Our minds & bodies respond to unaddressed emotional wounds with increased fear, a propensity to dissociate & developing toxic shame. This creates an altered & distorted inner reality which I call a ‘trauma-world’. Healing requires that we transform our trauma-world by developing consciousness, responsibility & compassion.
When we experience overwhelming pain and fear, we develop an unconscious conviction that our life is at risk. As a result, survival systems are activated in our minds and bodies and we move onto a different developmental path to the one we would have followed had we not been traumatised. We begin to live our lives from within a ‘trauma-world’.
We are becoming increasingly aware of how widespread trauma is, and of the huge costs it imposes not only on individuals and their immediate communities, but also on society more generally. But there is a great deal of misunderstanding about trauma, and we need to develop far greater clarity if we are to work with it more effectively.
© 2022 Daniela F. Sieff. All rights reserved.
