Trauma most often happens in an interpersonal context – a person perpetrating injury upon another person. Even in situations where the trauma has been caused by a natural disaster or medical situation, it ultimately materializes in a social context. You have to rely on the support of society to help you traverse the effects of this trauma. Therefore, it is imperative that those around you understand how to help you heal.  

Understanding the Trauma

The first and most important aspect of healing from trauma is to make sense of the trauma.  Recognizing certain facts about trauma:

• The trauma was inflicted upon you by another.  
• You did not invite the trauma no matter what you are told. 
• Nothing, I repeat NOTHING entitles another person to abuse you.

Talking about the trauma is helpful on many levels:

• It helps you organize your thoughts about the traumatic events
• It helps you correct any misconceptions you may have about the trauma
• It helps you deal with the shame of the event or events
• It may initially trigger more nightmares and fearful thoughts in your subconscious, but with proper help you can eliminate those triggers
• You assume power over your circumstance.  

Trauma is not stored in your memory bank like other memories; it is stored in your somatic system and it wreaks havoc on your nervous system, your senses, and your vagus nerve. This is why your health takes a toll – heart problems, insomnia, gut issues, joint and muscle issues. The vagus nerve controls unconscious bodily activity like your heart rate, blood pressure, and digestive functions. The deeply stored somatic memories interfere with all these functions. Trauma places you on high alert and you are hypervigilant. This interferes with your mind’s ability to access the deep roots of trauma within you. Trauma remains frozen deep within your somatic system.

Processing the Trauma

How then should a person process trauma? How can you help?

• The very first requirement is for him or her to feel safe.
• Their ability to cope with stress has to be restored. (remember their traumatic experience would have shattered their ability to cope with even the daily, normal stressful events)
• Help them find their resilience without minimizing the magnitude of their trauma.

You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in their distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat.

Isaiah 25:4

Regain Resilience

The perpetrators of abuse are weaklings who choose unhealthy means to exert control over you. You are not weak for “allowing” it to happen to you.  You regain power over the situation by talking about it and exposing evil. You can be resilient because resilience can be learned; it is nothing more than the “capacity to cope, adapt, and maintain psychological and physical performance following a traumatic event” (Scali et al., 2012). Given the proper support you can FIND your innate ability to be resilient.

Reframe

You cannot just pretend the trauma did not occur, but you can reframe it. You can reclaim the characteristics that define “you” and use them in context of your trauma. You must try to understand your trauma and make sense of it. When you understand how the mind of a perpetrator works, the evil and conniving that goes behind some of the trauma that was inflicted upon you, then you can make sense of what was done to you. Nothing just HAPPENED to you. It was DONE to you. It was deliberate. It was intentional. It was deceptive. It was well planned out. It was vindictive.

Release

Release yourself of responsibility for what was done to you, and take responsibility for how you will now heal from what was done to you. Know your strengths – embrace them and use them to integrate the experiences from your trauma into the life ahead of you. Know your weaknesses and set up boundaries to ensure others do not take advantage of you. Do not, however, let your boundaries become obstacles to your moving forward in life. 

Remember

Remember, your strengths and weaknesses are two sides of a coin.  If you keep your strengths in balance and do not engage in an overextension of them, you will avoid crossing over into your weakness.  

Eg.  Predators target caring, tender, compassionate people because they can play the victim and suck them in.  Your strengths become your weaknesses in the hands of a predator.  Those strengths however are hallmark features of your character and personality.  They are not your weakness and should not have been exploited.  The predator is the weak person.  In the hands of a protector and nurturer, your strengths would have flourished.  Do not see your strengths as weaknesses.  Just be more aware of the fact that predators are attracted to nurturers.

Your trauma will want you to not take risks any more.  It would be healthy to be abundantly cautious for a season.  Allow yourself to heal.  Allow yourself to truly understand your traumatic experience.  Your pain may never go away.  It may diminish and you may learn to live with it.  You will learn to cope.  You will find ways to integrate the experiences of your trauma and you will learn to take “calculated” risks.  Risks that are now processed in light of your traumatic experience.

For no one is cast off by the Lord forever.

Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. 

For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone

Lamentations 3:31-33