How To Have The Courage To Overcome When Past Trauma Hijacks Your Life
Past Trauma
There is something about seeing behind the curtain of many individuals' lives that helps me make sense of what is occurring in that person’s life. I remember the phrase in school, “everyone’s behavior makes sense when you look at the context”. There were moments and situations I couldn’t make sense of until I learned about past trauma.
I remember being exposed to the concept of trauma at one of my workplaces. It was a moment of significant clarity and helped me make sense of what I was seeing. Before we get too far into this discussion, let’s define what trauma is and what it isn’t.
Trauma isn’t only an assault or childhood abuse. Are these things considered trauma? Absolutely! But past trauma can also be much smaller and seem innocuous. To simplify something that can be very complex, the definition I often use is:
“Trauma is anything your brain couldn’t process in the moment”.
What can past trauma look like? It can be bullying from your childhood, a parent’s divorce, someone else’s decision that affected you emotionally, etc. Past trauma doesn’t simply have to be assault or abuse.
Example:
A great example from my own life happened when someone attempted to scam me by telling me there was a bench warrant out for my arrest due to not responding to a subpoena. As a counselor, this situation brought up so much fear and anxiety.
Even after speaking to the police and they assured me this was a scam, feelings of anxiety and fear still lingered. The feelings didn’t go away just because I wasn’t in the situation anymore. In essence, I was traumatized by the unethical and illegal behavior of someone else.
Luckily, I knew enough about trauma to recognize the fear and anxiety was due to this situation and was not a present day danger. This allowed the anxiety to dissipate after a couple of days of reminding myself of what is true instead of believing what the trauma of the situation was telling me.
The Past Controls Your Life
The unfortunate reality of trauma is it can take control of your life without you even realizing it. It can be past trauma from childhood that you were unable to process due to your young age and developmental level. Maybe it is a situation so painful that to think about it causes considerable amounts of distress. Regardless of how much you tell yourself it isn’t true, you know these past hurts are affecting your present reality.
Maybe you are reading this right now, and you would say “this doesn’t affect me anymore” or “this was too long ago for it to still be affecting me today”. My first encouragement would be to go to the podcast from this week where I discuss this concept in more detail. You will find a link for it at the bottom of the page.
To summarize, most often the effects of past trauma occur outside of your conscious awareness. That is why it’s so important to seriously consider how it is affecting you. Even if you hadn’t considered this past hurt or trauma is affecting your present behavior until five minutes ago, now is the time.
Start by looking at your automatic responses in various situations.
Here are some examples:
In current friendships, are you guarded and refuse to be vulnerable due to a hurt in a previous friendship even though they haven’t given you a reason to not trust them?
In your marriage, is your first response defensiveness, anger, and self-protection due to a past unhealthy relationship?
In relationships with a certain group of people (i.e. men, women, older adults, etc.) is your response to clump them together and attempt to disengage due to prior hurts or traumas?
Still Affected By The Past
If you say yes to any of the above, my guess is your past is affecting your present. Remember, our responses do not have to come from huge betrayals and abuses. These hurts can come from small injustices as much as from large betrayals and hurts.
With all of this being said, my hope is not to make you feel hopeless in the realization that your past hurts or traumas still affect your present reality. Blaming is never the goal. Awareness and acceptance of the hurt is the goal. The difference is huge.
Blaming involves pointing your finger at someone and saying “I am this way because of what you did”. It takes your control away. Awareness and acceptance involve identifying that someone else’s behavior did cause you harm but instead of being a victim to it, you use that information to help you heal, learn, and grow.
Having the Courage to Overcome
You might think "courage" is a strange word to define what is needed to overcome past trauma, but I can't think of a better way to describe it. When looking at past trauma, this process can feel overwhelming. To willingly walk into this process is no easy feat. It involves knowing that facing these things might cause situations to get worse before they get better but choosing to move forward regardless. This is the very definition of courage.
Then the question turns to "how does one actually overcome trauma?". To keep your expectations in check, it is important to point out that I will not be able to completely answer this question in a blog post, but my hope is to cover a couple of key areas of where you can start.
Overcoming Past Trauma And Hurts
1) Be open to the idea that past situations affect your current reality.
If we are not aware of how past trauma affects our life now, we have no hope of changing anything. This might start with simply questioning your responses.
If there are situations where you respond abnormally out of proportion to the situation, it is important to question yourself. You can ask yourself: "What caused me to feel this upset?", "What were the dominant emotions?" "Have there been times in my life where I felt similarly?". This begins the process of making connections that help you to see how your past is affecting your present.
2) Seek outside support.
Most of our discussion has been about trauma and as we discussed, trauma can take many shapes and forms. For some situations, support can look like a friendship or accountability partner who you can be open and vulnerable with as well as identify steps to overcoming this past hurt.
When dealing with bigger scale traumatic events, it will be most effective to seek out a licensed counselor in your area. One of the most effective forms of trauma treatment is a therapy called EMDR. You can find out more information about EMDR as well as find a trained therapist in your area HERE. https://www.emdria.org/
3) Know that your present and future is not doomed because of your experience.
Although the past can affect us, we do not have to live our life doomed because of our past experiences. This is the good news that we can all celebrate. Our identity and future are not determined because of what has happened in our past. It is determined because of the finished work of the cross and who we are in Christ.
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:37-39
And provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.
Isaiah 61:3
The hope of what Isaiah was prophesying is hope available to us today. We have access to the restorative work of Christ's love and sacrifice. This is what defines us not our hurts, pain, and trauma. If there is anything to cling to today, it is this truth!
