Trauma isn't always the big scary stuff.

Trauma. What springs to mind when you hear that word? A car accident, sexual abuse, life changing injuries, death? Something really catastrophic?

Trauma is subjective and what seems like a non event to one person can be devastating and life changing to another - it doesn't have to be all bombs and blood shed.

It can be a minor thing that happened in child hood which then dictates the way we grow and develop, leaving a shadow of a scar that later gives way to a chasm because its festered away unrecognised and unattended for years. The brain is a very clever piece of machinery but it can also work against us - it remembers these trauma memories and stores them in a way that doesn’t allow for healthy healing. Trauma is a wound that your brain hasn’t been able to heal. Your brain never receives the message that the danger had passed so its constantly on the look out for it. These thoughts never get put into their correct compartments within the brain and stay stuck in a trauma response. They can be triggered by certain sounds, smells, sights, or similar events related to the original trauma that pushes us right back to that moment, engages the fight or flight response all over again and reinforces that negative experience.

With the help of an EMDR therapist I have traced my issues back to childhood events that shaped my nervous system and beliefs that I then carried forward, leaving me with no self worth, people pleasing tendencies, a fear of conflict, inability to communicate my needs and a search for validation in all the wrong places. Then through my 20's and 30's I wound up in unhealthy, toxic relationships that did nothing but increase the trauma further.

Turns out that unworthiness is the baseline (its been an underlying theme through all of my adult life, I just hadn't realised it) I don't feel worthy of love, I don't like myself all that much and that manifests itself in many ways, some of them pretty dark and twisted. (As Meredith Grey once said - 'I go a little dark and twisty' .) 18 months ago the end of a relationship gave me the final push, the fog lifted and I knew exactly what I needed to do. THERAPY WITH A CAPITAL TTTTTTTT

I started with a lovely therapist who got me so far and helped massively but I knew I needed to delve further ; that's where the EMDR came in.

EMDR is like some kind of sorcery, I cannot recommend it highly enough. The basis is that it works via your REM helping to lay down all the memories that your body has stored as trauma into their correct places within the brain, so when that thought is ignited again your brain goes 'oh that's safe, no need to react' and you carry on with your day rather than rocking in a corner or climbing into the bath with the toaster. It works a little like the mycelium network of a tree - you work on one area that then spreads into several others, often healing more than one trauma at a time as they are quite often linked in some way. Mind blowing right? I have only had 2 sessions and I can already feel the benefits.

I have come a long way in a very short space of time - I started writing this piece back in November then abandoned it as the timing just didn't feel right. I feel like a different person to who I was back then and its only 4 months ago, so it just shows how much progress you can make if you are ready.

Everyone has a darkness within, its transmuting it that's the tricky part. The only way out is through that thorny dark forest, going around it may put a band aid on the problem but it certainly will not fix it. The monsters will still be lurking in the shadows.

Self worth for me is fickle, some days I really feel like I am really there, others I feel like the troll that's just crawled out from under the bridge. Its so back and forth it makes my god damn head spin, but that's just the nature of the beast and the bad days are getting much less frequent.

James May said in a Tik Tok that Sara sent me recently - 'Alcohol is gods apology for making us self aware' and fuck I felt that 🤣

It would be so much easier to be oblivious wouldn't it? But the world is already a dumpster fire so imagine how much worse it would be if none of us ever tried to better ourselves and exorcise our demons...

Love you byeeeee.

L x