When Strength Is Built From Trauma
What happens when your nervous system says “enough,” and real healing begins...
I thought I had done the healing work to move through childhood and adolescent trauma. After all, I had reestablished a relationship with my parents through my own sense of forgiveness, created a successful business built on service, and was healthy, happy, and fulfilled. But what I didn’t realize was that I had only scratched the surface and faced what my psyche was ready to face without shutting down into a complete dorsal vagal state.
This is the epitome of most transformational work. While I believe it’s crucial to work through our trauma in layers, I also feel that there’s a lot of bypassing taking place to achieve the label of being ‘healed’, or ‘ascended’, or even to call oneself a ‘healer’. There’s a sense of being ‘better than’ when one can share that they have healed themselves.
The bypassing behavior can also be an unconscious form of self-protection, keeping oneself at a safe distance from the trauma that left such deep wounds. Our systems are wired for self-preservation, and facing our trauma can feel too overwhelming, triggering an alert that leads to an unconscious bypassing of the perceived threat.
I believe that my system kept me from going too deep into my trauma, too soon. In my first dozen or so plant-medicine journeys, I rarely, if ever, experienced a truly psychedelic experience. I kept hitting walls that prevented me from reaching that state—walls that I now recognize as the years of protective walls that were intelligently built by my psyche, to protect myself.
I remember having a hypnotherapy session around the age of 26…
My therapist successfully got me into a state of hypnosis, but I ended up screaming at the top of my lungs and was immediately brought back out. I had no awareness of what was happening at the time, but I remember screaming coming out of hypnosis in her tiny office, and saw fear in her eyes. She advised me that perhaps it was too much or too soon to go there, but I had no idea what ‘there’ was. To this day, I have no idea what triggered the screaming.
It wasn’t until 2022 that I gained the ability to face the darkest depths of my trauma. The healing work I had done up until then had gifted me with the resilience needed to meet the edges I had yet to encounter. And to be clear, it wasn’t that my trauma felt safer to look at—I felt safer within myself. That sense of self-safety allowed me the strength to acknowledge the deeper layers of trauma that I had yet to see… but it took me facing another massive trauma in 2022 to gain the ability to see everything with more clarity.
A lifetime of trauma suddenly became all I could see—flashes of experiences, and sensations of pain, grief, anger, and sadness rippled through my body with such intensity that I eventually hit dorsal vagal shutdown, and found myself in a catatonic state.
Dorsal vagal shutdown is what happens when our nervous systems become too overwhelmed, and often occurs after a long, intense period of fight or flight, leading to severe disconnection withdrawal. The body literally shuts itself down to preserve energy… and although I had been close to this in the past, I had never experienced anything like this before. I was dangerously dissociated, in a catatonic state, and had lost all concept of time and space.
As I withdrew from the world, I would find myself in the safety of my therapist’s office, oscillating between complete numbness of the body and feeling way too much. At a time in my life and career when I felt as if the seeds of my labor were finally bearing fruit, I found myself at rock bottom, in the most challenging, dark night of my soul, letting go of everything I had built and the identities I carried, like sand through my fingers.
I felt helpless, hopeless, and my physical body was suffering the consequences of holding and bypassing my trauma for far too long. My previous pattern of pushing through was no longer an option. There was absolutely no way my body would allow any form of force—I could barely climb the stairs of our home.
The strong identity I once embodied had crumbled, leaving behind the rawest, softest version of myself that I had ever encountered—the version of myself that hid away beneath layers of protective identities because the world felt far too unbearable to navigate.
People knew me for my resilience, strong presence, and voice. My entire brand was built around this identity. But what they and I didn’t realize was that my strength and resilience were built through trauma.
What I’ve now come to realize is that we can only hold the weight of our trauma for so long before it shuts us down, dissolving all sense of strength and resilience to allow us the ability to feel and process the pain that we could not experience in earlier years.
And since I couldn't push through this time and had no strength left to hold it together, I allowed it all to fall apart. I surrendered it all and I allowed. I let go of everything I built and all that I thought I was to meet myself beyond my trauma… and it’s been the most confronting journey I’ve ever been on, but it’s also been the most profound, as it’s brought me to a deeper acceptance of who I am.
I share all of this because I know that many people in our collective are currently navigating something similar, perhaps even you. What’s important to know is that all of the healing work you’ve done so far has prepared you for the depth of healing that has now presented itself. And although it can feel overwhelming to journey through, as if your entire soul is being crushed and your former self is being erased… let me assure you that you are more prepared than you think.
Reaching complete dorsal vagal shutdown and being in a catatonic state wasn’t something I planned, nor is it something that I wish upon anyone… but what I know now is that my nervous system knew precisely what it was doing.
To face the deepest layers of my trauma and begin a new way of healing, I had to be slowed down; otherwise, I would have done what I had always done… pushed through, forcing my healing while bypassing the more challenging work of genuine, somatic healing—the healing of all unprocessed and thwarted threat responses that kept me stuck in a cycle of repeated trauma.
And through this process, I learned a few things that I’d love to share with you—things that I wish I'd been shown earlier, yet now understand why I’d have to learn them later in life.
Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned through this trauma healing journey:
Healing trauma requires slowing down, so you can allow yourself the opportunity to regulate your nervous system.
Healing trauma requires support, because this journey can leave you feeling more alone than ever before.
Healing trauma requires spaciousness to process, reflect, grieve, and be present with all that you are feeling, experiencing, and navigating.
Healing trauma requires more privacy and less presence in the public eye, because being ‘seen’ can leave you feeling more unsafe than usual due to the trauma you endured.
Healing trauma requires a support team of trained practitioners who can help you work through the impact that this trauma has on your mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being.
Healing trauma requires letting go of misaligned people, opportunities, and experiences because you’ll no longer have the capacity to put up with bullshit.
Healing trauma requires surrounding yourself with people who genuinely want to support and witness you through your process, without rushing or pushing you to get through it.
Healing trauma requires working less and taking on fewer responsibilities so you can focus more of your energy on healing.
Healing trauma requires you to be unapologetic about your needs and your healing journey, and that means saying ‘no’ a lot, setting healthy boundaries to protect your wellbeing, and not defending your needs with anyone.
Healing trauma requires you to meet yourself with more compassion, grace, and love than ever before, because this will be one of the most confronting journeys you’ll ever experience.
If you find yourself in that season of healing, experiencing flashes of traumatic experiences and sensations of pain, grief, anger, and sadness rippling through your body with intensity, unable to hold it all together anymore… trust that you’re there because you will make it through. Slow down and be present with your healing process.
#PotentTruth:
Healing begins not
in holding it together,
but in feeling what’s
been waiting to
move through you.
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With Gratitude,
P.S. Let me know what this article evoked within you. Share in the comments below—I’d love to hear from you.
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The truth about “healing” is that it’s like a cosmic onion with infinite layers. When we courageously peel one back, integrating our lesson, we get a new one, moving on to the next layer. It’s a bit of a yo-yo effect, but eventually we surrender to the overall journey (I’m still discovering this aspect myself.) But for sure, when we’re deep in the shit, it can feel impossible at times. The good news is that the only constant is change.