Trauma - Do I need it to leave the body, or can I be healed anyway?

Are you dealing with what people are calling unresolved trauma, and experiencing negative physical and/ or mental effects from it and want freedom?  Have you been taught that you need to get the trauma to leave your body, but don’t know how to?  I’m here to share hope, that you can be free from the effects of trauma!

Freedom!

What if I said that the memory of the trauma isn’t going anywhere, the memory is going to stay, but that you can still be free and healed and whole? The trauma itself doesn’t need to go anywhere, because its not in your body, it is in the past. We know this if we think about it. The trauma happened in the past. It’s not literally in your body, it is done. The wording is there, I believe, to try and describe that the effects of the trauma are being experienced in the body and mind. You might say that that is no big deal, it is not a big difference to say that it’s in the body or now, and it is what is meant. However, I think it is a big deal.  I think people walk around thinking they actually have something in their body that has to leave, and that causes fear. The thing is, the memory of it isn’t going anywhere. Our memories stay, they are just accessed through recall, and the more we recall something, the more neural connections are made, and the easier it is to access, and the more things in our world, and words spoken will bring it to our remembrance.  We also call those triggers. The more times a memory is brought up, the more associations are able to be made, and therefore, the more things that can pull up that memory, or again; trigger it. We get to be aware of that, and work on where our focus is. Is it on the trauma, and the victim-hood, or is it on hope, and the God of hope so that our associations and connections are to hope instead of trauma and hopelessness.

You may be thinking at this point, if you know about what classes I offer, that Janet, you teach somatics; so don’t you try to market that you can teach us to get trauma to leave our body. No, I don’t market that, and I will not tell you that (if I ever had in the past because it was just so commonly spoken, I’m sorry). We are using somatics, or the practice of caring for our body, as a way to agree with the decision that our body is a gift from God. It’s awesome, and we get to learn to take care of it. We get the opportunity to learn to not live in fear, or judgement with or body, but gentle, patient, care. We get to actually express love to our body, through actions of gentle kind movements and touch. Does it help heal the effects of trauma, yes, but not through removing trauma. It’s through focusing on aligning our mind and actions with the truth of our freedom, and walking in freedom and care for our body.

I tried trauma therapy for a decade, and I tried spiritual practices that I no longer participate in too, in an attempt to be free. I figured it was up to me, and I had to do the work. It was exhausting, but I thought it was helping. I look back and see it was just making more and more focus on being a victim, trauma survivor, and making recall to trauma, through connections to victim-hood easier and easier. I am not even talking about talk therapy repeating the trauma. Other techniques still make connections with it, even through what was said to be the guidance of the Holy Spirit (in inner healing ministry), and it wasn’t producing true freedom. I just increased the connections to it. Thankfully I know now that God doesn’t bring up our past, He sees us as new creations, and sees us in the spirit, as we are supposed to see others (2 Cor 5:16).  Even if He uses memories that come up to teach and bring freedom, we are not to dig in our dung (past), and ask Him to come with us. That is opening the door to opinions about our past, which God sees us free from.

I am claiming freedom from the past, from the trauma, etc., because Jesus set me free. Am I tempted at times to recall and dwell in the past? Yes. And I am no different than anyone scripture says. We are all tempted the same, yet God always gives us a way out of the that temptation, but we don’t have to take His way out of course. Instead, we could go to the past, and start to think of all the things that we could do in our own strength to work on being set free of trauma. But, I choose and recommend redirecting, and accepting the free gift of God, and walking in true freedom.