these high sensations (ego, telling me that I couldn’t be vulnerable, especially in the midst of a trauma response). Allowing myself to be with it, to accept it and to be vulnerable even in the middle of it, released an incredible amount of weight off my shoulders and with time lessened the intensity of the responses I was having. I started to notice when and how the responses would get activated and I was able to give myself the love and patience that I needed in those moments to be with myself and to help me heal, a little bit at a time.
Trusting and honoring yourself and the process
There is a level of trust and honor towards yourself that is required about what is coming up for you throughout the healing process. Sometimes, we have been so used to double guessing ourselves, to telling ourselves that there is something wrong with us, that the trust and honor part is something we miss entirely!
Trusting that what is coming up for you is for your highest good and is needed for you in that moment.
Honoring that what is coming up for you is true and valid and no more or less than whatever could be coming up for someone else.
This will demand that you slow down enough and long enough to reconnect with a part of you that is true and authentic, and slowly learn to switch from operating from the incessant restlessness and whirlwind of ego thoughts.
Asking for help
What helped me (and IS helping me) the most on my journey of self-realization has been asking for the help of professionals. To dig into the work of various masters to help me navigate my own transformation. Having a personal coach, I could process all of this with, has hands down been the biggest and most pivotal move of my life. And of course, having an amazing support system around me and the most amazing partner that I can share all of this with.
Asking for help from a professional you connect with, and trust, might help you move forward faster and more efficiently than you ever thought possible.
And as always, be kind and patient with yourself. You are worth it and are bigger and more powerful than can even imagine…
With Love,
Nino