You (Yes, You) Need Trauma Work

The word “trauma” is popular now: emotional trauma, surgical trauma, post-traumatic stress, etc. These terms seem to reserve trauma for those who have witnessed horrors, endured abuse or experienced extreme situations, and it’s true that these things constitute trauma. But this is not the only way trauma can show up. Some practitioners (including me) differentiate between “Big T Trauma” and “Little T trauma”, big T meaning large accidents, sudden events, war experiences etc., and little t meaning everything else - stressful relational patterns and “normal” life disruptions like loss, divorce and financial strain.

Trauma, the little t kind, not the car accident kind, can be defined as: experiences in your nervous system that have been walled off from your usual experience because they are too intense, painful, or overwhelming.

Do you have little t trauma? Almost certainly.

To explore this, look for your sensitive spots: is there an area in your life in which you feel overly reactive? Or perhaps there is a topic everyone knows not to ask you about. This points to little t trauma.

Examine the most recent loss you have endured, of a person/pet, relationship, or job. Were you able to feel the full complexity of the grief? If you walled up, “got through it” or were overly “strong,” you may have been separating from the experience because it reminded you of a loss you couldn’t handle when you were young. This, too, is little t trauma. Most of us have some of this.

So the whole population has trauma? Really?

Well, yes. Because young nervous systems are easily overwhelmed and life can be intense and unpredictable. Even the gentlest upbringing cannot prevent the loss of a beloved grandparent or pet and the overwhelming emotions that go with that. The most accepting community cannot stop a child from being rejected or betrayed by a friend. And as well-meaning as your caregivers may have been, they likely did not have the emotional skills to really help you process these difficulties, even in the unlikely event that you could have articulated the need for it.

So from a young age, we have all been walking around with emotional scabs on the inside - sensitive areas that indicate un-processed emotions: little t trauma.

Is it bad that we all have little t trauma? No. But it’s true.

This means that you can benefit from trauma work with a skilled professional. Trauma work allows you to get closer to those sensitive places with a person who knows how to modulate your experience so you don’t become overwhelmed or re-traumatized. And amazingly, in this space it can heal! It is possible not to be reactive about “sensitive” topics anymore. It’s possible to process grief without becoming overwhelmed by it. It’s possible to live much more comfortably internally, without denying, compartmentalizing or avoiding. Really!

My approach in Healing Work is to inquire about your bodily experience of stress, which inevitably leads to your trauma places. Sometimes these places are quite protected — you feel armored or walled off or numb. We explore this too: barriers and resistance also indicate trauma and must be honored. All of this is done gently without pressure or expectation. There are other approaches too - trauma work is a broad term — but they all lead to the same place:

In time, you melt. The safety of the space and the practitioner gives your system what it needs to to speak the truth of how it really was for you, and you learn how to feel what you couldn’t handle back then. As this happens a new courage and trust emerges, and you develop capacity to meet even greater difficulties.

The process is intelligent and beautiful, I’ve seen it again and again. Our systems are meant to do this, they just usually haven’t been given the right space or guidance. I consider the healing of trauma to be a kind of birthright, something we all deserve, a place where we should all end up.

So! Are you ready? If yes, reach out to me or another practitioner and let’s get to work!