Written by Karen Bashford, Soul Growth Therapist
Karen Bashford is a Soul Healer, Change Facilitator, and intuitive Mentor on a mission: to empower women to be calm, confident and healthy leaders in their businesses and personal lives. Founder of The KB Method and The D.R.E.A.M. System, she brings rapid and enduring change to countless lives.
Recognising trauma is more than significant events. Rather, it can be small everyday occurrences that might prevent burnout, anxiety, long-term health problems, broken relationships, financial stress and depression. Trauma is responsible for many of the struggles we face emotionally and physically daily, which needs to be dealt with rather than ignored.
Utilising the power of your body to change your life
You are body, mind and soul, not mind, body and soul.
Your body is the primary communicator of the distress you are experiencing daily in your life from all directions. Work, people, electronic devices, the environment, food and drink, the products we use on our bodies and clothes all affect our overall wellbeing.
But what about the consequences of the trauma you may not be aware of?
Listen for the warnings
You must remember that your body is in constant dialogue with you and recognise when it urges you to seek harmony and equilibrium to avoid burnout and mental illness.
Pausing or slowing down helps you rebalance and manage your life better. However, it will not stop the consequences of trauma, as everything in life is interconnected, and if one part is out of alignment, it will have a knock-on effect on other areas.
You can't deny trauma
Trauma is usually associated with wars, refugees, natural disasters, and terrorism, leading to psychological issues. However, there are many more forms of trauma, all of which can be a painful experience for our bodies and minds, causing us to become physically, emotionally or mentally ill over time, if not immediately.
Our resilience will dictate how we react when we suffer emotional trauma. However, few of us would associate trauma with everyday events in childhood or as an adult. Trauma is not necessarily a major event; it can be as minor as waking up in the dark scared as a child, which creates an emotional memory you refer to in certain circumstances.
As children, we are at our most vulnerable. We expect our parents to protect us. But unwittingly, they can do us harm by sharing programmed ancestral, generational, cultural, and family histories that were repeating beliefs and behaviours formed in their childhood. Subsequently passed on to us through our genes and demonstrated behaviours and beliefs. Regretfully, those beliefs and behaviours in terms of their words spoken and actions cause us trauma.
Nor can we ignore the accidents and racial, religious, cultural and medical trauma which occurs at any time.
We contribute to our trauma by watching TV programmes and the news. Traumatic experiences, real or imaginary, leave scars and sores that irritate us to the point where our bodies are affected mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically. Resulting in damaging our health, relationships, financial stability, happiness, and ultimately our lives.
Read more here.
Your body will put the brakes on if you continue to ignore its pleas
As a trauma-informed Empowerment Mentor and Soul Growth Therapist, I have witnessed the impact trauma, both known and unknown, hidden and seen, has on the body from the perspective of clients and my healing journey through a physical and nervous breakdown.
If we ignore the warning signs for too long, our bodies force us to stop physically, emotionally and mentally.
From childhood, we build a wall to protect ourselves from the many painful woundings we experience. In my situation, it began with my parents' lack of physical and emotional love, followed by being rejected by my siblings. Unfortunately, add to the former trauma the abuse I experienced during my marriage and relationship with my partner contributed to my emotional burden. However, it was not until considerably later, after years of emotionally supporting my mother, that my body and mind had clearly had enough, resulting in my breakdowns.
Read more here.
Letting go of control
A breakdown forces us to let go of control. It is our body's way of encouraging us to go inward and review what we feel and how we have lived our lives. We desire to control all aspects of our lives. Yet, realistically we need to surrender.
What does surrender mean?
Surrender means you stop attempting to control everything. This is a challenge in itself because we are encouraged to be busy doing rather than allowing ourselves the time and space to listen to the one thing that will never let us down: our inner guidance, gut reaction or intuition. When we listen, we become proactive rather than reactive.
Surrendering control lets us avoid repeating the same behaviours based on our current beliefs and thoughts. Allowing us to reconnect to the inner knowledge and wisdom we all have.
With a quiet mind, we can listen, feel, and see from our hearts rather than our minds. In doing so, we discover that life flows without needing to push forward or struggle. We are calm and at peace within ourselves.
Create harmony within
So, the next time your body tells you it is sick, ill, or diseased, listen. It wants you to return to a place of harmony rather than constantly doing. Harmony can only come from within, not external to you.
Remember to listen to what the body is saying—subtly with pain, discomfort, emotions, or an emptiness within you.
Why deal with trauma
Trauma is not something we can quickly shake off like an animal. Although we do shake when confronted with a highly charged emotional event.
Instead, we store memories of the trauma in our subconscious mind, which is then referred to as a measure of what could happen when confronted with a similar situation. Our bodies will energetically store the memories until they become overloaded. However, before reaching the point of a breakdown physically, emotionally, or mentally, our bodies would have been indication it needed our attention through pain and minor illnesses.
Regretfully often ignored, all the body can do is become progressively unhealthier.
Changing your eating habits, drinking more water, getting enough sleep, and taking time for your own needs are all ways to improve your life. However, the best action you can take to create a better life, is to deal with the trauma your body is warning you about through illness and disease. Or in the form of self-sabotage or self-doubt.
Trauma, sabotage and self-doubt will have an underlying programme of beliefs, behaviours, and habits that can be changed, ensuring you are living from a place of certainty and knowing you can succeed and deserve to.
Karen Bashford, Soul Growth Therapist
Karen Bashford is a Soul Healer, Change Facilitator, and intuitive Mentor on a mission: to empower women to be calm, confident and healthy leaders in their businesses and personal lives. Founder of The KB Method and The D.R.E.A.M. System, she brings rapid and enduring change to countless lives. Karen's journey through childhood neglect, two abusive relationships, life-threatening illnesses, and financial struggles provides the platform for her to be a thought-provoking and inspiring leader and mentor.
