05/22/2018
One of my teachers posted this today. It is something I often talk to my clients about. I know, from my own experience that healing trauma shifts us in ways we could never realize and allows us to experience relief and joy as if we never knew those feelings existed. There is freedom to be found through this work.
After seven years of researching Sacred Medicine, I've learned one clear thing: As much as we'd like to steer clear of this topic, we can't talk about curing disease without talking about healing trauma. More and more data is flooding in to support what shamans, spiritual healers, energy medicine practitioners, and psychologists have known for ages- that trauma and disease are indisputably linked. This explains why so many health nuts eat the purest diet, work out with personal trainers, avoid toxins, take a dozen supplements, and maximize both conventional medicine and functional/integrative medicine- yet they're still knocked-on-the-floor sick.
We so want the magic bullet, that "easy button" solution that frees us from physical suffering without making us look at our emotional wounds. But here's what I know to be true:
TO PERMANENTLY CURE DISEASE, YOU MUST DO THE DEEP INNER WORK NECESSARY TO FACE, HEAL & CLEAR TRAUMA.
The great news is that trauma is curable! You are not damaged goods! We all have it, and it's nothing to be ashamed about. You don't have to have capital "T" traumas like sexual abuse, growing up in a war zone, or being abandoned by a parent in order for trauma to lead to chronic illness, chronic pain, cancer, or heart disease. Psychologist Dawson Church, PhD defines a traumatizing event as something that is:
-Perceived as a threat to the person’s physical survival
-Overwhelms their coping capacity, producing a sense of powerlessness
-Produces a feeling of isolation and aloneness
-Violates their expectations
Every one of us has had many episodes of this kind of trauma- and if we don't heal it, it predisposes us to disease.
If you're struggling with a chronic illness, and nothing is helping, don't hesitate to seek out good therapy from a trained, licensed trauma specialist, like someone who specializes in IFS (internal family systems), AIT (advanced integrative therapy), somatic experiencing, or EMDR. Someone with training in trauma can help you determine whether trauma lies at the root of whatever you're struggling to cure.
I know it's scary, but the bravest and most joyful people on the planet are those who have dared to dive into their trauma healing work and come flourishing out the other side of the journey. I like to think of it like the Japanese art of "kintsugi," the way gold is applied as a repair to broken pottery, forming gold scars that document the history of an object. Instead of pretending it was never broken or throwing it away, the broken places add to the beauty and deepen its story. You are like that. Your traumatized places make you tender and beautiful, and gold scars form when you dare to heal.
