Epi 130: How Trauma Shows UP - Mini Mindset Reset

There’s not a single one of us that escapes the ups and downs of life. It is the way we learn, after all. But, those moments are often given a label, and that label is trauma.

That’s what we are leaning into on today’s mindset reset. Kim from Detroit wrote in and said, “Hey girl, I am in an interesting place in my life. My father recently passed away. At his funeral, many of my family members began to ask me about my feelings regarding his passing. He and I had a long history. There was abuse, mental, emotional, and physical. As I got older, we both acted like it didn’t exist so that I could keep him in my life. But as my family has begun to open up more, I am discovering what I remember and what they know do not add up. It’s as if I cannot access it in my memories. However, since that day and many of those conversations, I have noticed my behavior has been different. It’s almost as if I’ve reverted to things I used to do, like needing to prove myself, feeling like I need to be right, and having a hard time keeping my boundaries. I read one of your posts about trauma and how it shows up on Instagram, and now I’m questioning myself. How can we identify if we have unhealed trauma guiding our behaviors?”

As to your question, how can we identify if we have unhealed trauma guiding our behaviors, this is a huge question, one that can lead people into years worth of therapy, and unfortunately, is not a one-size fits all kind of answer, but we can talk in generalizations. So, let’s dive right in.

Trauma is anything, for any reason, and it comes down to your personal emotional, physical, and even mental response to a distressing or dysregulating event. Unlike the challenging moments we experience, traumatic events often feel sudden and unpredictable and involve a degree of our personal control, sense of safety, and comfort to be rocked.

Listen for the full list of behaviors we often see from unhealed trauma.

Steps to start processing trauma:

Step 1: Get your experiences out. We want to do this piece-by-piece. You can write a generalized statement, but we want to get into the finite details. So, tell your story. Please put it on paper, put it in a record on your phone, just tell your story. And, don’t downplay it! Allow your feelings to arise and be what they are. So, step 1, get out all of your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.

Step 2: Begin to look at how it made you feel. An excellent way to lead yourself through this exercise is to look at the individual moments and write sentences that start like: This is how I felt when… This made me feel…dot, dot, dot. Stay with your feelings rather than push them away.

The first step was putting down your facts. Step two is putting down your feelings about the facts.

Step 3: Begin to explore how those moments impacted and affected your life. Explore how the moments shaped who you are now. What we are doing is looking at the connection between then and now.

Step 4: Give yourself space to state what you want from this point forward. Allow yourself to create a plan for your growth and change.

Kim, I hope that answers your question. Ultimately, if you see something within yourself that makes you uncomfortable or do not like, the question becomes why is it there and what will you do about it?

You are in charge of your mindset, no one else. I challenge each of you to give yourself space to be free of anything that hasn’t worked for you.

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