In this week’s episode I talk about trauma and identity. There is so much to say on this topic and, in fact, it is the basis for much of my work. If it resonates, let me know, I’d love to hear from you.

TRANSCRIPT

Hi everyone and welcome to another episode. Over the last few weeks, and possibly even months, I have taken a bit of a step back from the trauma work that I do with others. I have stepped back from my social media pages and I have spent time concentrating on this podcast. In retrospect. This has been extremely draining for me. Speaking the unspeakable is always difficult and many of the things I have spoken about in the podcast, I think that I have never spoken in public. I had to take a short break which leads me to this week’s topic: Trauma and Identity. 

Growing into who we are and developing our identity is a journey from birth all the way through our lives, until we take our last breath. Yes, I believe that the purpose of life is getting to know who we are intimately and deeply.

When we experience trauma, along our life’s journey, it affects us on an identity level. If we’ve experienced trauma in early childhood, it has a profound effect on our identity and our journey towards self. I would love to be able to tell you that I have it all figured out and that I can point you to a checklist, so that you can come out the other side knowing exactly who you are, what you want, how to deal with life, 

but there is no quick fix for life, and certainly not for trauma.

I have found many tools along the way that have helped me.  They’ve taken me a lifetime to accumulate and assimilate, and the journey has not been an easy, it has, however, been extremely worthwhile.  This forms the basis of my trauma work with others. 

It is important to understand that the tools we use through our lives will be different at the different stages during our healing process. We likely used unhealthy tools in order to survive when we were children and young women, but as we begin an active path toward healing we experiment with more healthy approaches. Some of these work and some of them don’t, some of them work for some people and not for others, some of them and will work for a while and then not work again. What worked at the beginning of our healing process may not work later on.

Something else that I have discovered, is that there are times in our lives that new tools are required. Growing into who we are takes a lifetime, even without the trauma foundation, so when we have begun with a difficult foundation, it is important to understand that this is a journey to self is a journey for everyone, and the destination is not final. We will need new coping tools at the different times and stages of our lives and we will discover new things about ourselves at these different stages. When we experience key moments in our lives birth, death, love career changes, illness and, of course menopause. We my also find ourselves experiencing further traumas, and these will require healing too. 

All of these and more, can throw us off kilter, can derail our healing, and yes we can experience a resurgence of trauma responses that we thought we had overcome. 

Trauma can affect the way that we view ourselves in relation to the world. Everyone talks about the effects of trauma, in childhood and through life, but what they don’t talk much about is that it fractures you on an identity level. There’s so much emphasis on survivorship and healing, that little is voiced in terms of that fracture.

Identity formation is an important part of normal development, and takes place across our lifespan from birth, through childhood and adolescence, into adulthood, and old age. 

When I speak about identity I’m talking about our sense of self, of feeling enough, the integrations of emotion and intellect, awareness of our own emotional state as we feel it in our hearts and minds and bodies, how secure we feel in ourselves and within the world, how we experience ourselves. 

Identity is disrupted by developmental trauma because basic survival takes precedence over, and uses resources ordinarily allocated for, normal development of the self. 

Childhood trauma changes the trajectory of the brain’s development, because an environment characterised by fear and neglect, for example, causes different adaptations of brain circuitry than one of safety, security, and love. The earlier the distress, on average, the more profound the effect.

This is contrasted by distinct before and after with traumatic events in adulthood. Who you were before the traumatic event, whatever that may be - the loss of a loved one, an accident, a medical diagnosis, an attack, an abusive relationship, and who you are now, in the aftermath. 

With childhood trauma it’s more complex, it’s layered. Your development of identity is intertwined with the trauma. Trauma becomes the foundation upon which you develop your identity. 

The question of Who Am I, Really?  Is one that takes time to answer. It takes work, and most of all it takes the willingness to do the work. 

What that work entails will differ from person to person, and depend on the modality that works for them. 

Again, it is not a quick fix, it is an ongoing journey. 

We need to learn to trust ourselves and trust the other (whomever we choose to work with), 

The process we follow involves observing, feeling, accepting, and integrating.

A part of this process is also grieving. Grieving isn’t only the terrain of death.

What we need to do is reclaim our Selves! It’s not about finding ourselves again, it’s about excavating, exploring and discovering who we are at each step of the journey. 

I’m really excited to be starting a project that I’ve called the Self-Dicovery Lab. It’ll be a place where we can journey together on this path of self-discovery. I look forward to sharing more with you in the weeks to come. 

Thank you for listening! If there’s someone you think may enjoy the podcast, feel free to share.

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