“Trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled, denied, misunderstood, and untreated cause of human suffering.”
― Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
When most people hear the word trauma they think of “shock trauma”, some shocking event that happened to us in the past. However, trauma has a much wider definition today. The classic definition of trauma is a lasting adverse effect on an individual's functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, and/or spiritual well-being as a result of exposure to an incident or series of events that is emotionally disturbing or life-threatening.
Here are four general categories of trauma inducing events and their origins:
Shock Trauma and PTSD
Shock Trauma is a reaction to a deeply disturbing, life-threatening event or situation. The classic example of shock trauma, also called traumatic shock, is a military veteran that has a panic attacks during a fireworks display. Another very common form of shock trauma is an Adverse Childhood Event (ACE). Some examples of ACE are; Physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, household violence.
Developmental or Attachment Trauma
There's another much more common type of trauma called “developmental trauma" or "attachment trauma”. Developmental trauma is much harder to identify, but it can cause as much or more psychosomatic difficulty than shock trauma. Developmental trauma is not just what happened to you, it includes what didn't happen to you that should have. For example, if an infant child is not held or loved enough by the mother or is neglected by the mother when in distress, that child very often grows up with attachment disorders or developmental trauma. This can manifest as a sense of not feeling good enough and/or unwanted/unloved.. always seeking love outside of themselves.. never learning to find self-love within. This can lead to depression, anxiety, and a host of insecure responses such as anger or withdrawal in relationships.
Transgenerational Trauma
Transgenerational trauma is passed on to us from the trauma induced behaviors of our parents and grandparents. For example, my grandfather as a teenager and his family fled for their lives from a foreign country/continent in the midst of a civil war. As refugees making the dangerous trip to the United States, they acquired psychic wounds (trauma) from both the war and the perilous journey. This trauma was to some degree passed on to my mother and ultimately to me. Unfortunately, our ancestors knew very little about healing trauma. Trauma continues to flow down from one generation to the next. How many of your ancestors were in wars, genocides, oppression, abuse, and parental neglect? As young children, we are strongly imprinted by the behaviors of our parents. Most likely, there is some level of ancestral wounding that is handed down to all of us.
Collective Trauma
We are all connected in one field of energy. Therefore, we are impacted by the trauma of others especially those closest to us. It is the least obvious type of trauma because it operates like a personal trauma sensitizer. In other words, the collective fear and separation that we find ourselves in currently weakens our resilience and more easily exposes our developmental and ancestral traumas.
The entire human race has most recently been traumatized by the global pandemic, an event that created widespread fear and separation. When exposed to this fear and separation many of our personal traumas were triggered. Due to our modern global media coverage, have been witness to wars, genocides, and a myriad human abuses and suffering. We have never had such vast opportunity to collectively share this planet-wide trauma as we have today. We get graphic images of human suffering burned into our psyche with daily doses of media. We've become hypnotized, mesmerized by the media outlet’s fear mongering as they compete for our attention. This is a notable factor in pushing us deeper and deeper into emotional numbing, coping methods such as alcohol, marijuana, anti-depressants, anti-psychotic medications. Many of us are withdrawing from reality obsessively watching sports and/or movie channels, driving us deeper into collective trauma.
Since we’ve all been exposed to collective and ancestral trauma, and many of us developmental and/or shock trauma, we are all on the spectrum of trauma. We're all swimming in a sea of trauma together.
“Whether we realize it or not, it is our woundedness, or how we cope with it, that dictates much of our behavior, shapes our social habits, and informs our ways of thinking about the world.” ― Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture
The Path Back to Wholeness
As alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicide rates accelerate we get further and further away from our humanity. However, many of us are waking up and looking to reclaim our peace, joy, sovereignty, and purpose in life. We’re seeking to reclaim our true divine self. Healing trauma has never been more critical to the survival of our species. As global mental and emotional health crisis accelerates, it destabilizes our ability to function and ultimately survive. We’ve reached a crisis point where we must now address the multiple core causes of our pain and suffering: trauma.
"Every time they (traditionally trained doctors) see somebody with an autoimmune disease or mental illness, they’re looking at somebody who’s traumatized, but they don’t realize that. Therefore, we deal with only with the physical manifestations, but not the actual causes.” ― Gabor Maté
The good news is that we can see very encouraging signs that mother nature, as well as expansion of human consciousness is providing for our healing needs. Both mother earth herself, as well as our own innate self-healing ability are part of that nature-based healing revolution. There are many plant medicines being discovered/rediscovered for healing - mushrooms, herbs, weeds, and plant-based diets. Also, psychedelic plant medicines (i.e., Magic mushrooms/Psilocybin and San Petro Cacti/Mescaline) are great examples of how mother earth is guiding us back to nature for healing. At the same time, we are tapping into our own innate healing ability, the divine spark within that has been covered up in us for perhaps thousands of years.
“There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.
You feel it, don't you?”
Rumi
Somatic, mindfulness, vibrational, energetic, and psychedelic inner journeys are our innate response to healing the wounding that threatens our very survival. The intelligence of nature knows we (the human species) are all one body expanding, transforming, healing, and awakening together!
“Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.”
Rumi.
Your guides Christine and John at Infinite Alignment in Colorado offer the individualized Passage-to-Freedom Retreat-Program to free yourself from trauma and fear through higher consciousness. Their vast experience, ROSE Process, and Life Integration Support are the key reasons why the Passage to Freedom Retreat-Program is a unique and powerful in-depth personal journey of awakening. Included in the program/retreat is a focus on rediscovering your true self to follow your soul's calling.
Schedule your Discovery Call HERE or CONTACT US at 303-582-5828.