The Lesser Known Side-Effects of Healing Your Trauma

#SafeVsUnsafe #MaternalInstinct #Oxytocin

Okay, so you’re finally feeling safe to stand in your own skin, and you’re keeping an even keel even when confronting your phattest triggers….

Career opportunities are coming your way, and you’re increasingly and easily finding yourself amongst tribe….

and then you hit a doozy…

it comes left of field, hits you blind-side, sits you flat on the ground,

an amygdala's descent of endogenous agent-orange

an intensified experience which leaves you questioning whether you’ve really dealt with your trauma at all

Welcome to Samsara

Where the cycle of suffering never ends

Here’s what’s really going on…

When we have enough corrective experiences to know real safety, faux-safety hits hard

Faux safety is safety built on flimsy-relations including heirarchical-structures of status, money or class. Flimsy because when faced with dog-eat-dog survival, the structures simply would not last.

When we’ve experienced enough contact to soften to what comes towards us and enough autonomy to know we can lean in or out

we know the smell, sound, touch and taste of safety

the brain flips a full 180 degrees.

Loyalty to self over-rides loyalty others, we are no longer under the spell of fear

and the contrast between safe and unsafe becomes chalk and cheese.

It is well-known that oxytocin not only has a warm, fuzzy side but, as equally powerful, a ferocious-protective side

Oxytocin is the neurotransmitter which surges during sex, birth and ecstasy. The primary condition for oxytocin, is of course, a felt sense of safety.

All Somatic practices stimulate endogenous Oxytocin.  This includes the self-contact of organic-approaches to yoga and bodywork, as well as close contact with someone you trust, a soothing vibration such as a purr or a humming voice, or intimacy with nature.

Enough of it, and we can finally we can finally see what needs to be seen,

speak what needs to be spoken

and

do what needs to be done.

Enough safety and the tiger-mum inside each of us

not just once, but for all time

will release her almighty ROOOOOOAAAARRRRRRRR

...for the time her baby tiger cub was “pushed under the bus”

...for the time her child was made the scapegoat, the object of projection, collective shadow, blame or shame

...for the time her child was bullied, coerced or over-ruled

because someone else didn’t have the resourcing,

the skill

nor the balls to know what to do

And when she roars

our sense of trust is contrasted with non-trust,

loyalty with non-loyalty

safety with non-safety

tribe with non-tribe

Enough experience of our own tiger-mum’s all-pervasive protection, and we will no longer accept…CAN no longer accept [trauma-] ill-informed policy

It is then you will know you’ve come too far to return.

It hurts even more because we trusted, because we chose vulnerability and openness…and this pain merely highlights how much we have changed.

Here’s an example.

At one of my most recent places of work, I was NOT invited to staff lunchtime meetings. Other staff from across departments were there. I'd get my lunch from the fridge, awkwardly, and return to my desk.

It was confusing

Where I come from we share our meals

Where I come from, we include others, no matter what

The more I spend time with those who share love through touch, sharing food, pot-luck, tea, cooking for each other, warmly embracing and caring for each other’s needs, the more anything else is increasingly at odds, strange, confusing and frankly weird

Thankfully, safe places do exist….but we need to sniff them out and pro-actively preserve them, or as my daughter says “Protect our Peace”

When you deal with your trauma, you will find you can “follow your nose”, you trust the way the wind blows. You’ll find you can suddenly speak “baby” or “cat” or “horse” or “tree”… You’ll find children turn toward you…because you embody safety.

When you settle your nervous system at the base level of HRV, you’ll find you can easily stop and observe, you’ll find affection is your natural state, you’ll find ideas flow freely, you recall warm memories easily, and as a dear friend described of me recently “move through the world differently”.

When you deal with your trauma, you'll see the habits of "appeasing" or "proving" or "efforting" as indicators that you can do it differently

You'll trust that when your instinct tells you you don't belong, there is a safer, sunnier place for you, or as my smart girlfriend reminds me "Rejection is Re-direction" (Thanks Siyu!)

I share this story to highlight it is nearly impossible to know the outcome of addressing your trauma, other than the fact that eventually you will feel healthier, more at ease, more met and more understood than you would have ever believed.

In the short term, clarity itself can lead to confusion…this is merely a sign that what you once “knew to be true” has now flipped that full 180

It is a harsh reality that our work places, our institutions, even our own families and friend-groups, are rife with trauma-ill-informed practices.

To acknowledge the omnipresence of trauma to life is to accept the buddhas words that “life is suffering”

The lessons are not about avoiding the challenge, but about finding the conditions in which you, as a soft-bodied mammal, will feel safe enough to open to who you truly are.

Jung called it ‘to individuate’, Patanjali called it ‘Svarupe’ your basic nature, Iyengar called it ‘your radiance’

So today,

move with the openess to forget who you were,

forget who you thought yourself to be,

and remember

once, and for all,

who you are truly.

Amara & Lexy