Divorce Trauma

Don’t give it an inch more than is necessary to grow your soul.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

There’s a tremendous practical significance in refusing to give your trauma an inch more than absolutely necessary for your soul growth. No matter the circumstance, it’s preferable to divorce it asap and get on with your unshackled life. ~ Tessa Lena

It’s a game changer when we adopt the world view that the object of the Game of Life is to “grow our souls.” Rather than searching for someone to blame when things go wrong or praying to be delivered from tragedy by divine intervention, we can lean into our emotional intelligence, put on our critical thinking caps and become curious students of life. Only then can we start to frame our internal questions around what we’re learning from the challenges that life presents and which tools or knowledge we may need to acquire to address difficult situations. When we muster the inner resources to overcome difficulties, we grow into the most joyful and authentic version of ourselves and advance more gracefully in the Game Life. 

There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds. ~  Laurell K. Hamilton

Bad things do happen to good people both by accident and with intent by malicious people. Human beings inflict and endure unspeakable abuse ranging in scale from the intergenerational traumas that we all inherit to the genocidal horrors of war. When we recite the historical litany of human suffering, the existential threats facing our world today, or even our own personal misfortunes, it’s logical to conclude that God/Source is cruel, uncaring or non-existent. 

Human logic is not the logic of God, though. While we can never fully grasp the mind of God, when we grow beyond believing God to be a white-bearded man in the sky who punishes or rewards us, we realize that Source energy, with the nickname God, is way bigger than us and also an intrinsic part of us. Once we know God through intuition and synchronicity, we no longer expect God to intervene when bad things happen. Instead, we marry our free will to our innate connection to the Source from which our souls are formed and allow ourselves to be soul-guided into the best version of ourselves. We grow our souls incrementally by making choices and facing challenges until we start to resemble our creator and consciously use our life force to co-create good.

Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely. ~ Roy T. Bennett

If choosing is our birthright as a sentient human being, then it’s really up to us how we play the Game of Life. When bad things happen, we can shrink and attach to a victim story, or we can expand, and make our story about resourcefulness, forgiveness and lessons learned along the way. Not giving trauma an inch more attention than is necessary for our soul growth is an empowering act of self love. By highlighting our resilience instead of reinforcing our trauma, we free up energy that would otherwise get nailed to the problem. 

I divorce from the pain and insist on joy. Always. ~ Tessa Lena

There’s a common denominator that unites the multiplicity of painful situations shared with me over thirty years as a spiritual counselor: Unresolved trauma. Just as consuming expired food can be poisonous to our bodies, marinating in undigested hurt can spoil our life force energy by repeatedly inflaming the original injury. The devastating effects of unresolved trauma we experience are very real. They include the disordered biological reactions to stress that hijack our thoughts and convince us that a critical remark aimed in our direction is the equivalent of a mortal threat.

Like vicious little landmines that buried themselves deep in our psyches during periods of intense stress, unresolved traumatic events lie dormant until triggered by current events that resemble the original injustice. Convinced of existential threat, our survival brain activates, causing us to react by fighting, freezing, taking flight or fawning submissively. By repetition, we reinforce these reactions until they become “second nature.” They may seem hardwired, but we can rewire the dysfunctional knee jerk reactions that cause more hurt. We can disarm inner land mines so that they no longer blow up, hijack our nervous system and cause us to react in disempowering ways.

Trauma is personal. It does not disappear if it is not validated. When it is ignored or invalidated, the silent screams continue internally, heard only by the one held captive. When someone enters the pain and hears the screams, healing can begin. ~ Danielle Bernock

Regardless of the scale of the trauma we’ve experienced, the remedy is the same: Empathy. When we hold onto trauma that is past its “expiration date,” it’s like winding up a jack in the box; when enough tension builds up, it explodes suddenly. When we tell the truth about our trauma and experience the healing power of genuine empathy, built-up tension unwinds itself. Sometimes we need the help of an empathetic friend or counselor to help us fully dissolve our hurts so that we are no longer at the mercy of old trauma. Primed by empathy, forgiveness flows more organically. We shift our habitual reactions over time until one day we discover that we’re at peace about a subject that used to cause us turmoil. We start to respond rationally and from our hearts, rather than reacting from an old, inflamed wound when challenges arise.

If trauma’s purpose is to grow our soul, then healing it sets us free. In my healing encounters over many years, I’ve had the privilege of working with some ambitious souls who have taken on audacious challenges as players in the Game of Life. After recovering from the lifelong effects of unresolved trauma, the most common response is: I just don’t get bothered by that anymore. Instead of habitually reacting from the inflammation of buried trauma, they now respond in heartfelt, thoughtful and responsive ways.  

Forget what hurt you in the past, but never forget what it taught you. However, if it taught you to hold onto grudges, seek revenge, not forgive or show compassion, to categorize people as good or bad, to distrust and be guarded with your feelings then you didn’t learn a thing. God doesn’t bring you lessons to close your heart. God brings you lessons to open it, by developing compassion, learning to listen, seeking to understand instead of speculating, practicing empathy and developing conflict resolution through communication. If he brought you perfect people, how would you ever learn to spiritually evolve?” 

~  Shannon L. Alder