Trauma – Beginnings

I’m going to tell you my story. From the time I was small to the time I left home as a young adult. As much of it as I can remember anyway. Which isn’t much. That fact alone should tip you off to the nature of my beginning. In short, I have suffered trauma. Years and years of trauma. Perhaps my beginning is similar to your own. Perhaps you know nothing of it. I imagine, however, if you know anyone, you know someone who has been shaped, in part, by childhood trauma. A sad reality of the world in which we live. A sad reality that plays out its devastating effects on thousands of people of all ages every day.

Over the course of the next several posts, I will focus on trauma: my beginnings, how trauma changes people, and what can be learned to help them. I’m not an expert; I’m just someone who has walked through it. I’m someone that thought I dealt with my past and could leave it behind. I’m someone who realized that’s not true. I will focus on childhood trauma specifically, as it’s what I know, but the affects on the brain that are caused by childhood trauma overlap with many other traumatic experiences. If you have experienced any trauma in your own life, I hope these posts will help encourage you to seek healing or continue your journey. You are worth it. Your story is worth being told. And you are loved.

Trauma is a word that has been hijacked, like many other words in our language today. Many will hear it and brush it off. Cast it aside. Cast me aside for speaking about things that happened when I was a little girl. Those same people may brush off words like “trigger” and “marginalized” and “victim.” I get it. Those words have been hijacked too. They have come to represent weakness, self-centeredness, dependence. But, like “trauma”, each of those words has a rightful place in our world and those who speak them desperately want to be heard. They’re good words that need to be reclaimed for good. To bring healing and peace to the thousands of little girls and boys living inside the adults we know and love today.

What brought me to this place, to here, to now, is a long, weaving path that only the Lord could have designed. He planted seeds and let them grow. Then more seeds and let those grow. As he has done throughout my life, he never overwhelmed me with more than he has wanted me to see. He gently, slowly, brought about his plan. A plan I believe he will use to heal my heart and give me peace.

There are thousands of people who are suffering depression, anxiety, addiction, broken relationships, failed careers, and any number of other difficult issues in their day to day lives. We’ve seen article after article about the mental health crisis in our nation and many of us are searching for the “why” behind what we’ve seen transpire at alarming rates during the past several decades. I believe trauma is part of the “why”. Trauma isn’t the answer to what makes people who they are, nor me who I am, anymore than any one thing is the answer to anything. Trauma is a piece. A part of the puzzle. And we should think of it in those terms. Making it all of someone isn’t any more wise than making it none of them.

Further, so often, we want to flatten out the cause of such issues to make them more digestible. More understandable. More easily categorized into our finite minds. I understand this tendency, as we are literally bombarded with information and ideas constantly throughout the day, but I believe it to be quite a dangerous and divisive mentality. We are complex. Our lives are complex. Therefore, we must be comfortable with “both / and” scenarios, and shy as far away from ” either / or” as we can when it comes to human thoughts, behavior and interactions.

I recently saw an Instagram post by a cultural commentator. His exact words were, “If you don’t want teenagers to experience a mental health crisis, don’t poison their minds with transgenderism and critical race theory.” For those who follow him who need simple answers to impossible questions, it fits. They swallow it and move on to the next problem. For those of us who knew nothing of either of those two issues and suffered a mental health crisis in our teens and beyond, it’s a statement severely lacking in truth or substance.

I’m also reminded of so much of what we witnessed in our society during the past year. Too many people could not hold onto the tether between “COVID is a deadly virus and therefore we must be dedicated to strict precautions” and “Lockdowns are devastating our economy and harming many who are already suffering mental health issues.” Very quickly, the issues were flattened out, all nuance was removed, sides were chosen, and division grew out of control.

While we cannot pin any mental health issue, breakdown in relationships, difficulty in parenting or at work, on any one thing, including childhood trauma, trauma does play a significant role in shaping those who have suffered from it. Trauma alters neuro pathways. It erases memories or alters how they were stored. Trauma shapes our sense of worth, purpose, autonomy, and security. Further, it alters our responses to subsequent life events and situations. In short, for those who have experienced trauma, we are not who we once were.

Scientific studies have proven this, which has changed the field of psychology for the better, legitimizing the practice of trauma therapy. But we don’t have to look to science to understand why this is the case. We simply have to look to how we were created. We were made to be in relationship with others. We were made to thrive under the security of that relationship – to be nurtured, loved, taught, protected. We were made to trust those in authority over us. And we were made with the knowledge that those people were to be trustworthy. When what God has created has been broken, broken people are the natural result. Until he brings about healing in their lives.

Some may ask why I’m doing this. Why write it out. Why speak it at all. I’ve wondered the same and I guess my answer is what it has always been. I write to point people to Jesus Christ for their hope and their healing. And I long to help even just one other person know they are not alone. Childhood trauma is an indicator of severe negative outcomes in life and traumatized people can become some of the worst abusers to others. But if we are able to face the pain and work through our past experiences, traumatized people can also become beautiful sources of light and vessels of justice in this dark and desperate world.