Discovering what’s true and real during trauma recovery
If my heart could do my thinking
And my head begin to feel
I would look upon the world anew
And know what's truly real.
—Van Morrison
Some things I hear often in my practice are:
I’m not sure who I really am.
I can’t tell the difference between my own internal voice and the internal voices of others.
I don’t know which beliefs belong to me and which don’t.
I feel ____ but I know ____. How do I know which is true?
I’m not sure if my feelings are real.
I don’t know what makes me “me”.
These phrases, and variations of them, all feel familiar and expected to me in the context of surviving childhood trauma. These words often speak to one of our innate survival capacities as human beings: our capacity to disconnect from harmful experiences in order to make them more tolerable or survivable. This is a very normal strategy to use when under stress.
You see, disconnecting from parts of ourselves preserves hope in a hopeless situation. It allows us to psychologically place our trauma and the devastation it causes to the side, so that an “acceptable version” of ourselves can emerge. Of course, we can and should be acceptable, trauma and all, but this often does not seem possible through the eyes of a child. So, we may voluntarily or involuntarily disconnect from the parts of us that contain the trauma in order to continue on with life. This is a strategy we may come to rely on, even into adulthood.
This strategy is brilliant for survival, and it also has a cost. It can leave us feeling like the part of us that has “gone on with normal life” is the only true, real, and acceptable part, while the younger parts that are (understandably) still affected by trauma are not. I believe that all parts of us are true, real, and yes, even acceptable. There are no “bad” parts, just parts that have absorbed the impact of trauma so that another part of us can continue on with life. That’s survival, and there’s no shame in that.
It makes sense that we might continue to label parts of ourselves as “good” or “bad”, “real” or “fake”. Sometimes, younger, survival-oriented parts of us show up in undesirable ways or in ways that are initially unhelpful, making it easy for us to unintentionally reinforce their badness or their fakeness. This might help our functioning short-term, but it doesn’t address the underlying wounds that need to be healed.
I believe that our job in healing is not to fix these “bad” parts or banish them further, but to repair our disconnect with these parts by beginning the delicate work of recognizing the legitimacy and necessity of their existence and the ways they have helped us survive. Instead of differentiating between “good” and “bad” parts of us, we can begin to differentiate between parts that match with the present moment and parts that continue to show up as an internal record of past harms. The latter are still very true, real, and acceptable—they just have yet to feel the safety that the present moment offers, because they operate as if the trauma is ongoing.
By doing this, perhaps we don’t have to rearrange our minds and hearts like Van Morrison suggests, but rather, create safe internal conditions for our minds to listen to our hearts with more curiosity and compassion.
Building a strong sense of self after trauma isn’t about further disowning our pain or our wounds so that our functioning parts can prevail. It’s about creating safety inside so that all parts can be accepted. This work can take time and often requires repetition. Perhaps I’ll write another post on why healing takes time and why I often advocate for a slow, steady approach.
Source:
Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors (book), Janina Fisher
