The 1 Crucial Piece For Trauma Healing

Trauma has a depth, force and perceived deadliness akin to an ocean storm. Multi-storey waves of emotions can toss you around and throw you off course. In extreme cases, they can temporarily ‘sink your ship’.

A mere trigger can activate this storm, leaving you inundated and overwhelmed. Luckily, trauma storms don’t kill us. They can ‘take us out’, however, causing us to dissociate, numb ourselves or act out; before we wake up on the shore of our consciousness, vomiting and gagging.

Much like sinking to the bottom of the ocean, with trauma there’s a sense of drowning in the depths of our soul; of being disoriented and shrouded in darkness. It’s like you temporarily lose yourself.

If it is true that you lose yourself, then where do you go during that time? And is there a way to hold on to yourself during the storm? The answer is an emphatic yes. But that means you need to be clear on who you are — beyond the trauma.

There’s More To You

Mindfulness allows us to notice our thoughts. With enough practice, we eventually discover a widening gap between ‘us’ and what we are thinking.

When a thought arises in someone lacking conscious mindfulness, that person reacts emotionally and behaviourally to the thought without knowing of the thought’s existence. Imagine you drink some milk, and an hour later your stomach begins to feel unwell. Initially, your only concern is dealing with your sickness. Later on, you might start to consider what you consumed which caused the problem. With some investigation, you pinpoint the bad milk as the culprit, and you determine how to avoid getting sick next time.

This is the power of mindfulness. By knowing what your thoughts are, and what impact they have on you, you can decide how to respond to them before their accompanying reaction can complete itself.

Yet the power of mindfulness goes much further. Firstly, mindfulness can apply to emotions. Mindfulness can also expose our ego, along with its negative beliefs and rigid, limiting scripts. This alone gives us immense power to transform our lives. Often simply being mindfully conscious of a hidden aspect of ourselves is enough to initiate its transformation. From destructive thought patterns on the surface, to the sub-personalities lurking in our inner depths such as the narcissist or psychopath, mindfulness is capable of revealing things beyond our mind’s capacity. Yet that is still only a portion of the power of mindfulness. It goes further still.

Where we often trip up, is with trauma. Storms such as toxic shame attacks, panic attacks and dissociative episodes often override our capacity for mindfulness. Yet in the wake of this loss of ‘self’, we discover something of infinite power, ready to be activated — we discover the capacity to be mindful of the one who is mindful.

The Deepest Of The Deep

When you meditate on your thoughts, and notice a particular thought drifting by, who is the one who notices that thought? Rather than the thought seamlessly acting through you, you are now aware that you have had a thought in the first place.

If you then close your eyes and drift deeper, noticing anger inside you, who is the one not only feeling, but witnessing the anger? This introduces a major paradigm shift for trauma. Rather than being traumatised, you become someone who has trauma.

But be careful, this can quickly turn into an idea for your ego to exploit. “I have trauma” can become another thought pattern, and when you are not mindful of it as a thought form, you become hijacked by the ego. Rather than being ‘the one who has trauma’ and able to experience it directly, you become reduced to an ego in love with the idea of having trauma. After all, there is a major difference between knowing that Cairo is a city of ten million, and standing in the middle of its bustling streets, consumed by its smells, energy and history in motion.

To be mindful of a thought is one thing, being immersed in the experience it points towards is another thing entirely. You might be thinking how you don’t want to attend a certain event, but how about going into the accompanying anxiety? How about welcoming that anxiety, paying attention to how it feels in your body, even how it manifests as panicked thoughts? Do you dissociate from the feeling, or create new thoughts that convince you it’s not a big deal? Here you have fled into your imagination and your ego. Yet the anxiety remains, and so do you — the one who is capable of seeing the anxiety, creating space for it, and fully accepting it.

Beyond your ego, beyond your emotions, your thoughts, your memories, your beliefs, beyond your feeling Self, lies the benevolent, watchful eye of your Higher Self. Your God Self.

The Highest Of The High

During childhood, our parents are the alpha and the omega; the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful omnipotent beings ruling over the pantheon of our young world. If we grow doubtful, they have the answer. If we grow overwhelmed, they can contain our emotions, remaining unwavering in the face of our storm. If we are hungry, they provide all the nourishment we need. If we grow needy for love, they accept us, embrace us and restore us to wholeness.

Parents are the Highest Of The High — in theory, anyway. Parenthood is a tough responsibility, and parents are only human. They make mistakes. Yet we should not be concerned here with their potential human flaws. Rather, it is what lies within every parent which creates the omnipotence in the child’s mind: The ‘Great Parent’ archetype.

A ‘good enough’ parent is consistent and generally successful in their attempts at demonstrating all-knowingness and all-power. Having been brought up with emotional, cognitive and social intelligence, the good enough parent uses their acquired tools to provide the guidance, nurture, love and strength the child needs to thrive.

These qualities are fuelled by the Great Parent.

And when is a ‘Great’ or ‘good enough’ parent at their best? When a child is overwhelmed, confused or having a tantrum. In such situations, the parent contains the child’s emotions and guides them through their experience. The parent nurtures the child toward their best, and accepts them at their worst. There seems to be no limit to the ‘good enough’ parent’s strength, wisdom and benevolence.

The key to successful trauma healing is to recognise that you have the Great Parent within yourself. Recall that you possess the ability to be watchful and mindful of your inner space. Beyond and within you is the one who sees; who can breathe through an overwhelming experience and expand in their capacity to contain and accept it. Toxic shame, panic, anxiety, confusion; you possess a Higher Self capable of rising higher than the highest emotional tsunami your being can conjure.

The Higher Self is paramount to a sense of safety. As a child, we rested in the presence of an omnipotent parent who was capable of protecting us from all dangers. When we channel our Higher Self, we are able to strengthen our container and capacity for self-love. It takes time to grow this aspect of our spirituality, yet as we do, we develop more trust and confidence in its capacity to ‘hold space’ for doubt, fear and intense emotions. Above all, as our Higher Self grows in stature, we find we no longer need to dissociate and distract from our feeling Self. We can remain with our trauma like a good parent with their suffering child.

No matter what experience you are having, within you is your Higher Self, able to witness, love and transmute it all. As you progress through healing, practice mindfulness of your thoughts, your emotions and your patterns. Witness the space between you and these ‘energy forms’, and then direct your mindful attention to the one who is mindful. This is your Higher Self. This is ‘the one’, the alpha and the omega who is higher than any trauma.

The power contained within your Higher Self is beyond conception. No matter how powerful it becomes, it can always ascend higher. And no matter how fearsome your trauma becomes, you have the capacity to contain and tame that fearsomeness.

Amid a storm, it is easy to lose faith, and to reach out for others or for our ego to save us. Yet the more we develop and trust our Higher Self, the less need we have for such things. When aligned with your Higher Self, you feel centred, powerful and whole.

Explore mindfulness, lean on the edge of your limits, and invite your Higher Self to emerge. Over time, your container will grow, and your Higher Self will shine over your entire inner landscape — including your shadow — and it will love everything it sees.