Many of us in some way have certain emotional knots deep within our subconscious. Some of these clots are small, and some of them are very complicated. Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud always believed that if we want to change, we need to change our response to our past.
As a holistic life coach to leaders & people coming from different walks of life, I have often observed that we are a result of our past. When I say the past, it is not only about the situations we encountered but also our response in those particular situations.
It doesn’t matter how big your trauma is, the good thing is you can easily overcome it. When I say easily, I don’t mean quickly. With abhyasa (consistent practice) & vairagya (detachment) it becomes easy. Under the guidance of an experienced healer, it becomes simple.
What Is A Trauma?
Let us first understand what exactly trauma is? In one word, it is ‘memory’. In layman’s language, you had an experience, and that experience is stored within your subconscious with certain negative emotions. Whenever that memory is triggered, those negative emotions resurface. Every time this happens, the negative emotions become more and more intense.
For example, a lady, whenever she tries to drive a car, gets a lot of anxiety, because she faced an accident on a bicycle when she was young. A man, whenever he sees a conflict, gets fearful even if that conflict has nothing to do with him because he was bullied a lot in his school day.
Such traumas are very common traumas that people have experienced. Some complex traumas can be losing a loved one to death, a divorce or a breakup, or a loss in business.
What To Do?
One thing I have understood as a student of life and a life & wellness coach, whatever our emotional trauma is, we can overcome it with appropriate guidance. Life is in our minds. The past is nothing but memory. The present is what we witness, and the future is many possibilities, but in many ways it is influenced by what we do in any given situation.
Whatever type of experience you may have, you can overcome that experience and create a new pattern in your mind. Every time you remember that event, you can be completely normal. Whenever someone brings up that event you can respond in a calm and composed way.
You can create the negative events of your life into your strength. Now, depending upon the intensity of the impact of the experience you may need certain guidance, however in this article I will share certain steps you can take at home.
Step 1: Identify
This is an essential step. You need to first identify what exactly your trauma is. You must know whether your trauma is big or small.
Identify which event caused that trauma. Many of us never accept, even to ourselves, that we have trauma. A negative experience that we resist bringing up, even in our thoughts sometimes. We need to identify such traumas, if there are any.
Step 2: Accept
Accept whatever has happened. Have complete acceptance of whatever has happened. Normalize it, but don’t defend it, don’t try to make it, ‘It happened for good.’
Whatever is bad is bad, whatever is good is good. Our major mistake is we try to make bad look good. We don’t need to make a bad experience into a good one to accept it.
We can accept a bad event without making it good. Accept that event has happened, the event shouldn’t have happened, but it did happen, and it has made you strong.
Step 3: Take Measures
This is the most essential step. Take measures to overcome the trauma. Take measures to resolve the anxiety it causes you whenever someone tries to bring it up or whenever you recall the event.
The objective here is to normalize an event in your head. So that it doesn’t take a toll on you. So that it doesn’t destroy your confidence. So that it doesn’t affect other areas of your life.
Some basic things you can do:
- Say to yourself whenever the experience comes to your mind, ‘it’s okay, it’s alright, no big deal, so what if it happened, no need to worry’
- Create a list of things you learnt from that experience. This list will convert your weaknesses into your strengths.
- Create more happy memories.
- Focus on happier memories.
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For Example:
A man in his office senses that his colleague often try to dominate a situation. The man notices that the colleague is making things up about certain events, but in order to avoid conflict he chooses to stay silent.
- First, he will notice his response, internal & external. He will see how many times he responded by being silent.
- Then he needs to accept the fact that he has a tendency of avoiding conflicts. He needs to admit that this has to change if he needs to grow.
- In this step he needs to first change internal response, by saying to himself ‘It is alright to feel this way, but I need to counter the colleague when he is lying. It doesn’t matter what will be the consequence, I will point his out the next time.’
The external response will be to take action, small or big, doesn’t matter, but take action that is different from the past actions. In this case he will counter the colleague. The colleague may defend or win the argument, doesn’t matter, because he has now changed the pattern.
This small step will empower him for future events. He may also jot this entire experience in his journal, this will be his own success story.
Following such steps will help you a lot to overcome any small or big trauma in your life. Many of my students have changed their pattern just by following the above steps.
As a holistic life coach my job is to empower people, help them get better. Hope this article will help you. If you still think you need some guidance, feel free to book an appointment. Our first exploratory session is complimentary.
