By now, you are aware of how a childhood of trauma can stop inner peace in its tracks. It seems that every day, maybe even every moment, there is a new emotion or overwhelming thought to address. The constant inner struggle can make it hard to address the tasks that your daily routine requires.

I used to hope for a change in my outer circumstances. I used to think peace would come as soon as I found the perfect job, bought the perfect house, lived in the perfect town, met the perfect partner, had the perfect family. I thought it would be possible to ignore the inner turmoil after my outer life was as I wanted.

But I was wrong. While it sounds like an easier plan, the path to inner peace had to happen from the inside out. Of course, you have heard that before. It is quite the cliché. But what does it mean? How do we make that happen? Inner happiness is a whole lot harder to find than the perfect material things.

I have learned that while it can be difficult, it is also the only way to inner peace. We must do the hard work to tackle the awareness challenge so that we can live with freedom. There truly is no way out but through.

Presence Brings Peace; Stillness Brings Clarity; Self-Awareness Brings Freedom

About eight years ago, after the birth of my two beautiful triggers (I mean children), I realized that I had to make some changes. I had to try a new approach or I was going to go crazy. At first, I did not understand the significance of these changes because most of my traumatic memories had been repressed. And honestly, this was probably a good thing.

I thought that clearing my head for fifteen minutes per week was enough. And while that had helped, it wasn’t enough. I was still ignoring the inner struggles that plagued me during the rest of my days and nights.

The realization finally came when I read a book by Eckhart Tolle called The Power of Now. When I finished reading it, I read everything else he wrote. I bought his CD’s. I subscribed to his website. I was completely obsessed with his simple perspective on mindfulness. Up until that time, I had not lived with hopefulness. But shortly after I started reading the first book, I told a friend that Tolle’s teachings gave me hope. And that hope was powerful beyond measure. That hope changed my life.

While reading a book on mindfulness is helpful, I knew I would have to start making changes in my daily life. And this was the hard part. After years of work, it is still the hard part. Reading about concepts is one thing. Changing ingrained habits is another. But I started small, which is how all changes should start.

I decided that I would practice mindfulness in the car. And to clarify, mindfulness is not about closing one’s eyes and clearing one’s mind. Mindfulness is about practicing awareness in the moment. It is about stopping the endless chatter and constant stream of thoughts in my head and just focusing on what is happening in that precise moment. And I knew the car would be the easiest place to start. The car was where I spent most of my alone time. I wasn’t ready to practice mindfulness while interacting with others yet. The biggest sacrifice was turning off the radio because I love my music.

While I had been doing yoga and meditation for years already, I had never incorporated mindfulness in to my daily life.

I would just focus my thoughts. I would focus on my surroundings. The car in front of me is red. There are trees to my right. There is a stoplight up ahead. I tried to keep my thoughts about facts. I tried not to judge. And as you know, in the car, that can be challenging.

Eventually, my thoughts changed to how I was feeling. My heart is beating fast today. My leg has a strange pain. There is an itch on my back. This is a big step for someone who has used dissociation as a defense mechanism. It was very scary to be in my body. But I did my best to stay with it.

Over time, I was able to bring my mindfulness practice to other areas of my life, eventually culminating with interpersonal interactions. Oh look, I am reacting strongly to this situation. Is it possible that I am triggered? What from my past am I being reminded of? Who from my past is this person acting like? Or more importantly, who do I think they are acting like?

While it was fine to become aware of what triggered me, there was a need to take it further. The next questions I asked were about how I could change myself. What could I do to react differently the next time? How can I calm myself when I see the trigger coming? How can I reassure myself that I am safe when an individual exhibits that behavior? Are my feelings about my old life or do they relate to now?

It is that last set of questions that changed my life. Awareness is important. And some changes will happen with awareness alone. But action is necessary in the triggering moments. And in these moments, I made a new life for myself.

During these drives, I would not try to silence my thoughts. That is a very difficult task for a trauma survivor.

Awareness is the only way to bring peace and freedom to our lives.

But taking on awareness practices too quickly will inevitably become overwhelming, which can lead to abandonment of these practices for self-preservation purposes. Therefore, awareness should be tackled in steps, especially for those of us who have already mastered the dissociative defense mechanism.

This is a big change. It may be the biggest change you have ever attempted. And this kind of change will take a lifetime of steps and still not be fully complete.

Why? It is human nature to be unaware. So why do it? The results of small awareness changes are dramatic.

Even mastering the first step will bring some peace into your life.

Overcoming the Awareness Challenge

Introduction

Awareness in our daily lives is a form of meditation, but it is not the most commonly publicized form of meditation. It is not about sitting and clearing our head of all thoughts. This is a very good practice, but it can be very challenging for trauma survivors. I was doing brief meditations prior to my awareness work, but the benefit of meditation began to grow exponentially when I started practicing awareness techniques on a daily basis. The great thing about awareness is we don’t have to stop thinking. We have to think about what we are doing. And when we inevitably start thinking about something else, we refocus on what we are doing. We use our minds as a tool to help us in the moment, as opposed to running our lives (like they tend to do).

How to get started

To get started, pick a time when you are the closest to a peaceful existence. For me, it was driving with no passengers in the car. For you, it may be an exercise class or a walk in the woods or cooking a meal. Make a pledge to stay aware and present when you are doing this one task. This means paying attention to your thoughts while doing this task. If you are chopping vegetables, try to stay focused on the task of chopping vegetables. This means only thinking about the knife, the cutting board and the vegetables. Of course, this includes the sounds, the smells, the temperature, the feeling of the knife in your hand and any body aches you may be experiencing while

Bringing Awareness to Peaceful Experiences

When other thoughts enter your mind, put them aside for later. If it helps, you can make a list of things to think about later (unless you are driving a car). Don’t judge yourself for leaving the present moment. And don’t judge yourself for judging (believe me, I have done that). Just bring yourself back to the moment and go back to your present experiences.

Stepping it up

Once you are feeling comfortable with the first step, try to take on something new. Add an experience which might be harder for you to stay present. Don’t involve interactions with people for this step, but try to explore something that might have some triggers. Maybe there is an experience where you have to concentrate harder, like your work environment.

You could also add in a daily journal at this point. You could explore the experiences of the day during which you felt the least present, maybe even times of the day during which you don’t remember what you did. What were the triggers that discouraged your presence? What were the emotions you were experiencing or avoiding experiencing? What else was happening in your body? Did you experience any muscle tension or pain? Were there any flashbacks? What thoughts crept in to your mind to explain your reaction? Our brain will always try to explain our bodily reactions through thought. Understanding how the brain does this is an important part of your awareness practice.

What will stand in your way?

When I was a child, there were horrible things happening to me. My brain was underdeveloped because I was a child. Eventually, it was also underdeveloped because I was being traumatized. I was unable to process my circumstances. I was unable to feel the intense levels of hopelessness in the moment. There was no escape that I had been able to find, so the emotions were overwhelming. I finally came to a decision that I will have to die or I will have to forget. My only options were suicide or dissociation.

The idea behind dissociation is that we put away our pain for another day, a day when we are stronger, have a more developed brain and solid coping mechanisms. While it doesn’t always feel like we are ready to address the pain when it does come, more than likely, on some level, we are ready.

But my inner child was not so sure. She had lived for a long time under the impression that the emotions from her childhood would kill her. And she wasn’t going to release that information easily.

So the defense mechanisms don’t release easily. It takes time. It takes patience. And it certainly takes awareness. The most important part of awareness is understanding what the defense mechanisms are. Once you see how they are interfering, you can choose to set them aside for brief moments at a time. Eventually, you can choose to set them aside for longer periods of time.

So, when the painful emotions come, you will be faced with your inner obstacles. You may want to numb them with substances. These are more obvious defense mechanisms. But your brain will also be a huge obstacle.

Let me give you an example.

When I am about to encounter a new revelation from my traumatic past, I always know it is coming now. I know it is coming because my brain takes the same journey. I will wake up in the morning worrying about my day, the next day, the following week and my retirement in 30 years. I will spend the day moving manically from one task to another. Sometimes, I have an extremely productive day. Sometimes, I start a bunch of things I don’t finish. But I am busy. My brain is always churning through thoughts that keep my awareness focused anywhere but in the moment and on my body.

This is why awareness can change our world. When we stop to recognize the current moment, we can be blessed with information that was hovering below our normal thoughts. That information is critical to our future growth. But we have to know how we are stopping it. Awareness can do that.

Introduction

Interpersonal interactions are the number one trigger for growth in our lives. Why? Because trauma doesn’t happen without other people, people who abuse their power over us. And those relationships wire our brains to expect, even manifest, similar interactions in our adult lives.

There are a few key understandings when we begin working with awareness in interpersonal interactions.

1) People are our mirrors. You may not want to know this, but it will change your life. That which we recognize in others exists in us. Otherwise, we would not know it. This is also known as “projection” and the awareness of it can be used to recognize our growth areas as well as the traits we were meant to embrace.

2) We are likely to create our prominent childhood relationships through our current adult relationships, unless we have consciously processed the childhood experiences. You have heard the expression that women marry their fathers and men marry their mothers. It is actually based on reality. And children of abusers want to nip that in the bud.

3) Often our most emotionally triggering interactions are based on a child-like perception of a much earlier experience. Discernment is challenging for children. Many times, children will judge a relationship based on an “all or nothing” mentality. A child will believe that someone is all good or all bad. A child

Bringing Awareness to Interpersonal Interactions

may believe that a situation is entirely the child’s fault or they may blame everyone else for all bad things. When we have been through trauma, some of these beliefs may be buried deep inside, running our experiences.

How to get started

To get started, pick someone who can journey with you, who can help you in your awareness and might want to work on their own awareness in relationship with you. Don’t pick your child to start. And don’t pick someone who has no desire to be vulnerable. At first, it may not be possible to be aware in the moment of interaction with others. The awareness may come through retrospective journaling.

Spend a few minutes each day examining how your interactions with that person may be triggering your old emotional reactions based on your traumatic experiences. Take time to look at the key understandings of interpersonal interactions:

1) What are the traits of this person that trigger you? Write them down. Then ask yourself how you may be exhibiting or hiding those exact traits. This is hard work. It takes courage and an open mind.

Example: If you find people to be untrustworthy on a regular basis, in what ways are you being untrustworthy? This doesn’t have to be huge, like having an affair. This can be something small like telling people you will do something small when you have no intention of doing it. If you commonly dissociate, you may have parts that don’t trust other parts, making it hard to integrate your traumatic experiences. Do you believe yourself?

2) How do the interactions resemble your childhood relationships? Where might you be recreating those interactions? Keep in mind that relationships are never simple. One person may be recreating aspects of several childhood relationships.

Example: If you were commonly faced with emotional abuse when you were a child, you may want to examine how your relationships are continuing that abuse. Are you in relationships with people that make you feel bad about yourself? If you spent most of your childhood hearing these messages, it can be hard to see, but it’s worth it.

3) What beliefs from your childhood may be impacting your perception of the relationship? Ask yourself, is that really true?

Example: Do you have a belief that people will always let you down? Are you overreacting when someone fails to meet your expectations? Look at those interactions where your beliefs seem to lack centering. Do you cut off a friend when they make one mistake or put up with a friend who is constantly letting you down?

Stepping it Up

As you move through the process of awareness, you will eventually bring awareness to the interactions themselves. Instead of examining your reactions in retrospect through journaling, you will start to catch your triggers in the moment. This is a natural progression with awareness which can happen organically, but you can also choose to ignore it. It will be your job to make another choice. First, you will notice it but won’t change your behavior. That is fine. That is normal. Next, you will notice it and stop in your tracks. Finally, you will notice it and do something new. All three matter. Don’t ever minimize one of these steps.

Once you have done this introspective work with someone who is helpful and less triggering, it is time to pick that one adult. You know the one. The adult that makes you want to stay in bed when you are fighting. The adult that has made you consider leaving your favorite job just to get away from them. This, my friends, is where the diamonds are. When you are willing to examine that relationship and stop making it entirely the others’ fault, you are ready for some true transformation. You are not messing around.

And this relationship is going to be hard work. If this person is willing to be vulnerable and work with you, the work might be harder, but much more rewarding. You are also likely to create a lifelong connection that will never be broken. Or on the flip side, you might discover that some relationships are not meant to be. Either way, your life will improve.

After spending time with this tough adult relationship, start working with your children. While they cannot help you through the triggers of parenting with deep cognitive conversations, they can help you with reminders and keywords which I will discuss in the next section. Believe me. Just like with adults, if you explain to your children that you want to make changes in your reactions to them, they will be helpful. And it is destined to improve your relationship when the masks come off and they can see you as a regular person just like them.

Parenting will be the toughest work because it is so pervasive in your life. Where many adult relationships may offer the occasional trigger, your relationship with your children mirrors your inner child. You are literally staring your inner child in the face every time you address your children. The triggers are endless. The good news is that children are flexible, loving and willing to be vulnerable. They are most likely to change and help you change. In other words, we can learn so much from them.

What will stand in your way?

When I was a child, relationships were dysfunctional at best. I was abused emotionally, physically, mentally and sexually. I was abandoned. I was manipulated. I was treated by others as though my life was not very important. I developed a child-like mentality that relationships were one of two extremes. Either I was looking for a savior who I put on a pedestal, so anything that went wrong in relationship was clearly my fault. Or I was settling for someone who wasn’t worth their weight in salt and I let them know it. In other words, I was the abused or the abuser.

In these relationships, I was attempting to resolve the tragedies of my childhood by repeating the same patterns and expecting them to turn out differently. Some refer to this as the “definition of insanity” and maybe it is. But that means we are all insane and maybe we are.

Our inner child is not going to change relationship patterns easily because the masks are comfortable. More importantly, they are safe. We developed them in an attempt to keep our abusers at bay, to stay alive. Maybe we don’t set boundaries and do whatever the other wants. Maybe we eliminate vulnerability in relationships and keep our distance. Maybe we have mastered all aspects of codependence.

So we have masks. And we aren’t dropping them without a fight (or a whole lot of awareness and some anxiety too). Here are some common masks:

1) It is all the other’s fault. They are abusive.

In childhood, this was true. In adulthood, we have more power to set boundaries.

2) It is all the other’s fault. I can’t trust them.

In childhood, this was also true. In adulthood, we may be untrustworthy too.

3) It is all the other’s fault. They abandoned me.

In childhood, this was also true. In adulthood, we may have been dishonest about our expectations or we may have changed significantly (and this can be a good thing).

You get the idea. It is good to be aware of the masks we are wearing as we work through relationships, so we don’t find ourselves stuck in our childhood patterns.

Introduction

Working with triggers will bring an awareness that can only lead to freedom, but it takes time and patience and a willingness to examine aspects of your life that you may have been avoiding. You may have heard the phrase, “There is no way out but through.” Unfortunately, this appears to be accurate. This work must be done to find the peace we deserve. But take it slow. Give yourself the time and space to process. It is advisable to have a working relationship with a trauma therapist when you do this work also.

How to get started

If there is a trigger that makes you want to curl up in a ball in the corner (and there is always that trigger), don’t start there. Start with a trigger that gives you a feeling that something isn’t quite right.

Maybe you react too strongly to something at work.

Maybe you distance yourself from someone when they behave a certain way.

Maybe you avoid something you need to do and you can’t figure out why.

Changing Your Inner Responses to Triggers

1) Write a list of those times when something doesn’t seem quite right. They can be specific situations with certain people. Or they can be a more general reaction to a type of experience.

2) Write down how those triggers impact you. What happens in your body? Do you stop breathing? Do you feel muscle tension or joint pain? Do you see flashes of old memories? Do you feel waves of emotion? What happens to your thoughts? What are the beliefs that come up when this trigger is activated?

3) Write down where it might come from. Was there a situation in the past that is similar to this situation? Was it dangerous or unsafe? If not, did it seem dangerous or unsafe? How was it similar? More importantly, how was it different?

4) Examine your new level of empowerment as an adult. How can you respond differently this time? In what ways are you no longer the victim? In what ways are you now safe?

These tasks will create a level of awareness that you did not previously have. The first time you write about these, you will not have all the answers. You may not even understand how the trigger is connected to your childhood. There may be something you don’t remember. If that happens, just write the question. “How is this similar? I want to know.” The information will come to you over time. Of course, this is where patience is important.

Once you have practiced awareness for a while, meditation can become more manageable. And meditation can be critical to understanding your response to triggers When you are feeling a visceral bodily reaction to something, meditating on that feeling can be truly enlightening. If you don’t want to do that alone, work with your therapist on a guided meditation.

Stepping it Up

The next step is the hardest step of all steps. As the trigger happens, how can we respond differently? How can we be aware in the moment of impending doom (as our inner child interprets it)? When our heart starts racing and the flashbacks kick in, how can we bring our body back down from the crisis?

There are many methods that work and you will need to find the one that is right for you. The key is to presence yourself. This doesn’t mean you avoiding a bodily response. This just means you are aware of it and you know you are not in imminent danger. Here are some methods that have worked for me:

1) Breathing. If you are focusing on your breathing, you are present.

2) Physical reminders. Touch a table in the room and say, “This is a table.” Any physical item will work.

3) Key words or phrases. Use a phrase that will remind you to come back to the room. You can also give it to people you trust. Children can be helpful here.

Once you are able to presence yourself, work to build a different reaction to that trigger. Maybe you yell when the kids argue. Maybe you can breathe first and respond second. Of course, this is much harder said than done. I know. I work at this every day.

After working with some less significant triggers, move on to some harder triggers. In reality, you may find that some of the harder triggers organically soften over time as you build awareness. But they may not vanish completely without some awareness directed specifically at them.

What will stand in your way?

When I was a child, my brain learned that I was in imminent danger all the time. This was not a cognitive process. Imminent danger is processed in other parts of the brain. It is processed in the hippocampus and amygdala, the limbic system. Once those parts of the brain have overridden the cognitive parts, it can be extremely challenging to bring our systems back in line even as adults.

So my brain was wired for danger. The default was fight, flight or freeze. My body was flooded with cortisol on a regular basis. And only extreme levels of awareness are going to change that. And the change will happen slowly.

The primal need to stay safe is at the core of everything humans do. From having a job to buying a house to hovering over our children, we are attempting to stay safe. And when we have been addressing physical safety our entire lives, it can be hard to leave this behind, to convince ourselves that this basic need has been met.

As you work to respond differently to your triggers, you may notice that your anxiety increases at first. This is normal. You are trying something different. Change brings anxiety. Plus not all of your parts are happy about the changes yet. Think about doing some body work to bring your system back down. I recommend Reiki, Acupuncture and Cranio-Sacral Therapy, but almost any type of body work will help you.

And go easy on yourself and your inner child. This process will take time. But over the long haul, you will notice a calmer disposition. You will get less anxious during the daily tasks of life. And eventually, you will notice that you handle those difficult moments with a bit more grace than before.

Conclusion

Many programs discuss awareness using the perspective of flow, integration and spiritual understanding. This is all true. But I have learned that recovery from complex trauma requires a more willful approach. This is why I use words like stepping up, facing the challenge and overcoming obstacles. I have learned that if I don’t face the reality of my trauma with an action-based philosophy, I can quickly move in to “spiritual bypass” mode.

What do I mean by that? Spiritual bypass is an approach to self awareness that tries to make the process less “messy”. In bypass mode, we find ways to ignore our bad feelings by removing ourselves from triggering situations and meditating our system back to some level of calm. While meditation and other spiritual practices do help, they cannot be used to avoid the deep, messy work of trauma recovery.

We have to use our minds, bodies and emotions to drive the changes we want to see in our lives. That being said, it is best to have a partner, a therapist and/or a coach to help you see what you inevitably won’t want to see. There will be times when you want to put the blinders on, and since you are already very good at defending against that deep emotional processing, you will find plenty of excuses. Others can keep you honest with yourself.

If you are ready to step up to the awareness challenge, if you are ready to bring your life to a new level of freedom through hard work and changes over time, you are willing to do what it takes. And I am ready and willing to help you in that process. I have individual email coaching available here to help you step up and find your freedom.

With deep gratitude,

Elisabeth

Join me at BeatingTrauma.comLet’s heal together.

Beyond Trauma: Elisabeth Corey is a survivor of family-controlled child sex trafficking and abuse. As an advocate for trauma recovery, she helps other survivors take back the life that has always belonged to them.

She works with survivors navigating life and parenting, and with media and organizations through her private sessions, workshops, writing, speaking and training seminars.