Having a sense of identity is a privilege that some people don't get to have naturally. Knowing who you are gives you an internal security. Although your sense of self might change throughout your life by growing and evolving, as long as you can identify yourself with your values and things that you like and are important to you, then you are doing a good job in carving out your identity.
However this is not the case for people who have had experienced trauma in their childhood or even adulthood. Trauma affects our view of self, the way we understand ourselves and the world around us. It is like wearing broken glasses. Looking at everything is disoriented and shattered. Therefore, making sense out of everything becomes difficult and confusing.
How does it happen ?
Because of trauma, our brain and nervous system only focuses on the survival. The brain orders every single parts of our self to be alert and cautious. Basically we are living with constant fear that something bad is going to happen, so we avoid new experiences, we avoid learning new skills, and we only focus on the survival strategies that we have learned. This puts us in a box. A cage that limits our connection to the outside world.
Hence, we are left with insecurities , lack of self-esteem, living based on fear, relying on relationships and scenarios that resemble our trauma narratives ( this is also why we get into more and more traumatic experiences). Because, this is what feels "familiar" and "comfortable" to us. Its like learning to live in that cage even though it sucks and we are completely forgetting that we were not supposed to be in that cage in first place!
So we begin to identify ourselves with it. We believe that the world is a scary place and this is the ONLY way we are going to survive! By living in that cage. It becomes our reality and we can't recognise our identity outside this cage!
So what to do next?
The problem is not that we are not aware that we are living in this cage! Most of the times, when I am working with trauma patients, I can clearly see that they have the awareness. They KNOW that they are in this cage and they KNOW that there is a life waiting for them outside of it. What they often don't realise is that they are the one staying in that cage because they have identified themselves with it.
" I can't be anyone else, other than what my trauma made me feel.. "
" I wanna be "this" but my past experiences tell me that I can't"
" I wanna get out of toxic relationships but I find myself in another toxic relationship again"
"I don't know what I want for my life because, what I like or who I want to be, because I don't know anything about myself"
"There is something fundamentally wrong with me and I can't understand how to fix it "
Any of these sounds familiar ?!
Recognising and identifying our identity after trauma may sound like a scary process for most of survivors, because the world outside the box is unknown to them. It may be difficult to step out when there is a fear that you might get hurt again ...However this is not the end of the story, yet. We gotta get you out of that cage. There is just so much more about you that you are not able to see just yet. Let's teach your nervous system to calm down and switch the warning signs off, for a while. We need to distribute your attention to be on every aspect of your life and not just on the survival. There is just more to life then surviving, don't you think ?!
This is just the beginning of a beautiful journey to rediscover, reconnect and emerge from the darkness and to live your life to the fullest potential.
Happy Healing
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