Trauma
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Welcome to you all, if you don’t already know me, my name is Pam, I am the founder and CEO of Pam Poole Self-Discovery coaching. If you would like to know more the website is www.pampoole.co.nz
I specialise in Self-Discovery coaching for woman, because I know how easy it is for woman to lose themselves, and to forget what they like and enjoy, because we are all socialised to put others wants and needs first.
That socialisation results in us living inauthentically and because we are the common denominator in our life, our life feels inauthentic as we impact and influence every situation, circumstance, person, interaction.
To live our best lives, to have the best possible experience we need to know ourselves and then decide if that is who we want to be moving forward and if not decide differently and figuring out how we do that.
Of course, this is easier said than done. I certainly would not be living my dream life without help from numerous coaches, memberships, and other kinds of support.
My own journey has emphasised to me just how important getting to know yourself is. It helped me realise how much I wanted to support other woman who want to have a different experience and have no idea how much say they have over what their experience of life is.
If you are a woman who wants to wake up looking forward to their life, and the day, rather than wanting something different, or wishing it were different, this podcast is for you and a great place to begin.
If you want more, I have a membership, called Be You, there is an express lane coaching package, which is an 8-sessions of 1:1 coaching and Equine Emersion mini courses, which is self-discovery coaching experience through relationship with horses. Equine Emersion courses are a derivative of “The Horse Wisdom Program”, created by EPI Australia.
I have just had two days away at a Trauma conference so I thought this would be a great week to chat about that. I loved it, it reinforced what I already know and also allowed me to go a bit deeper.
It had me wondering how many people really understand what Trauma is and the impact it has on a person’s life.
These days there is a lot more openness around trauma, a lot more knowledge and understanding both scientific and psychological information as a result of research and evidence-based theory.
I think most of us have heard the term “trauma” and tend to assume that it is limited to major events, or engagement in high-risk employment that exposes a person to significant tragedy, like being a Police Officer, Ambulance Officer, or War Veteran.
Of course, these things definitely can cause Trauma for many, but trauma is not limited to this type of experience. Trauma can be a one-off event, many related events or for those with complex trauma many unrelated events. They can be big or small.
Regardless of the origin of the trauma when we here that word, we all understand it means “that someone has had something bad happen to them, that continues to affect them. Trauma is caused by a deeply disturbing or distressing event that activates a primitive survival response in a nervous system, so any event that leaves us feeling extremely threatened, unsafe or at risk of dying. As a result of the experience, we create deep sensory and emotional connections to smells, sounds, sights, feelings etc that were part of that experience.
So as an example, we could have a trauma response to a friend who wears a similar perfume to our grandmother who beat us when we were 7 years old. If we are unaware that an experience has caused some trauma then we could respond or act in a way towards our friend that is completely irrational, disconnected, or disproportionate because the stored, emotional memory from that time is activated and adds to the emotional response being felt in the present.
I hope that makes sense but just to be clear I’ll offer another example. I broke my leg in three places when I was about, I don't know 10 years old, that was a pretty distressing event and it was very upsetting but there is no trauma connected to the experience for me, because my primitive survival response was not activated. However, I had another experience when I was 7 years old where I nearly drowned and in fact for all intents and purposes I did drown, I do have trauma related to that experience, because my survival instinct was activated, and I fought for my life. Both incidents were distressing but they affected me in very, very different ways because one of them was a life and death situation and the other one although painful was not a life and death situation.
Trauma is also subjective, because two different people could experience the same event and one might experience a survival response and the other will process, heal, and move forward, not because there survival instinct was not activated but because of attachment, upbringing, genetics, previous experiences etc. Trauma is a response to an event, not the event itself.
Trauma activates unhelpful responses to the here and now of our lives, and that is the only reason it is a problem.
Honestly, I imagine there are less people in the world that haven’t experienced trauma than there is those who have.
What I have noticed in my own life is that trauma responses are normal human behaviours, feelings and responses that have become adapted in an unhelpful way.
Like “generalised anxiety”, anxiety is a normal and at times a helpful human response, anxiety lets us know we are considering taking a risk, like doing something we haven’t done before. It is a healthy feeling to have, however for those with a “generalised anxiety” diagnosis the anxiety is being over utilised and becomes more a way of being than just a fleeting or inconsistent feeling, or very context specific, it has become more generalised and consistently felt during the day.
Our body, brain offers us a trauma response in an attempt to keep us safe because from a primitive perspective – survival was the only thing that mattered, a kind of “quantity over quality” type of thinking. The trauma response is activated in the here and now because the brain does not know the difference between real and imagined, so if something in the present triggers the memory response, the brain automatically assumes the same thing is happening again. This is until we become aware enough to interrupt the process and remind ourselves that this is a response to a memory, that in the here and now I am safe.
Like most things to begin to heal from trauma we first need to gain awareness of it and how it is impact us in the present, this is like opening a can of worms or a hornets nest so I strongly recommend that if you think you might need help to heal from trauma that you find a qualified therapist, psychologist, counsellor etc that specialises in working with trauma. Healing usually requires working with both cognition and somatic approaches, or other alternative therapies such as Colour or drawing therapy.
If you know you experience trauma, have already engaged in therapy and are ready to move forward, this is where Self-discovery Coaching and Equine Emersion works well, these approaches look at the here and now and work to support new skills, knowledge and understanding of the self that minimises and manages the impact of our trauma in the present.
If you would like to know more about this or any other topic my website is www.pampoole.co.nz, I would love for you to go and have a look and book a free no obligation enquiry call so we can chat in person.
Thanks again for listening, I know I say it every week, but I really do appreciate your time and interest. Have a great week and remember the relationship with ourself is the longest and most important relationship we will ever have; it is the one relationship that is part of every experience we have throughout our whole life.
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Have a great week
Bye for now.😊
