The Change We Seek and Need...

The world as we know it is changing rapidly. The new technology developments have sky-rocketed in the past couple of decades and this pace keeps increasing. The climate is changing drastically. And we've just gone through a pandemic. There is so much change happening that it's sometimes hard to remember what the world used to look like. Most of this change - I can't say I'm loving.

But here's the change I'm on board with and am seeing more and more of. And it's the change we all seek and need...

When I went through my experience with having a major depressive episode, severe anxiety, suicidal thoughts and eventually - going through trauma healing work, a whole new world opened up for me. What I found on the other side of all that darkness was the truth. I found peace. I found presence. And I found a community.

Through my experience, digging and searching for answers I realised that there was a major shift in awareness that was happening - globally. This is largely driven by more access to information also - luckily. We're able to educate ourselves, learn more and share experience faster than ever before. This has created communities of healers all around. To be able to live in a world now where we see more and more people (who work in this space) calling out traditional psychological treatments, shifting the ways in which we've approached trauma and bringing about change in the trauma healing space is powerful. We're starting to learn to turn to ourselves. We're taking charge of our healing processes and we're empowering others along the way.

Here's why that matters...

The traditional route for someone experiencing a major depressive episode for instance (but others issues also like anxiety) would be to see a therapist who would have to give you a specific diagnosis (in the US) to charge the insurance and would most likely prescribe you an anti-depressant. In Europe - you'd be put on a months' long wait list to see a psychologist and also prescribed some pills. I know way too many people who live on anti-depressants for years. It was the only solution they were ever offered. And they never once tried to dig out the answers to why they were feeling that way. Adding to that the fact that most psychologists are not trauma-informed is unbelievable and incredibly scary. In the world where we know just how much trauma impacts the development of our brains, our physical and mental health - we fail to do trauma healing. Everything's commodities, our health most of all...

When I realised I was truly unwell (without realising at the time that I was depressed, I just knew I was really unwell) I decided to stay out of the system. I spent the last money I've had on therapy sessions with a trauma informed therapist and we started digging through my past. This was an incredibly difficult work and most people don't embark on that journey unless they feel they must or that's it's the only answer. Nobody decides to willingly sift through decades old trauma as it's incredibly difficult and painful (although we really should). But I knew I had to resolve my issues as I've seen that no matter what I did I was only getting worse.

The work we did was never even focused on my depression. She didn't know I was depressed. I never told her. We did trauma healing work. A really intense trauma healing work. And then at one point, after I've gone through the most painful parts of digging through my past - I started to get little glimpses of feeling alive. Slowly but surely, over some period of about 1.5 year my depression had started to lift. Sometime during that period I listened to a talk by Dr. Gabor Mate (cannot find that exact talk but here he talks about the same stuff) and it all made sense - he perfectly described everything I had gone through. He told us what depression was - the depressing of our true selves, our emotions, particularly anger. Where does this originate? In childhood. We were conditioned to do this. Instead of turning our anger out towards the rightful offenders, we pushed it inside, deep down, believing we had no right to feel it.

This made everything click into place for me. It made me realise that the work I had done in the past 4-5 years was about finding myself. It was about removing the layers and layers that were covering up who I was. It was about finding myself in the midsts of all parental and social conditioning. It was the return home. And that's exactly what I had missed the most in the long period of 15-16 years from when this suppression had first started. I had missed myself so deeply. I longed for that person not realising I was living in survival mode and pushing myself deeper down. I searched for her far and wide, never truly taking the time to look inside. But that's how trauma works - we're unaware of it. Once we bring awareness to it - a path starts to open up.

Without the incredible amount of information available online, the books that had been written, the podcasts that have been recorded and a community of self-healers around the world - it would've taken me much longer to truly realise and understand what was happening to me. It is crucial that we share this information. It is crucial that we do the work on opening the doors to conversations that need to be had. That we work to remove stigma from being human - because it is exactly that that's making things worse.

I see a lot of people still unaware of the patterns, still suffering deeply due to their own conditioning. Stuck in their own patterns. It makes it difficult to watch - but the path opens up when we're ready to see it. For years I wasn't also. But I also see a new world awakening, the removal of the veil - and this gives me hope. And hope is something I haven't had in a really long time. We are on a good path, or at least it appears so.

So stay tuned into what's happening all around us and start your own work of self-inquiry. It isn't just early trauma that conditions us to become someone we aren't. It is the learnings we've got as children that we never questioned and re-examined in adulthood.

The answers you seek. The need to escape that you feel you need. The longing for yourself. Those are all pointers that something within you is missing and that that which you seek is the connection to yourself - we all have those answers deep within.

Stop looking for them outside and focus on you. You are everything.

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Tomorrow I'm hosting a free webinar at 7pm CET sharp (you'll be sent a link directly when you register) on the topic of Early Trauma's Impacts in the Workplace. The webinar will give you a glimpse into how early trauma can impact behavioural characteristics we see in today's workplaces (but also in personal lives).

COACHING PROGRAMME ANNOUNCEMENT:

My first ever small group online coaching programme starts this fall - a path towards helping you find yourself again - over 4 modules, self exercises and 1:1 coaching session with me. I will help you learn about the impact of early trauma, how to do your own work of self-inquiry to identify your own trauma patterns and how to overcome them.

The spaces are filling up and the number of spaces is strictly limited. Register early (by August 17) for a discounted rate: https://voicefulconsulting.com/coaching-program.