It is so easy for us to say things like
“you get over it”
“she should learn how to say no”
“why can’t he show his feelings?”
“stop being a pushover”
“I have no idea why she still cannot set her boundaries”
without knowing what actually happened to them. And I don’t mean in the last days or months or even years.
Our trauma starts very early on, I keep learning from psychologists.
You come to a point in your life where you think the path you are given or you took does not feel right. I had that moment too and it was conflicting. Do I listen to what everyone else is telling me or is this nudge pointing me to something different?
That is the point you are actually trying to connect to your real self again. I tell about my story in my book Create a Life You Love; how I heard my own voice telling me I cannot go on like this. Life and work cannot be meaningless. I knew I had to change my path. It was not my analytical mind talking, it was only my intuition. That is why until this day, 25 years later, I still cannot explain it to people who only want to use their left brains.
Well if you listen to that inner voice that wants to pull you in a different direction, everything starts to change after that.
Something(s) in your outer world does not match what your inner world wants. Because you lost touch with yourself long ago, you start on a journey to reconnect again. That is the turning point.
The more I learn about human psychology, the more I understand what might have happened to me and others on the same journey. Garbor Mate (is a Hungarian-Canadian physician. He has a background in family practice and a special interest in childhood development and trauma) explains it in detail.
We are so comfortable in our skin as a baby or as a young child. We know how to say no when we don’t want to eat, when we don’t want to sleep. We have all the best dreams about our future. We will be an astronaut, a famous basketball player, an artist. I talk about this in my book and also in a very short animated video I created years ago. It is later that we start to lose our wonderful power; our wonderful self.
Why is that though?
When we do something that is not acceptable or manageable by our parents in our early childhood, we usually have to choose between two very basic needs Dr. Mate says:
- attachment- to another human being to be fed, to be taken care of
- authenticity – being in touch with ourselves, listening to ourselves (which protects us from real danger)
If we were angry for example and we were told to go to our room until we feel calm again, it does not feel good at all. In that moment we have to choose attachment over authenticity because we need to survive. Every time we choose attachment to be held, to be loved, to be fed, we learn how not to listen to ourselves. Every time we do something that could not be handled by our parents (because they have their own traumas), we start to move away from who we are. So you start to say Yes to things you want to say No to. You lose the boundaries you want to keep. If your artistic gift freaks them out because you will starve in the future, you give that up too. To be attached to the people who will feed you and care for you, you give up authenticity.
The same happens when a child does not feel loved. If your mom ignored you and did not show affection for a while because you broke something that was valuable to her; you have two options:
- My mom doesn’t love me OR
- There is something fundamentally wrong with me
As a child, unconsciously you choose 2. Because the first one is unbearable and you have no control. If you choose 2, then maybe one day you will be perfect and then they will love you again. (That must be how perfectionism is born!) We get disconnected from ourselves again: we are flawed.
That is how trauma starts. As Dr. Mate says, the biggest trauma is to be disconnected from ourselves. It is at the root of our suffering. I believe him. It explains so much.
Knowing this happens to almost all human beings except maybe a lucky few, it is not so easy to judge people for not saying no, not having boundaries, not voicing their own opinions. not being strong. Maybe their trauma was bigger than yours. Maybe their parents’ trauma could not handle some of what your parents did.
Trauma doesn’t stay in your childhood. Because all of it happens unconsciously. You do not know you are carrying it around. It does not feel like trauma either. It is a good life. Until something hits you or you are stuck. When you want to solve it or some voice tells you you need to change the path and it scares you, that is when awakening starts. Only if you choose to see it. Trauma directs your life until you become self-aware. Then you can do something about it. Thinking most people do not like to have this inner journey, most live on auto-pilot, and some just trying to make ends meet, the number of unaware people is huge.
So please do not be surprised by what people can or cannot do and please do not judge. All have been acting on survival instincts. Nobody had a say or a better way to process all this as a child.
This is why I love studying human psychology. You understand yourself, people, and the world so much better.