After working very intimately and personally with trauma over the past couple of years, I felt inspired to write a few words about this complex and often misunderstood emotional issue.
Meditation was my entry point to recognise that I was unknowingly working with a wound that had been controlling my life and holding me back from moving in the directions I wished to go within myself. After a relationship breakup that certainly triggered something deep inside, a couple of months later I found myself living and working full-time in a Tibetan Buddhist meditation retreat centre, perfectly situated on the edge of the staggeringly beautiful Beara peninsula in West Cork. My search to overcome my suffering led me right into the genuine possibility of enlightenment within my heart and mind.
Soon after my initial honeymoon phase, I came face to face with an aspect of myself that had been so intelligently tucked away by my unconscious. I came to realise that something was revealing itself to me, with all its messy, painful and grotesque parts showing up at once. I began to see that I was holding trauma deep within the body in the chest, heart and shoulders.
As I began to familiarise myself with what felt like a ferocious beast, it was meditation that provided me with the mindful eye to take a closer look without being overtaken by it. What follows is my own personal insights into the nature of carrying a traumatic incident and what it represented to me.
Trauma is not just the result of an accident, an assault or witnessing the unimaginable, but can come from any event that we have been profoundly affected by, such as death of a loved one, the end of a significant relationship, being immersed in a long term toxic environment, fear of losing something or someone close again, or anything really that contributes majorly in a highly negative way to our sense of self, our sense of safety in the world and our ability to shake it off and move forward.
With trauma, moving forward doesn’t feel so easy. In fact, it feels impossible and completely disheartening that no matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to let go. Trauma will sleep with one eye open, waiting for any event that resonates with its own energy to trigger it and come back into your mind and body with the same intensity as before. It could be just a thought, a lonely feeling, the sight of a particular place or person, or a slight rejection which causes what seems like a completely unwarranted reaction.
Facing and healing trauma takes the utmost self honesty, plenty of courage, determination, raw willpower and a host of other personal resources and resilience to find your way through it. I found trauma to be incredibly complex in the sense that it had a whole army of tactics to not let me touch the original wound.
Almost everyone that carries it also reports depression. There are some who believe depression to be an actual coping mechanism as the heart shuts off and closes down to what is perceived as either further pain or too much to handle and so you become numb to life to lessen the pain, which creates more pain. So on top of the unmanageable fear that can become lodged in the body and reveal itself at any chance it gets, there is also the heaviness of depression and a feeling of being trapped with all this and with no way out. This might all sound a bit extreme, but I think everyone holds a trauma of some sort as a product of growing up in a seemingly mad world where so many people are killing each other for no reason and senseless cruelty happens daily.
To begin to heal trauma, I had to finally sit down with it and say “no more”. I had to make a commitment to sit with the overwhelming feelings and sensations coursing through my body and observe the powerful thoughts flowing through my mind. Providing myself with a space to practice non judgemental attention of body and mind has been a key element to finally begin to overcome the incredible intensity of the emotional charge that traumatic feelings carry. If you think this sounds easy, think again. Meditation is crucial for cultivating awareness, and it’s this awareness that can become our very best friend and tool to uncover and massage the wounds that keep so many of us locked in, so we can heal and finally be free. With practice, it is life changing.
I came to see that with my own trauma, the wound has been pushed down and suppressed so deeply that if I try to bring attention and awareness to it, I feel a block or a very common one, I feel nothing, which comes from having numbed it unconsciously to avoid having to feel it. My ethos has been to keep going, to feel what is there again and again and again… and again, while removing the inner critic from the process, which has been the most important factor in discharging the associated emotional pain. Once that has temporarily ceased, a vibrant aliveness can reveal itself, which is much more indicative of our true identity.
If you’re interested in trying a practice with me now, let’s do it. (Also, this will work for generally stuck emotions and blocks too). Here we go: Take a few minutes to feel into your body now. Imagine dropping your attention from your head down below the neck or bringing your mind into your body. Feel around for a little bit with your attention. Don’t judge or condemn anything you might feel. Just bring a sense of space and ease. Now, bring your attention down to your heart area, don’t think about it, feel it. Feel what may be there, the tingling, positive feelings or negative feelings, even neutral or bored feelings. It doesn’t matter, remember not to judge. Eventually as you take your awareness more deeply into your heart, you’ll feel all sorts of things; this is normal. Keep going. If you reach a place where your heart feels open, great. Enjoy that. If not, continue on. A common thing is people hitting a place of numbness or heaviness, if this happens, just be with that impartially. Relax and be with the feeling without analysing or interpreting it. Just be. Try to allow it without getting caught up in the storyline and diverting into thinking. If you can do this, then you’re overcoming the resistance to what is essentially blocked and not flowing deep inside. The trick is to keep your attention lightly and gently on the wound and to forget expectations and just be with it. Over time, healing can take place.
I truly believe that this type of practice can have incredible results and can not only help us to heal trauma and lead us to a much healthier self, but if practiced consistently, can also point us in the direction of the truth and wisdom that our society so badly needs to incorporate.
For all the people out there working with emotional trauma, I wish you the best. Don’t forget to love yourself. Phil.
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