Is your trauma showing?

Is your trauma showing?
I just wanted to know about ice cream. Seriously, when all of this first started for me in 2012 the only thing I was interested in was learning how I had become ice cream’s bitch. Not even the good stuff mind you! No, for me it was those nasty drumstick cones in the freezer section. Back in those days no one was talking about triggers or trauma. I thought there was some mystical gremlin that got in my head and took away my ability to make a conscious choice.
But the ice cream was what led me to hypnotherapy and that led me to a boat load of childhood trauma. What followed was over a decade completely dedicated to researching trauma, emotions, behavior, and the subconscious. Where’s it’s left me is with a pretty good eye for spotting trauma. I’ve spent so much time inside head going back through my own story that I have developed a knack at helping people find the roots of their issues, often in just two conversations, after having spent years in therapy.
It’s also shown me that most of us have not been taught how to manage our emotions or be emotionally self-aware. Emotional shut-down effects all aspects of how you manage yourself and your life. It’s rooted in fear, anchored in pain, and shielded by the subconscious. Everyone single one of is walks around with false beliefs about ourselves, others, and life. We all have things in our minds that block us from living the lives we want. We all have some disconnect from our joy, freedom, peace, and happiness because our soul has been put into hiding.
Here are some examples, and if they seem like average day-to-day life, you are right because most people are stuck behind trauma and have no idea. Shut down is seen in blame and the inability to take responsibility for your own emotions and let others do the same. It’s prioritizing accomplishment over yourself so much that it leads to self-destructive avoidant coping. It’s the inability to establish secure bonds with others including your children. The emotional shut down caused by trauma is what drives us to distraction and obsession. It’s how we allow ourselves to accept abuse as normal. It’s why we live in judgement and comparison so deeply that we believe a mani-pedi is a more important form of self-care than a nap. It’s why we value others over ourselves and why we become co-dependent. It’s why we can’t cry at movies or talk to others deeper than the surface level because we fear the shame of vulnerability.
And it all leads us back to unresolved experiences from childhood. Even conflict within current relationships has roots in those early years. Childhood is the blueprint to all adult life. Emotions are the GPS. As kids we were often encouraged more to turn away from ourselves and avoid our feelings than look to ourselves for the answer we each already have.
The good news is you can do something about it!