Notes From a Relationship Coach
(Big ideas in a small email)

“It’s only trauma if we can’t talk about it.”

I’ve worked with a boatload of therapists and Kindee is for sure one of the best. She drops gems like this all day long. But I’d like to unpack this one in particular.

If something terrible happens to you but you are immediately surrounded by help, love, support, guidance, and people who care – that’s not necessarily a traumatic experience. You mighta just had a bad day.

Yet, if that same terrible something happened and nobody cared, helped, or even noticed… and you just had to shoulder that painful experience all by yourself (forever), along with fear, shame, guilt, uncertainty, self-loathing, “was it my fault?” and everything else that comes with it…

Now that has all the makings of a traumatic experience!

(This has been studied and documented by many, including the GOAT of childhood trauma Bruce Perry).

An experience of powerlessness that overwhelms our nervous system requires some form of dissociation to survive (disconnecting from ourselves, others, or reality). And because we come out of dissociation the same way we went into it, in order to re-embody, reconnect, and heal, we must have what we would’ve needed to prevent that trauma in the first place:

Someone who truly sees, understands, cares, protects, and supports us.

That’s what I do. It’s what Kindee does. It’s what any trauma-informed healer intuitively knows. And it’s why we can’t “heal ourselves” in isolation.

…

During intake sessions with new clients, I always ask “As a child, did you have someone to talk to when you were hurt, scared, upset, etc?” Most of them didn’t and still don’t.

If you do not have a single person in your life you can bare your soul to, I highly recommend it.

Because the thing you can’t talk about is usually the thing that’s controlling your life.