if you have trauma ; do not compare yourself : understand your wounds and love yourself

There is nothing as painful in suffering trauma as the world and other people not truly understanding the full impact and depth of what happened to you, of what was denied you, others just take for granted. But the paradox is that because your experience is unique and often intensely painful then there may not be a lot of people who are capable of or even fully willing to understand. If you can accept this living with trauma then life will still be challenging but you will not end up being so doubly traumatized by a world that is not always capable of showing you that much needed support and critical empathy. You may also save yourself the grief of feeling you have to live up to standards that are not fully suited to you, considering the true nature of your own trauma.

Sadly in our society I believe many of us suffer from the terrible wound of self rejection, in fact Henri Nouwen after suffering his own deep depression and from feelings of complete isolation and abandonment by the world began to write a lot about this issue of self rejection. He saw it as one of our deepest wounds.. And he also saw a path to redemption coming out of this wound when deeply navigated, contained and understood. He felt, through his own dark night experience that once we could find a way or ways to reach deeply for that sense of being beloved or perfectly worthy as we are even in the midst of not feeling or being ‘fine’ or worthy by the standards of a certain world view, we could come back into a far more loving, grounded and realistic relationship with ourselves and also release others from the demand to fill up that hole in the soul that abuse, trauma or rejection leaves inside of those of us who are traumatized.

That said as part of our healing, especially if we suffer from very challenging feelings of self criticism or persecution and self blame that early childhood trauma and its lasting impacts causes, lies in finding someone who is capable of offering us that necessary empathy and understanding, someone who can accept that as a human we have limits and bear scars or wounds… For to develop the capacity to live in a relatively peaceful state with such wounds depends very much upon finding this source of empathy somewhere.

This idea of loving unconditional self acceptance also relates to the idea or concept of there being an eternal part of us that lies outside of the ego that is like a watcher or witness to the smaller self. This ‘knower has the capacity both to contain our suffering and wounding as well as offering acceptance, love and understanding to the hurting places..This part of us will also help us to recognize our own very natural human and humane earthly limits.. it will have the capacity to stand up to the persecutor and it will also stop us from endlessly engaging in self limiting self protections, such as never hoping for or reaching for love or happiness outside of trauma.

In some ways this post I am writing tonight is prompted by the current face off between Uranus and Saturn. If you like Uranus is the part of us that deals with ideals and concepts of perfection.. In the Uranian view some kind of revolution needs to happen in order to upturn all of these hellish impositions and restrictions that the more earthly limited planet Saturn represents.. Uranus may demand that we never feel fear, or that we overcome all obstacles or find some kind of reason for things when in fact there may be no reason for some things having happened at all, it all just being down to the random order of life or fate. It may be a tough Saturnian call to accept this earthlt human place as a place of imperfections and suffering and not see these as signs of failure or weakness but more so as signs of our truly dual nature as part animal part spiritual.. we can then see the feeling sensate animal part of us does suffer and hurts due to our dilemma of being born by no free choice subject to all kinds of forces both damaging and nurturing.

So let us no longer blame ourselves for what we did not cause…let us understand that to be human is often to suffer and suffer deeply. Seeing this NOT AS A SIGN OF FAILURE but instead part of the human dilemma of being born while struggling to live in an at times deeply traumatising and wounding world.