I Know My Trauma, But What Do I Do About It?
I will never forget the day I was sitting in my Human Growth and Development class in graduate school when our counseling professor, Dr. Dan Zink, sauntered into the lecture room right on time, like a wizard arriving precisely when he means to.
"Do you want to know what human growth looks like? Do you want to know what you are helping your clients do in session? It is ONE word..." He paused as we all pulled out our notebooks, ready for the secret to the universe. Then, he grabbed a red dry erase marker and - using the entire double white board - wrote the letters, G-R-I-E-F.
"Grief," he said. “No one wants to do this or feel this, but we will never change, heal, or grow unless we are willing to grieve. We cannot heal what we don’t feel.”
Grief isn’t just sadness; it is the whole experience of feeling life on life’s terms. It is the ache that calls us back, not to fix what happened, but to acknowledge and turn towards what has happened.
But what does grief have to do with trauma and why we often feel stuck? What if we know about our trauma but still don’t know what to do about it? How is grief involved in the healing process?
This is a question that I have heard many of my clients ask, and one I’ve asked myself. The answer lies in understanding that trauma is less about what happened to me and more about what I did or am doing with what happened to me.
As Dr. Gabor Maté says, “The essence of trauma is the disconnection from the self.” It’s not the event itself that wounds us most, but the way we must disconnect from our experience, our humanity, others, and even God as a way to survive it.
This disconnection is a strategy to protect ourselves, yet it becomes the very self-inflicted wound that keeps us stuck. We disconnect in many ways, often unintentionally, and sometimes in ways that even seem helpful (like overworking or people pleasing). This means that knowing what happened may not be as important as noticing what we’ve done or are doing with what happened.
Healing, then, isn’t just about remembering what happened or trying to get something to go away. Healing is the work of slowly re-attending to whatever is hurting with love, patience, courage and clarity.
So, how do we do that? Here are a few, simple steps in the right direction.
Steps Toward (Re)connection
Slow down.The more complex the trauma, the more complex the strategies we develop to keep ourselves from slowing down and connecting. Slow down in order to be with your experience.
Identify.Ask, What am I feeling? Naming emotions makes them real.
Own it.Ask, Is it okay to feel this right now? As children we couldn’t handle big feelings alone; as adults, we can choose to feel and seek support.
Explore.Ask, What is this emotion telling you? Approach it with curiosity, not judgment.
Express.Notice how the feeling lives in your body. What does it want to do—cry, rest, move, speak? Allow a little space for that.
Get help.We won’t risk connecting to painful experiences unless we trust that someone—or something—will meet us on the other side. Find safe people, like a counselor, who can hold space and guide you as you risk feeling again.
You can know your story backward or hardly at all—the way forward is the same.
What are you doing with your experiences of pain, rejection, or abandonment?
As much as I resist it, I want to—as Andy Gullahorn sings—“take a broken heart instead of one that doesn’t feel.”
