How Stephanie didn’t let acute trauma from a car wreck carry over and haunt her future
Each time trauma rears its head is an opportunity to shift our relationship with it and transform its grip on us
Harnessing polarities is about embracing expansion. This can present itself across our emotional spectrum from deep sorrow to radiant joy. The key to leveraging these states for our transformative development resides in how we relate with these poles. When we feel controlled, or overwhelmed, by our emotions, these experiences can be depressive, gripping, and/or frustrating. On the other hand, when we feel the capacity to be an active agent within the movement of emotions through the body’s sensations, the same types of experiences can be expansive, creative, and emotionally liberating.
So what is a key to recognizing barriers and transforming limitations in order to shift from feeling controlled, or at the whim of our brain chemistry, into the benefits of embracing polarizing emotional experiences?
Consider what we often refer to as trauma. When past events have deeply impacted us in ways where we weren’t able to move the visceral energies at that time to stay present, it can generate stimulus-response patterns that play out across future contexts. That is until we develop both awareness of the cycles when they start to play out, as well as build the capacity to relate to the pattern differently. Each time the trauma rears its head is an opportunity to shift our relationship with it and transform its grip on us.
Identifying the moments that trauma holds us back can be elusive. Often this can show up in the dynamics of how we relate with others. One important indicator can be when we feel a strong pull to judge or blame others for the way we feel. Of course, if someone impacts us in a way that elicits feelings of hurt, this reveals the reality that we live in interdependence and always have influences and effects on each other.
To break free from reactive cycles, we must stop letting our perceptions of others hinder the free flow of emotions in our own experiences.
The value proposition for embracing the multi-polarities across the emotional spectrum is primarily for us to feel well, feel free, and maintain nourishing relationships. In addition, this approach often radiates out to serving others through inspiration.
My friend and colleague, Stephanie, recently got into a car wreck. Her story offers a compelling example of one way it can look and feel to turn our attention towards cultivating awareness of traumatic cycles right when they are ripe to grip us. Another car t-boned her car at an intersection. Her body immediately went into constriction and fear. The inertia from the vigor of the event twisted her back in an abrupt way. The airbags popped open and the car skidded with intensity. In the initial shock, Stephanie was overtaken by the physical reality of forces. However, once the intensity of the wreck settled, she reclaimed the capacity to choose how she related to the overwhelm and pain.
This presented a key moment for her to take responsibility for decreasing the probability that the impact from the traumatic event would carry over and haunt her in the future.
Stephanie has put a lot of time in her life into learning how to feel and reconnect with being present. Her practices of meditation, yoga, healing, authentic relating, and creativity allow her to live more resiliently from trauma loops regularly, yet this was a heightened challenge to face. However, the cultivation of these skills paid off in this critical moment. She recognized her body wanting to shut down, she recognized how scared she was, she recognized the overwhelming painful sensations pulsing through her body. In these recognitions, she honored her agency in choosing to respond in ways that would increase the probability that this event wouldn’t freeze her body into feedback loops of resistance, ie. trauma, and perpetuate suffering into her future.
She shared with me how she focused on her breathing, how she sat down to feel grounded in the earth and touched the grass. She let her sensations roll through her body in waves. She felt the pain. She felt the grief. She felt the sadness. She felt the fear. She felt her raw vulnerability and a connection to her mortality. She also felt the invitation to let her anger transform into blame at the people in the other car, yet she simply redirected her awareness to processing the arising sensations and remaining present. She knew that later she could calmly handle all logistics that were needed to fairly deal with the logistics of the aftermath. But, now was the time to honor her emotional waves, open to sensation, and ground in self-care.
This process is not algorithmic. There will likely still be ripple effects from this event that she will need to address as they arise. However, it is fundamental to her own capacity to feel free and move through life and relationships with grace instead of reactivity.
Regardless of the type of trauma presenting itself, it’s worth considering how we can take further responsibility for how we don’t have to let the residual loops of reactivity, depression, or resentment dictate our lives.
It might be active or passive traumas presenting, yet either way we can start from right where we are. At this moment. And, we can still hold people accountable. We can still handle logistics. However, prioritizing becoming present to the moment and allowing emotions to flow freely can catapult us into loving life in ways that we might never have thought possible.
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