Part Five, The Benefits of Healing from Relational Trauma

When you resist the pain to heal from relational trauma, it doesn't  allow you to receive love from others, and that you aren't able to fully love others as well.

Transcript

Hello, welcome to trauma unpacked, my name is Ingrid Andress. And with me I'm Ana Sorensen. We are actually trying to bring awareness to the obstacles of unresolved relational trauma in our lives. And to look at it because we want to see the benefits of healing from that relational trauma that we sometimes knowingly or unknowingly keep hidden. 

Our goal is to have a conversation about several topics around relational trauma to share with you how it has helped move us through our process of healing, in hopes that it will help you as a listener to grow through your process of healing.

Alright, so we're now diving into another benefit for bringing awareness of unresolved relational trauma in our life. As we've spoken earlier, our adaptation to live with this trauma in our life is quite remarkable. And we don't know most of the time, the beginning at least, that we even have an option in a freer way that doesn't have to be underneath its control, the more we run away from the pain, the more we stay under its control. So this is why this is our final benefit is to actually unveil that it is in our hiding it is in our fear of the pain, it is in our fear of any change that we actually allow it to keep its control over our lives,

I'm thinking of a quote that I will never forget that I learned years ago was that pain waits for you that it's not going to go away, it waits for you to deal with it.
That's a very powerful quote. And so rather than believing the lie that if we stay under its control, at least we have some sense of ourselves, when really, it continually prevents us from experiencing a life that allows a freedom of thought of choice,
freedom of loving one another and being loved. 

I think that's one of the things I experienced early in the journey was recognizing that I wasn't allowing others to love me, and that I wasn't being able to fully love others as well.

Very true. We spoke about the alarm system and past conversation. And that was once again very important for the time of the trauma. But how to rewire that subconscious and not let that alarm go off is about speaking that which we know to be true here and now out loud, where our subconscious they're finding out has to respond to it. Whereas if we just keep it inside, and not let it hear from us, it will continue to exist.

And when you say subconscious, am I right, in that you're talking about our automatic thinking. So the thing is that we believe in value and interpret life is more of the experiences we've had that have built up all this automatic thinking and how we judge an experience. 

And so how do we change that reverse it? How do we rewire like you say.
So when you were talking about rewiring your way of thinking, the patterns that you now have that are different from when you grew up, I was thinking about how it affects who we love and who were around our children and the patterns that now we're changing or changing the way they relate to each other.

That's the beauty of this no longer living underneath the control and feeling empowered and who we are ultimately breaks that cycle of dysfunction passed down from generation to generation and families. And it creates a new way of life for this next generation which ultimately is such a an honor to participate in to feel that that can actually be impactful and leave a wonderful place for them to enjoy and explore without having to carry the baggage down generations.

Yeah, I definitely relate to that with my own family history trying to continually break the chains of the dysfunction that has been passed down to me and wanting to give my children freedom from that, yes, and to know that not only our children, but to understand that it will affect our community. 

When we as a community start to embrace this concept of being freed from that which had control over us at one point in our life, and cause great trauma in your life will not only free us, not only free our children, but will free other children, friends of our children, it will free a community that will look much more compassionately at each other instead of condemning only, for example, what kind of ways do you see by changing our patterns, changes patterns in the community
because we've gone through the healing process of our own pain. We no longer are quick to judge others to keep safe within our own limited way but we know taste and desire for them to taste that freedom and have more compassion on them because we understand the difficulty of going through that you need support you need kindness. 

That's interesting how when you recognize and deal with your own pain, it sets you up for being kind and understanding of another's pain rather than holding on to bitterness or judgment. Yes. Which kind of is a protective pattern? Exactly, now you're able to just be real, with another person who is having pain as well.
And we're journeying along beside each other, encouraging each other along the way, because life will have its ups and downs. And that's what it's called to be human...that's okay and it's good.

I was thinking about how frustrating it can be for me to not be done with the journey. But I'm recognizing how to appreciate the steps that I'm taking.
That's a great, great point that you're making right now. Thank you, Anna, because helping each other know to not to be discouraged about how long this journey is. But part of enjoying healing is that we get to celebrate those times of releasing and letting go of fears and pain is part of that celebration. That is scary at first. But that's why we're here on this radio program to encourage everyone to know that if you're going through this, please, we implore you to compassionately care for yourself, and allow yourself to be led to the next place that you need to go to explore and healing so that you can enjoy the benefits that life has to give to you. You have the right to be loved and nurtured and accepted.

We know that some of this information can be very hard to hear sensitive raw feelings, want you to love yourself if there were any of those kinds of emotions drawn up when listening. We're in this together. Thank you for listening today.
We hope this encourages you and your journey of healing and that you feel loved and cared for. Cheers!