Have you ever experienced trauma? According to the CDC-Kaiser Permanente adverse childhood experiences study (ACE), trauma is widespread. But even if you were lucky enough to avoid it as a child, there are many ways to be traumatized in adulthood.
Regardless of when you experience trauma, there is strong evidence that it negatively affects one’s life.
Mental health issues, relationship problems, alcoholism, and addiction are just a few ways that trauma rears its ugly head.
Fortunately, studies have shown that mindfulness is helpful. A study by the US Department of Veterans Affairs stated, “Interventions that bolster mindfulness may help mitigate the negative impact of cumulative traumas.”
How Mindfulness Transforms Trauma
First, mindfulness is not an elixir that makes your painful past magically disappear. It’s important to know that mindfulness doesn’t erase the past. Rather, it works because it changes your relationship to the traumatizing event. The past wound loses the charge and power over you that it once had; this is in part because you are not resisting it, trying to escape it, or pushing it away.
Mindfulness offers you a new coping strategy. It encourages a new understanding of what happened. Most importantly, this new understanding is steeped in compassion and acceptance. You are not simply forgiving the past actions of others who may have harmed you. You can also grasp that those who harmed you were themselves harmed in some way. By recognizing the pain of others, you can grow what I like to think of as “your personal compassion container.”
Truly, no one escapes trauma in this human world, and it is through gaining this perspective that you can better cope and gain greater peace.
Reflection Practice for Trauma
Mindfulness works because it uses your selective attention. Rather than focus on old wounds, it helps you use your attention to look at harmful past events in a new way. This is how it changes your relationship to your trauma.
The reflection here is an excerpt from my book Simply Mindful Reflections. You can use it anytime, whether you’re feeling upset or calm. Either way, find a quiet setting where you can spend a couple of minutes. Take two or three centering breaths before starting. Let out a long exhale and relax the body. Set the intention to make peace with your wound before you begin reading.
Take your time as you read these words. Let each idea sink into your being.
If you live on this planet, trauma is unavoidable.
Yes, you could summon your trauma
until your last breath,
grabbing on for dear life and not letting go.Or, you could start with a very different notion:
That every suffering being
in your proximity could benefit
from a kind deed, action, or prayer.Say a blessing for your own
frail nakedness clothed in eternity.
What more (or less) could one possibly hope for?
Awaken on this!
Now, spend as long as you need to reflect on or journal these three follow-up questions.
- Saint Teresa once asked the prisoners of San Quentin to pray for her. Who needs your prayers?
- What would it be like not to define yourself by trauma?
- Write down one blessing that could help you right now. How could this support you throughout the day?
Conclusion
Congratulations on beginning the healing journey to creating a new relationship with trauma. This takes time; repeat this reflection as necessary. Remember to send yourself a generous dose of self-compassion and loving kindness as you move forward.
