The beautiful truth: everyone has trauma
On the staircase, I tapped Holger on the shoulder and asked if I could experience a Somatic Experiencing session with him. "I don't have any trauma," I told him, "but I'm really curious about your work." Holger looked at me with a gentle smile and said: "Everyone has trauma. It's simply part of life." Through trauma, we have the opportunity to go through growth we couldn't manage before. We can even complete the growth our parents and ancestors were never able to. Trauma is part of our evolution as humanity.
Trauma
Every single day, our system is flooded with information. As we grow older, we gradually get better at processing it all — our capacity expands. We learn to walk, talk, work, maintain long-term relationships, care for children, and so much more. But sometimes things happen that limit our ability to move through life with ease. That's what trauma is.
This limitation arises when our system takes on more than it can handle in a given moment. It could be an accident, a difficult birth, or abuse — but it can just as easily be something like growing up without attuned parents. Parents who couldn't sense your boundaries. Who were too busy to give you the attention you needed, or who constantly pushed you to perform. This kind of overload throws our system out of balance and makes it harder to respond effectively to what life brings us in the present. Persistent stress is one of the most familiar examples of this.
Healing
What defines trauma is that we experience the present moment as if it were the moment the trauma originally occurred. We become stuck in the past, in a way. Something happening right now triggers the trauma within us. As a result, the present moment becomes colored by thoughts, emotions, and sensations from the past — ones that got lodged there due to the overload on our nervous system.
For example, a squeaking sound you're not even consciously aware of might pull you straight back to the panic of a car accident, where metal scraping against asphalt made that same sound. Healing from trauma means building capacity and releasing that stuck energy — so you can meet the present moment fresh, rather than through the filter of the past.
Somatic Experiencing Therapy
The most effective form of therapy I know for working with trauma is Somatic Experiencing. It's why I've trained to become a Somatic Experiencing Therapist myself. I wholeheartedly encourage everyone to experience a number of these sessions with a therapist who resonates with them — especially if you're drawn to living a fuller, richer life. For more information, visit the page about Somatic Experiencing.
