Is our pain always “trauma”?

Trauma has become the popular go-to diagnosis in the healing space over the last few years….and with that has come a lot of positive change, of course.

It has highlighted the importance of the body in our experience and also looking at the different ways we can support through therapeutic intervention. There have been many wonderful books, writings and work around this.

However, with that has been the tendancy to approach all that feels painful, uncomfortable, under the surface, hard to move on from, as trauma.

Often pain comes from our more innate human experience. You might consider, some of the following:

• Is it trauma or is it sensitivity?
• Is it trauma or is it a painful emotional pattern?
• Is it trauma or is it the repression of who you really are?
• Is it trauma or is it you not listening to or understanding parts of yourself?
• Is it trauma or is it long term stress or burnout?
• Is it trauma or is it your body’s natural program of homeostasis

Arguably some of these areas might come under the title of “complex trauma”. The problem with this is, it becomes something outside of us, something to be fixed, something that we have to go to a specialist for, something to be feared, something that’s pathologised.

When I first started to read about trauma, everything in my life started to make sense and it felt like I finally had something to work with. Whilst this gave me an amazing basis to start my healing journey, over time I didn’t quite get to the answers or the results I wanted and it took me broadening my horizons from the somatic world to really make substantial shifts in my healing, growth and empowerment.

What really made a difference, was the understanding of my soul-self and following the threads of who I was and who my soul wanted me to grow into.

The truth I found myself with was in fact much more empowering and that empowerment itself was a huge part of my healing journey.

So much of what we might experience is innate to our human experience and wants us to come into relationship with it, not to fear it.

Admittedly much of the rupture happens in response to our ailing society and family systems:

∆ Lack of space and time to process
∆ Lack of safe and conscious community
∆ Lack of understanding of the nervous system or emotional health
∆ Lack of positive matriarchal + patriarchal archetypes
∆ The pressure + focus on productivity
∆ Lack of support for mothers
∆ Lack of cultural context
∆ Disconnection from nature

I’m not here to deny anyone’s experience of trauma…only you know what your experience is and I’m not here to try and make sense of that from a distance. If you find the term supportive to your healing journey, then is absolutely is supportive.

However, it’s important that we open our eyes to all the iterations of human experience, of wounding, of emotional health, so that we can develop a relationship with the parts of self that want to be seen, to be heard to be nurtured.

Once we see it, that’s when we can bring it back to wholeness.

And wholeness is the only answer.