When traumatic events happen to us, and they’ve happened to all of us in one degree or another, you run the danger of picking up what is called “victim consciousness” and start wallowing in self-pity.

What that means is that, you see what happened to you as a part of your identity – who you perceive yourself to be. It stops being a simple occurrence or event, but rather something that defines your worth.

If this horrible thing happened to me, that must mean that I am horrible. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have happened.

Traumatic events are especially marking in childhood, when we have no ability to defend ourselves, stand up to our abuser, or express our true feelings.

We carry this mental and emotional memory into adulthood. When unaddressed and unacknowledged this wound becomes infected. It affects everything you do because it still hurts and there’s yellow puss spraying everywhere.

We put our true, soul self into a shell, too scared to come out even when the danger has passed.

Healing

To heal, it is essential to realize you are not what happened to you. You are not even what you do. You are divine, pristine, and unchanging.

To prove that to yourself, you have to take aligned, informed, and courageous action back to your soul. This can be a mix of gentle, healing practices such as soul healing and inner child work, and bold fear-facing.

You want to go from repressed to expressed.

That includes verbal expression, ecstatic dance, and a creative business you’ve always wanted to start to help the world.

When you are in a traumatized, negative space, being positive and experiencing pleasure is an active practice. You must make yourself expand into something you think should be natural.

As a consequence, when your nervous system is shot you “can not experience pleasure, cannot trust, because when you are vigilant, anxious, and insecure you can’t lift your head to go and take off in space and be playful and safe and imaginative,” Esther Perel.

Your task is to root yourself back in your body by listening to it. By expressing what has been repressed and letting your wildest desires live.

We all embark on a journey to grow from what happened to us back to our full, expressed, joyful self. Because the soul is always there, waiting to take you back.

Affirmations

If the things that happened to you brought you to the conclusion that “I am not enough” and “There is something wrong with me” thinking thoughts such as “I am enough” and “Everything I’ve ever wanted is seeking me now,” will be very unnatural. Painful even.

That is why I can both agree and disagree with people who say affirmations don’t work.

If you keep repeating “I’m rich, I’m rich” or “I’m skinny, I’m skinny,” but you don’t believe it in your heart, that is like putting wallpaper on a crumbling house.

But if you decide to believe uplifting and expansive things such as “the Universe provides for me,” “I can achieve anything I believe in,” “wealth is my birthright.”

Maybe the first time you read them, you’re like “Ew, I definitely do not believe that.” Or you glance through it really fast. But what if you tried to feeeeel it? What if, just for a few moments, you imagined you live in a world where magic is possible.

You live in a world where wonderful, magical, amazing, brilliant, unexpected things happen to people like you. But you have to have faith first.

Because we’d rather not be disappointed. We’d rather not try. We’d rather be the safe, familiar, boring people we are today than risk the unfamiliarity of becoming someone new tomorrow.

We’d rather believe our brain and find justification why amazing things aren’t allowed for us. Why we are the way we are.

When we expect things to go wrong, it takes a lot to step off that ledge. It takes a lot to convince your brain that everything will work out. That you might be scared sh*tless, but you’re going to do it anyway.

Taking Courageous Action

We get attached to our stories and our excuses of why we can’t do it. Why we’re a poor little victim and such beautiful, wonderful, grand things just don’t happen to us. All because we’re too afraid to try.

Because stepping off that ledge is hella hard. But once you do, you’re free.

Otherwise you cling to a broken, misconstructed idea of self and you avoid any situation that could shatter it (even if it’s going to be the best thing that ever happened to you).

So next time, when you read something like “I am wealthy. Money flows to me easily and freely. I can earn any amount of money I want,” think differently. Think, “this does apply to me.” Put in the effort to think differently and feel more. Risk being emotionally uncomfortable in attempting to have more.

Trauma does not absolve you from action, creativity, and doing the things you are afraid of. In the journey of healing you need tools from the complete spectrum:

from complete self acceptance to radical honesty & action.

Sometimes instead of following your true soul calling that requires everything of you, but also gives you everything, people try to compensate and make themselves feel better by feeling superior. Superior in knowledge, material possessions, social status, and achievements. Do you recognize anyone like that?

Be better. Go from unconscious to conscious and use your story to change people’s lives.

Change your’s first.

The only way out, is through.