What Healing Trauma Wounds Requires

Are you ready? Are you ready for this? 

This is big. 

This is the thing that nobody ever talks about. 

They sugarcoat it and skim the surface of it, but they don't show you not going to show you visually. But I will show you your words by describing what healing looks like.

When you're healing trauma wounds, when you're healing those parts of you that are fragmented from the adult part of you that wants to thrive in life. 

I want you to take a deep breath because this will be big.

This is not light and fluffy chit-chat.

Deep breath in, let it out. 

Trauma!

Trauma is the result of something that happened. Trauma is what's left in your body after something happened. 

It might have been a shock, a disappointment, an injustice, an attack, or neglect.

It's just what happened from your perspective, from your age, and from your ability to manage your emotions.

The trauma is what's left over.

As we dive into this, there is no judgment: nobody else's opinion matters but yours. 

When you permit yourself to do it thoroughly, there is no right or wrong way to do this.  That your way, your way through your trauma experiences, is what will set you free.

That's what we want. 

That's how we guide you home: to help you return to your true self, the wholeness of who you are. 

When we pick up those fragmented pieces or those little pieces of our childhood that got left behind because there was no process that would help them mature and grow and find understanding, find acceptance, find the ability to let go of them, find the healing.

They got stuck, and that's where they remain. 

In the past, we don't have trauma in the future, right? We're only talking about the past. 

A lot of times, the conversation is about not dwelling on the past, just getting over it and moving on. 

But the past is an essential element that holds the keys to our future happiness.

If we have junk in the past that we haven't dealt with and we've tried to get over it, be happy despite it, and move on, that is not the same as dealing with the actual trauma and going through the healing process.

When you are healing, it can feel chaotic, manic, and a little out of control. 

If somebody saw us, they would probably think we'd lost our minds, but it can come in the form of weeping and wailing. 

It can come in the form of anger, pounding your pillow, screaming at the top of your lungs, yelling into the universe, and getting the gunk out. It's not pretty.

Imagine an entire jar of bacon lard. Some of the bacon crumbles and burnt pieces are in there. 

The lard is sticky, and it's hard to get off your hands when working with it. 

You can't just wipe it off with a towel or a rag. You need to get some degreaser, use water, and rinse your hands well after washing them. 

That's how you get bacon lard off of you, in a sense.

In my experience, those traumas make me feel like we're drowning in bacon lard. It feels like it's thick, and there's no oxygen. 

It feels heavy. It feels lonely. 

It feels like we can't call out because we would look strange, or it would be inappropriate to include somebody else in this process because it's so private.

Now, some of us have support around us. 

Some of us can invite one or two persons who feel well and healed enough to hold space for our wounds. That's not typical.

Even in a breathwork class, where everyone's weeping and wailing and hollering and getting the gunk out.

It may or may not be fruitful for you if you're conscious about it, or what's the word I'm thinking of if you're self-conscious, if you're looking around wondering if you're wailing too loud, weeping too loud, or spouting off swear words too loudly. 

We might withhold some of our anger, some of our injustice. 

Overwhelm and sadness and grief and loss.

Putting yourself in a private place is a good idea. 

As you are working through the trauma, you will probably find a very natural way through it. 

It's sort of hard to conjure up the emotions of the trauma until a life experience exposes the wound. 

When you interact with somebody, the injustice served to you on a cold plate by immature parents comes up.

You didn't have a handbook for emotionally dealing with that situation back then, and you couldn't process it fast enough. 

Something was expected of you to respond or react a certain way, and you just were a deer in the headlights, putting how to do it.

Your body went to cold mode, freeze or fawn mode, and you were just stuck in a pattern of being frozen or being.

When the emotions came at you from emotionally unstable people, you might have felt guilty, shameful, fearful, neglected, rejected, abandoned, and that's what got stuck. 

Those are the things that got stuck.

When you couldn't keep yourself safe or protect yourself fast enough to keep up with the situation at hand.

Anytime you don't feel safe, you feel defensive, or you feel put upon, even a sense of martyrdom or victimhood kind of wells up in you, and there you go again. 

That always happens to me. 

When that's going on, that's a wound. 

To be able to go back and identify the earliest time in your life that you can remember, when did that first happen to me? Why is it? What circumstances are bringing that up for me now? To find the healing of it. 

The healing process is to act out that emotion. 

Cry, cry hard, and let the tears out. 

It was so frustrating. It wasn't fair. I didn't deserve that. I should have been treated differently.

I am a good person, but that person couldn't see. 

It can turn into a lot of emotion and explosive emotion. 

Let it be that. Put yourself in a safe place. 

If you don't want to hear yourself weeping and wailing, go to a safe place and put on headphones with sweet, soft music. 

Just put on some healing music. Then, just let it rip.

How often have we ever let ourselves do that? More often than not, we repress our emotions. 

We shove them down, try not to cry, show bravery, and be admirable in our circumstances and situations. That is not required of you. 

If there is an inner child in you who is lost, heartbroken, sad, abandoned, rejected, has been called all the names, or has been bullied, it's time for you to take a stand for that child. 

You've got to stop the bleeding. 

You do that by letting that child express themselves, whatever comes out. 

Don't judge it, just accept it. Let the weeping and wailing and pounding on pillows begin.

Let all of it come out. Get it out of your system. It's just toxicity. Doesn't belong there. 

It's been sitting there because your child, your inner child, didn't feel safe. 

They needed to fuck up and be stronger and stop being a whiner and all those things, and it wasn't safe to express yourself. 

This is important because you need a life entire of expression—true, high-vibrational you, all your expression.

But we've repressed and suppressed it. 

Every time we have an experience in life that brings up those angry emotions, we're angry, raging, mad, sad, and feeling loss and grief and all the things. 

Then, we need to figure out what to do with it. 

Let them out, free that inner child. Let that person express as they see fit. 

I had an experience. 

My daughter was interacting with her young son, who was three years old. 

He wasn't just navigating big brotherhood with his 18-month-old sister. She wants to do everything he wants to do.

Interestingly enough, this can feel traumatic to a little child without freedom of expression. It was an argument over a plastic chair. 

They both wanted the plastic chair. She tried to do what he was doing. He had it first, but as the big brother, he was constantly asked to share it with his sister. 

If she was screaming, he needed to give up what he was doing and give it to her so she would stop screaming.

This little boy was so tired of being treated unjustly. Like a three-year-old, he knows what justice feels like. He knows when it's just too much—too much to share. 

Every day, all day, he was like one of the parents. 

Parents are expected to give up what's theirs and share it with their children. But little boys, not so much. Little girls, not so much.

They have to feel some level of fairness. It's like, you can have a turn, and when you're done with it, will you give your sister a turn? That kind of fairness needs to come into play. 

Well, this little boy had a meltdown. He clenched his fist, his face turned red, and he closed his eyes and just let out a dinosaur-sized scream at his mom in her face. 

She was on the floor, and he was in her face, screaming that he was not going to share the chair.

Had that ever happened in my childhood, I would have been knocked to the ground and beaten silly. 

I had learned early on that self-expression was not safe, so I repressed my feelings about the unfairness of emotionally immature parents' requests. 

Luckily, this little boy has a very mature mother who was wise enough in her young mothering years to know that he was expressing himself and it wasn't really about her. 

He just let this dinosaur scream out of his mouth. Tears were rolling down his face. He was crying at the top of his lungs and telling her how he felt about the jerk's ruling.

Wise mother, first of all, it startled her. Second, she decided not to react yet. Third, she gave him space.

As she moved away, she checked to see if he was open for a hug, which he was not. He screamed at her in her face, do not touch me. 

She honored that. She said, okay, I will be over here. She moved to a different chair in a different corner of the room. 

She said, when you are done expressing your anger, it will be over here, open for a hug whenever you're ready.

I was just witnessing that. 

I didn't have space for that when I was raising kids because I was just coming out of what the only example I had ever known was. 

It was not as bad as what I experienced as a child, but it wasn't as good as what I witnessed in their home. 

Sure enough, this little guy let out a few more dinosaur stomps and screams into the open, and those turned into tears of sadness because anger is just masked sadness.

He came to her and said, Mommy, I'm ready for a hug. 

She opened her arms, and she swallowed him up in her arms. He said I'm sorry I screamed at you, Mommy. She said, I know; I'm sorry that you were upset. 

But in this family, if we scream and yell, we can still love each other and give hugs. That is what your inner child needs. 

Your inner child didn't get that. You didn't feel safe expressing yourself and felt like screaming, yelling, and throwing a tantrum, whether the universe was giving you lemons or not. 

You have to find a way to make lemonade. Or you are experiencing real emotions in relationships.

It is your job to stop and process. 

Get those emotions out in a nice, safe place where you can be alone and not worry about the ugly cry or the loud noise you're making. 

Your car is a perfect place to do that, or an empty oceanside if you have the luxury of having access to one.

But your job is to get the motions out. 

Your inner child needs to express herself; following that, she needs a hug. 

You need acceptance. 

One of the ways that you can do acceptance is here. Rubbing the shoulders is here. 

Rubbing the face is here. You are putting a hand on your forehead. Even rocking back and forth can be very comforting. 

When you are done expressing your grief, sadness, anger, and rage, comfort yourself. It's okay. 

It's okay to have those emotions and feel the way you feel. 

That's not wrong, and it's not victimhood. 

We won't stay in it forever, but if you don't get it out, it remains a wound. 

Then, when you practice that acceptance, rub the shoulders, crossing your arms and rubbing each shoulder together or putting your hand on your forehead and rocking back and forth. 

You can even tap your chest and your heart and then have a blanket handy. 

You're going to be spent. 

Emotional work is emotional. It's exhausting. 

So, have a blanket handy. 

Lie and cover yourself in a warm blanket because your nervous system will be on fire now. 

When I say on fire, I mean it's lit up. It's moving through the emotional realm, and sometimes, it can dysregulate your body temperature. 

You might experience chills or feel extremely cold. 

Your body seeks more comfort, so put yourself in a warm place. 

Lie down, blanket you, and continue to soothe yourself. 

It's okay to have those feelings. 

I'm never wrong. That's a good one because you aren't. 

You're never wrong. 

If you sense injustice, rage, and anger, something is happening, and you must address it. Okay. 

Let yourself take a nap, soothe yourself, and then, after some time, you'll fall asleep, which is the fastest reset if you can fall asleep. 

If not, re-regulate that nervous system, letting yourself come down naturally. 

You will move from that high, explosive emotion to a very soft one. 

As I said, sadness is just underneath all that anger. 

When the anger is out, sadness and tears show up.

Feeling sorry for something you might have done or been part of or having compassion for what happened to you or the person struggling was part of the issue, which comes later. 

But when you give yourself permission to express yourself completely. 

The healing has begun. 

It might be hard and take all you've got for the rest of the day as if your energy is sapped. It's okay. Let it be what it is. 

Don't judge it; don't move through it faster than you can. 

Have you ever done that where you're crying, and then it subsides for a second? 

Then you feel like crying again, and it subsides. The tears come, and then it subsides a little bit. 

Then you just have a couple more really hard sobs, and then it subsides. 

That's just letting yourself move through it.

Don't judge it, don't stop yourself, don't shorten it, don't tell yourself you're being a baby. You're not. 

There is an inner child that needs that kind of acceptance and freedom. 

When you give yourself that freedom, that child starts to mature. 

That child moves on from being stuck in your life and is fully open to joining you for the rest of your life as a mature part of who you are.

Let the journey take place. Do not shortchange it, don't try and ignore it, don't bury it, just move through it. Let it come up. 

As soon as a life experience shows you that there's a wound from your past, it's like, oh, that's the same energy as I felt when I was seven years old and I didn't get the award in school or that I was made fun of on the playground or I was bullied at home or whatever it is. 

Let it come out. 

You might even have to create a space for that to happen so you're in a private, safe place by yourself.

But plan to heal, please plan to heal. 

Just let those parts of you come out because as soon as you do and those little innocent, neglected, self-abandoned pieces of you become whole, you can start to take your life to another level because there will be fewer times that you feel defensive, offended, sad, rage, or anger.

It's just like it doesn't come up anymore, or it may come up in other ways, and that's another wound. 

Go back and heal it. 

As you know, as you start to heal these things, you'll notice, huh, that thing used to bother me. It doesn't bother me anymore. 

I used to hate that that person did that thing because it reminded me of the part of me that wasn't healed. And now I don't care if they're like that. I

It doesn't bother me because you've healed it within yourself. 

How can this take your life to another level? 

Spending so little time in wounded areas of your life leaves you so much room to grow and expand and experience your higher self on this amazing level, where you're expanding exponentially. 

You just feel happy and satisfied, and there's so little fear and the worry of tomorrow that hasn't happened yet; it's not there anymore. 

You're just letting yourself get into the flow of life, and very little throws you off.

That's a process—I'm talking years—so be okay with the process. It takes years. 

You spend six weeks out of a year just moving through a process, moving through a healing process. 

When I say six weeks, it's different for everybody, but you can have all those emotions. 

If you get really good at this, you can move through it in a day, but at first, it can take a week.

It's like, man, I have a funk for this week because it takes time to be aware that you have a wound and to identify where that worm is. 

It takes time; for example, even if you can't remember where it came from, it's just a clue that it's a wound and reoccurring. 

It keeps coming up in your relationships and your life experience. It's a theme. 

That's a wound. Identify it. Call it something. 

It's an emotion, the emotion that it feels like to you. 

Write about it, and if a memory comes up, great. 

If it doesn't, that's fine. But feel the emotion and feel it fully. Like, do the dinosaurs scream?

Let the hot tears roll. Clench your fist, pinch your eyes, and let it out, and everything will get better. 

That's where the healing starts.

Don't judge it if it lasts a week and you feel just low and depressed. 

I don't mean like depression, where you need clinical help. 

It just feels like nothing feels exciting right now because you just feel low. Let yourself feel low. 

What that is grief and loss. There is no timeline for grief and loss.

When you get the sadness out, if this has been a thing for you for a very long time, there is a loss of having to hold the space for that injured child.

Sometimes, we don't know how to live without the wounds. 

It's a whole new experience to live without the wounds. 

Just be patient with yourself. It's going to take time.

It may take you a week or a month to experience ups and downs and feel these emotions rolling through you. 

But if they can roll through you, if you'll just let them, allow them, and don't squash them, they will move through you, and then you'll be free. 

That part of you will experience elation, freedom, and true self-expression. 

More of you will feel safe, and it will become your favorite thing. 

Your life will be less chaotic, less offended, less defending, less negative energy, and focused on things that are taking you away from the life you were meant to live.

Heal those wounds, be patient with the process, and sprinkle it with lots and lots of love because you are so worthy of the love and the healing that's on its way. 

Take care of yourself, and let me know if there's anything that I can do to help you on your journey. 

I'm here for you—lots of love and light if needed.

Note: You can access the full blog content in audio versions on Spotify and YouTube. Happy listening! 🎧 

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