Is Connecting with the Authentic Self After Trauma Possible?
For me, there was no authentic self for a very, very long time.
Before recovery, my life was dark and lonely place where I was cut off from my authentic self. I was a shell of a person, carved out by childhood and narcissistic abuse. I eventually turned to drugs and alcohol to numb the pain of my own disconnection from self. There was a void inside me where the authentic self should have lived.
Having recovered from many things – childhood trauma, alcoholism and drug addiction, codependency, narcissist abuse, and above all: disconnection from many parts of myself, including my authentic self, I believe this disconnection from self to be the most exquisite type of pain we can experience in our human form.
What I can tell you is that the climb back to that authentic self is the most rewarding journey one can embark on; I’ve done it myself, I’ve seen others do it; I’ve coached women through it; I’ve held partners, lovers, and friends’ hands through it.
I’d love to tell you that this is an overnight journey, that it is just a couple of self-help books and a few months practicing daily meditation, that it’s just one Yoga retreat in Bali away. Of course, we both know, that it isn’t. It’s sobriety. It’s daily recovery. It’s facing your trauma down. It’s feeling all the goddam feels. It is pure fucking determination to feel something other than the void inside. It’s a snot-cry here and there (eventually the snot-cry is not every day, but when you’re in the thick of it, it’s pretty fucking frequent). It eventually leads you to freedom.
When I get into enough pain, I will typically be hell bent on getting the F out of it. By the time I came into recovery, the intense pain of disconnection from myself forced me to face all my patterning, my core beliefs, my negative self-talk, my traumas, and yes, my shadow self.
I can’t tell you what you should do. But I will tell you what I did. And how I did it.
(Prepare for the absolute worst and most daunting to do list of your fucking life.)
Here’s how I connected with The Authentic Self After my (big T) Traumas (plural). (Yes, it’s fucking possible, can you believe it?).
1. Stop Medicating with Drugs and Alcohol.
You’d think this was self-explanatory. But it isn’t. An old AA sponsor once said to me that if I am taking any pill, any food, any drink, or any drug to alter my state of mind or get a sense of ‘ease and comfort’, then I am not sober.
That revelation fucking sucked. Here I was popping Tylenols because it helped me with whatever pain I was in each day. My Tylenols days ended right then and there, a mere three months after my drug and alcohol days ended. Fuck, had I no vice? There was no fucking way I could do this.
It’s only through living a non-medicated life that I’ve been able to truly reconnect. Yes, some of us are really out here just raw-dogging reality.
2. Find Community Support and Care.
Don’t do this shit alone.
I needed support. I tried healing, I tried therapy, I tried addictions counselling. I tried yoga, I tried dieting, I tried dating, I tried not dating. What I needed, and continue to need, is authentic and safe connection.
Coming from a place where connection was dangerous and life-threatening, this one was hard and slow, and took a very long time to open myself up to. In a nutshell: I hadn’t developed safe attachment and attunement with my caregivers – so safe attachment and attunement with others felt impossible. But it was (and is) necessary for my healing. How the hell did I do that? Ugh. That’s a whole OTHER blog post. Ear mark this for later.
3. Meditate and Journal, daily (if not two or three times a day).
I know it sounds super basic and spiritual by-passy, perhaps very ‘love and light’ of me. But I had to get still with myself in order to connect. I have been journaling almost daily for the past nine years. I rarely journal about my days or my inner thoughts. I’d rather journal about my gratitude, my goals, my affirmations and aspirations. Even my beliefs in the law of assumption (ok, a whole other blog on this too…).
But at the core of it, and at the very beginning of my journey into recovery, if I wasn’t able to get still and sit with my feelings, I wasn’t ever going to get well. If I wasn’t going to get well, there was not chance in hell I could connect with what is my true, core, authentic self.
Since becoming able to meditate, and witness my own thoughts and patterns rather than engaging in them, I have been able to recognize the shifting nature of the self; That nothing, including myself is permanent. That includes my feelings, my trauma, my flashbacks, my triggers but also my joys, my success, my celebrations.
Meditation and journaling has helped me witness myself, and let go of myself all at once.
4. Witness Your Traumas.
Someone else was unable to witness the harms they caused you or the harms someone else caused you and now, you need it to be seen. This has become your job now. It isn’t fair. It isn’t fun. But: it is the only way through.
Gabor Mate sums this up beautifully. He says ‘trauma is not what happens to you, trauma is what develops inside of you as a result of what happened to you’. If I grew up in a volatile home, and no one was there to help me through it, then the trauma stays within me. Unlike, say, a friend of mine who also grew up in a similar home. But, they had a trustworthy grandparent or aunt who they could talk to, a safe place they could go on weekends, someone who witnessed them in the pain of what was happening.
When our pain is denied, it continues, it persists. It stays inside of us – an energy that cannot find its way out.
Witnessing my traumas has allowed me to witness all of my self – all the parts of myself that have been hidden away for years. I mean all of them: the sad, scared girl who carries the shame of my sexual abuse, the over-compensating manager who seeks my mother’s approval, the angry teenager who rages and drinks and flirts, the suicidal preteen who just needs to be hugged.
I have sat with all of my inner girls and I have witnessed them as wholly as I can. (Believe me, I cried a fucking lot).
5. Then write it all down.
What does it mean to witness my traumas, and witness my inner girls who experienced these traumas? I have written down their stories. I have written down the incidents that have been most harmful to their sense of safety. I have written down everything ever “done to them”. I have written down their thoughts, their prayers, their plans for escape.
I literally meditate, and affirm to myself that I am safe and what I am about to do may bring up a lot of emotions, but it is okay because the danger is over now. Then I sit and I write. Sometimes for twenty minutes, sometimes for three hours. But I write until it is out and I don’t know to write it down any more. Usually, what I end up finding is that I had done nothing wrong but as a young child or teenager who was never taught how to self-regulate, I blamed myself for many of the abuses I suffered. I carried that shame with me for many years and acted out of it, in defence of it, and to protect myself from it.
Once I began writing out my traumas and situations, (this is going to sound weird), I would get physical symptoms. I would burp a lot, feel like I was going to vomit, not be able to sleep for a night or two, need to scream and cry. But I knew that these were all pieces of energy attached to the traumatic situations that needed to just leave my body. So I moved with them (seriously, like writing on the floor, crying with snot dripping from my nose, and getting burps out), to help get that trauma energy stored in my body to finally be released.
I’m lucky enough to have a partner who has done similar work. He has been able to coach and guide and love me through these difficult processing and witnessing moments. If you can, get somewhere peaceful, quiet, and safe. And take a safe person with you who knows what this heavy stuff is about. Someone who will help you regulate when you need to, and remind you that you’re doing a good job in the middle of that snot-cry.
Eventually, I began to write down my inner girls’ dreams, their hopes, their desires – which became mine again (this is called integration).
6. Forgive yourself.
I’ve heard a lot of shit about forgiveness. Shitty therapists have told me I need to work on forgiving people (my mom, my dad, family friends, ex boyfriends). I haven’t forgiven many people in my life except for myself and the people who have asked for forgiveness (Soundoffinthecomments).
The most important forgiveness has been of myself. I have had to forgive myself for the pain I have caused others with the way I acted when I was in pain; I have had to forgive myself for not knowing any better; I have forgiven myself for accepting abuse and thinking it was love; I have forgiven myself for sliding back into old behaviours and patterned ways of thinking; I have forgiven myself for moving on too quickly or not quick enough; I have forgiven myself for the bad days, and for the days when I felt I didn’t deserve anything good.
Self-forgiveness is an ongoing process, like much of my journey to connect with myself. This is a daily practice.
7. Regulate your Goddam Nervous System.
Easier said than done, amirite? The slightest energetic interference will throw my nervous system regulation out of whack. Sometimes, I am convinced that I’m not as introverted as I think I am, I am actually just traumatized (lol).
Meditation, journaling, prayer, exercise, yoga, stretching, breathing, getting in touch with my body and emotions have all helped me to regulate my nervous system. Working with community and other people (safe people) has helped me to learn what a regulated nervous system could feel like.
Quick tip: Have you ever felt warm and fuzzy in the presence of others? Maybe like, it’s a friends-giving surrounded with fun, delicious smells, hugs, and cozy feelings? And it feels like a warm hug that starts in your belly? That. That, for me at least, is optimal regulation.
8. Realize That You Are More Than A Survivor.
Because I am. And you are. Surviving my worst days is not who I am. Surviving the worst days at the hands of my abusers is barely the beginning of who I am. My identity does not end and begin with survival of hard things.
Reconnecting with what feels like my authentic self (holy fuck, maybe I’m way off base and this ain’t it???), has taken the larger part of a decade. It is a daily commitment that, over time, has taken less energy and focus than it did at the very beginning.
I am not what I have survived. I am nuanced. I am layered. I am multitudes. And so are you.
