Trauma Is An Incomplete Transformation
A shock that initiated a toppling of your worldview, but left it hanging midway. An incomplete cycle.
You are moving through life in inertia. At rest in the places you’ve always been at rest. In perpetual motion along the lines you’ve moved along for long.
Then something happens.
A shock. A spark. A sudden tryst with destiny.
A burst of force catching you off-guard and pushing you off-kilter.
This is trauma. It is the initiation of a new cycle. But often, in its dense, smothering reality, it becomes hard to complete that process of closing out the old cycle and take steady steps into the new one. Or even understand what is happening. Hence the impending journey following the force of initiation, goes unfinished and unlived.
I believe that post-traumatic growth is the living out that process to its completion. Dreaming the full dream. Not stopping midway at the point it turned into a nightmare. What if the scary part was only the middle? If you cut it off right there, it will always remain a nightmare. What if the rest of your undreamed dream is resolution and recognition, is seeing through the veil and getting the gist of your fear, healing you in the process?
If you resolve to never return to that nightmare, push its contents out of your mind, you never get to see that part right there at the end. Even more importantly, you never get to stop living that nightmare, in your waking and dreaming realities. It will come as trickles in your good times and as torrents in your bad times. It will stay with you in perpetuity as the patterns and colours of your life. Deciding how to draw it and what colours to fill in.
Unless, you dare.
Dare to look and dare to see. To embrace your truth. At the heart of your shock, is a refusal to see your own truth. Not merely the truth of the circumstances or of other people. But some deep, core truth about yourself that you never dared to see. You never made the space for. Something you never embraced about yourself. A part of you exiled. And covered up and forgotten.
But you have felt the pea beneath the many, many mattresses*. You have known its existence. Though perhaps, for the life of you, you couldn’t remember what it was.
Perhaps it was a part of you sent away so long ago. Before you learned to speak and sing. Before you learned of yourself. Perhaps it was a little spark extinguished ever so violently. You did not dare to go back for it, for you feared for your own life. Perhaps it was a run down part of you, tired of the endless grind of days. Tired of the same routines and same excuses, she went for a stroll and found a kinder, braver world and never returned.
No matter how that part left you, know that it was them looking to find their way back to you. That shock was meant to shake you loose, of the cloud you’d drawn around you, when you felt naked and alone without the whole of you.
And it did succeed at that. It did manage to shake you loose. But the shadows guarding your wounds are smart. They would very soon find another cloud to drape you with. To keep your wounds numb and your soul sedated. Distractions to forget their truths. Addictions. Looping thoughts and images and stories. Patterns meant to keep you stuck.
You likely need your time in there. Concealed by the new clouds. Taking baby steps or none at all. Resting. Grounding. Reorienting.
And then there will come the day when you are ready to poke a finger out. When you feel that nudge, do it. You may want to draw it back in soon enough and that is fine. You may want to keep exploring and that too, is fine. You decide your pace. And you decide your direction.
Your dreams are important. Your tasks are important. Your world is important. But you are more important. You are the most important part of your life. So claim the time and space you need, and deserve.
And as you feel more and more ready, you will hear the whispers of your soul. The incomplete nightmare calling you to dream its end. Heed that call. For in it, you will find your answers. They may not be what you wanted to hear, but they will be what you need to hear.
They will tell you the story of your soul. Of how she was whole and then fractured. And how she is ready to come together again.
That story is seeking you. Don’t run away anymore.
Footnotes:
I do not wish to trivialise any painful experiences or memories. Intense, big T Traumas are very rude initiations. So it is very hard to look at them as that, an initiation. I invite you to consider this view only if it resonates with you. If it doesn’t fit, leave it behind for something else that speaks to you. The right words will find you at the right time.
Trauma can be an overwhelming visceral experience. Please seek medical and psychological support if you’re going through intense symptoms. Your own inner work is vital and transformative. But that doesn’t mean that you must struggle alone. Help is available and you deserve that help.
These are two resources that speak to me: I love this movie by Dr. Gabor Mate called the Wisdom of Trauma and the rest of his work. Peter A Levine’s Somatic Experiencing is a great body based approach to trauma. There are so many more modalities out there. Please choose the ones that resonate with you.
My thanks to author and dream teacher Robert Moss, for the idea of nightmares being incomplete dreams that were cut off midway because of our fear and resistance to dream it further.
*If you’ve not heard the Princess and the Pea story, here it is.
Thank you for reading,
🌿 Swaroopa