A little invitation to self-compassion:
It’s OK if your trauma is still showing up. Maybe it has a message for you. Maybe your body freezing, or your impulse to attack or run away, is actually your body trying to tell you that the circumstances in which it finds itself don’t feel safe. Maybe it reminds you of circumstances or situations in your past which weren’t safe.
It is up to you to determine if the current situations are safe now, or if they are, in fact, still unsafe, and your body isn’t ‘stuck in trauma’, needing to be healed, but actually giving you sensible signals that it might make sense to listen to.
If the circumstances in which you find yourself now are safe, then your body needs compassion and understanding to help it understand the difference between now, and then. What is different? Why? Do you have more resource to take care of yourself?
If the situation is actually unsafe, but you’re trying to convince yourself it’s safe, it’s likely that you will actually re-traumatize yourself instead of healing. Overriding your body’s defence mechanisms, without recognising why they’re showing up, it not a kind or loving way to treat yourself.
Discerning the difference between the two can take time (and therapy might help!), but generally, when you hit on the right one, with compassion regardless, your body will tell you. It will release some tightness and you will resonate with the response, even if a part of your is scared of the consequences. Hold yourself gently. Love all the parts of yourself showing up. Never force your body through fear.
An invitation to compassion
