Trauma seems to be a well used word lately.
Teachers, business owners, HR, nearly every kind of employer or employee is being trained and informed about ‘trauma imformed’ behavior.
It seems that trauma affects all of us. I guess being human, it makes sense that we can’t get through a life without traumatic experiences.
An interesting subject, on one hand, it can explain a lot about why anyone acts the way they do. It can explain better our own selves. Why am I acting this way? Ohhh trauma triggers…
The downside is, that it’s a good excuse for not trying too hard, as in: What’s the use, I have a trauma condition…
Which can’t be a helpful stance
Can it? I mean it’s good to give ourselves and others a pass, to veiw with a compassionate eye.
I think we have other options too.
With all the new research and understanding, my hope is that we can treat ourselves and our fellow humans better, but also have more skills for regulating.
I know I want to continue to learn more and to amend some of my life views, (the ones that get in the way of calm confidence). Times when I wake up off, or get triggered by something unexpected or even unknown. I’m always seeking more awareness. More self understanding, more other people understanding. Always more self understanding.
I wrote my book ‘Peaceful Hearts’, a few years ago. It came out of my triggered reaction to a very televised school shooting. I didn’t yet know anything about triggers. What I remember is not being able to stop watching the horrible scenes on repeat as they played across my computer screen or how sad and sick I felt. The worse I felt the harder it was to drag eyes away. The affects stayed with me for weeks. I didn’t feel this way immediately after the shooting at our school, the one I was actually in, years before. I even went to EMDR afterwards to help me get over the dread of going to work that I felt after a long weekend or week break. I wasn’t the only one who got stomache aches as I drove up.
My friend’s son, who was on the playground at lunch the day it happened, struggled to stay at school for lunch for years afterward.
No one was talking about trauma back then. Many parents and teachers struggled with strong feelings, random fears, even anger, for quite awhile. Many refused to talk about it. EMDR was a new, unique therapy that many of us tried with pretty good success.
But these triggers…
I wrote and illustrated ‘Peaceful Heart’s’ long before I knew anything about the term ‘triggered’. I just knew I was affected and so were others. Here was an event, long since past, affecting us so completely. I was trying to just find some peace for myself.
It’s interesting that now, I don’t expect to ‘get over’ the traumatic events of my life. Years ago, I would have felt shamed for not being able to ‘just move on’. Instead, I now understand that these experiences never go away, but that I can live peacefully, triggers and all, anyway.
Even though things are recorded in my brain and body, I found some helpful tools that work.
Awareness, breathwork. Yoga
Having ‘Peaceful Hearts’ come to me, was as though the future was handing me a bit of help across the years.
Lately, as we as a society, become comfortable discussing harder things, Peaceful Hearts, which talks about emotion and breathing and feeling, is selling out.
Things you can’t predict.
Peace Kit 