Trauma and Denial

“As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself.”

People who’ve been deeply hurt and traumatized are, naturally, afraid of their memories.

They want to forget. They try to forget.

But the truth is, the brain isn’t good at denial.

When the feelings and emotions are pushed down and repressed, they can’t be processed, and they don’t go away. They aren’t integrated. They are lying there in wait.

And it takes a lot of energy to keep those memories down – for the past is still alive; you don’t forget the shame and pain.

So we live, day by day with a dark, gnawing sense of dread. And we feel we’ve lost control of our life, and who we.

What to do About it

“People cannot put traumatic events behind them until they are able to acknowledge what has happened, and can start to recognize the invisible demons they’re struggling with.”

To move on with our lives, we must share what we’ve gone through. How terrible it was. How traumatic it has been. We need to feel the pain. And the awful loneliness. The helplessness. The shock. And the utter disbelief.

And one we feel that we’ve been heard, and the horror has been seen, it changes us inside, and we find we start to heal.  

When we’re frozen in the past, we feel trapped and paralyzed.

But now we’ve been released.

That was then.

And this is now.