Re-experiencing trauma

If I have been deeply upset or traumatised by something, I may be hiding an unhealed wound in my unconscious.  While I was experiencing the original trauma, my reaction may have been flight, fight or freeze. All these were natural reactions, part of being a human animal: none allowed me to be in the situation and process it cognitively or emotionally. 

Unprocessed experience gets stored in a sort of flash-frozen state.  When it gets triggered by a current life event, it begins to thaw out and to hurt; it may cause me to over-react either inside myself or through my actions.   Today when this happens I will ask myself if my deep emotional reaction to a situation is appropriate or if an old wound is getting pressed.  If it is an old wound, I will let myself feel it and become aware of how that old pain is affecting me in my life today.

I find freedom through healing trauma

Truly one learns only by sorrow; it is a terrible education

that the soul gets and it requires a terrible grief

that shakes the very foundation of one’s being

to bring the soul into its own.

Lance Hawker

Source : The Soul’s Companion, Tian Dayton, October 25, p. 325