Waking up and finally coming home…

Since the body and soul is one - whatever happens on the emotional level also deeply affects the body. On a chemical level trauma affects the immune system, the hormonal system, the neurological system and the endocrine system…

It all starts so early.

As infants and as small children we have to adapt to whatever the environment wants from us – and to what it does not want from us.

We have to adapt in order to get the love of our caretakers… without their love we cannot survive.

Trauma does not only happen through accidents, abuse and severe neglect.

It also occurs when the child’s needs are not met and when the child has to compromise and adapt to the parent’s or other caregiver’s needs – this is when the child has to give herself up.

Trauma is everything that takes us away from being who we are – from being authentic.

It is not so much what happens on the outside but it’s all about what happens on the inside of the child.

Attachment between the child and the mother starts already in the womb. After birth it also includes other caregivers and those who are close to the child.

To attach is of survival importance for the child therefore it will do anything that is required to attach and to hope to be loved – and to keep the connection.

Even if it means – which it almost always does – that the child has to leave herself to adapt to the parents.

This is how we develop our personality – as a result of adaptation.

Personality is to be understood as the result of the adapted child who compromised and lives in her or his defence shield.

This is developed from social pressure and stress in general but of course it starts at very early age and with the adaption to the closest environment that often consists of parents and siblings.

As the child grows she or he meets other representants from the adapted adult world where the child is supposed to fit in. This process is extremely stressful for a child and she starts developing a false self to please.

The price for this is the child’s soul and health and later the adolescent’s and the adult’s health.

We just keep going in the same direction that was pointed out for us.

We loose our authenticity - our true self - to adapt and fit in.

This is how depression, anxiety, eating disorders, addictions of all kind and other mental health issues are developed. As a result of the stress that is induced in the infant and the small child, the body is also deeply affected and as a result different diseases will develop; heartdisease, high blood pressure, stomachissues, neurological illnesses and far more.

We numb ourselves with compensations and addictions not to feel the underlying pain that was caused to us as small children. We become addicted to sex, gaming, gambling, shopping, alcohol, food, drugs, smoking, excercising, working or something else that in the moment takes us away from the pain of not having had our needs met – not to feel shame, invasion, abandonment or some other deep fear.

We can live like this our whole life time or we can decide to wake up and start feeling the pain as a way to reconnect to our true self.

When we become conscious of what and how we are numbing ourselves, of the pain, of what we adapted to and how much it has cost us – a possibility to come back to ourselves rise.

A longing for ourselves could be felt – a longing of coming home and being with ourselves – whoever that might be…

This is a journey that needs time for reflection, for diving deeply in and for feeling.. whatever there is to be felt.

Photo by Satria Bagaskara from Pexels.