Letting go of trauma is not forgetting

Trauma changes you. It alters your life. Often you are told to let the past be the past. Let go of it and move on. That does not happen. Instead we need to help people accept the impact of trauma and begin to help them see the strength and power of the self. The dialogue of support requires that we legitimize the impact while helping people to see how they get stuck in false beliefs.

People who have experienced trauma often take ownership of it. They have explanations about their role in the trauma while diminishing the role of the perpetrator. The soldier will blame self rather than uncontrollable circumstances or the opposing force. The abused wife will blame herself for staying rather than recognizing how difficult leaving really is. The victim experiencing mental illness, depression, anxiety or PTSD will see themselves as weak as opposed to understanding the natural reaction of these emotions to trauma. They will have trouble separating the impact from the cause.

Meditation is a way to support recovery through coming to understand what is felt and where that comes from. It also helps to understand how they respond to triggers as well as to have a set of tools for responding differently. For example, slow purposeful breathing slows down the rapid breathing of anxiety. A conscious walking meditation offers gross motor movement when the body wants to constrict. Chanting alters the minds focus as does prayer or other spiritual practices. Focusing on an object or a movement calms the mind. These are not only distraction techniques but, more importantly, they are replacement behaviours that bring control back from the trauma.

These meditative techniques are not cures nor are they the only interventions needed. But what they do offer are powerful techniques for moment to moment, day to day emotional self regulation as the post trauma self is discovered.

The notion of brief meditation is quite helpful as it does not require elaborate techniques at those moments when the risk of overwhelm is there. 

I reached out to touch the memory of what once was

It was a memory of love, tenderness, of caring

It was a memory that preceded the overtaking of your ego

It was a memory of times 

of tenderness, of care, compassion

It is a memory of a time lost

It slipped away the first time the aggression arrived

Each time it returned

I walked further and further into the pathway  of loneliness, despair

It returned so many times

That I could no longer remember what it was like

Before your ego, your aggression, your demands took over

Love cannot exist in a garden so fallow

It is gone 

but you are not 

The memory of you will live on

But it no longer holds me a prisoner

The shackles of your ego are broken 

The pathway chosen is now mine

The apathy I show to you

Is stepping away from your journey

Your pain still exists within 

But it now exists as memory

That is in my control, not yours

In this I have learned that love is within me

I must first find it there

before I will also find it elsewhere 

© Peter Choate, 2016