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  • Writer's pictureChristina V. Mills

Are you Living your Truth or your Trauma? | Finding True Freedom

Living out your traumas as your truth, to me, is being in shackles.








You know, I'm someone who, you know, you guys know I talk about it was actually diagnosed with PTSD. And so I was in a place and for a number of years, where I was deeply living out my truth of my traumas is the best way I can explain it. And it did not lead to beneficial results. What led to beneficial results was was really letting it go. So we'll talk, about how do you let go of anger and trauma, when something has really happened to you that feels like, you just can't get over it.


You know, I think a lot of us really do take on trauma that has happened to us in the past. And we wear it like a badge of honor, you know, and I get it, it can be like, I think cathartic on some level to say this doesn't define me. So let me flip it and become it or become some type of version of it. But that's still a place of being wounded and coming out of trauma.


I think the way to begin to let it go, is to no longer identify with it. First of all, not let it be a part of your personality. So if you experienced sexual trauma, I think a lot of people will say like, Okay, let me kind of regain my confidence regain something that I've lost by taking my sexual energy into my power, which is cool. And so one of the ways and I say this kind of as something, this is something that I've done, is to become over sexualized, or to say, you know, I've experienced this, and so let me just kind of, you know, put it out there. And I dare anyone to do anything about it. That's just one way to do it. But you're still acting out of the trauma. So, even if you are taking your power back, and you're like, "I'm gonna, like, show off" and all of this, like, that's cool. But like, that action itself, is coming out of the trauma, you're not healed from the trauma, because you're still acting out of the trauma, it may be acting differently, you may not be like, in the corner crying like you were before, but you're still your actions are still governed by the trauma. So the trauma is still a central part of your life.


Once you get that it is so healing. And when you start to really ask yourself like, "Okay, which of my actions are governed are coming out of my trauma are coming out of ways that I was hurt or not healed, and I'm acting out like I'm literally acting out?" And a lot of that acting out can be negative toward toward ourselves and harmful to others, it can become like narcissistic, even sometimes when you like, if you have like a chip on your shoulder, and you're kind of like, I'm just gonna go through the world like this way. I'm coming out of like an angry trauma traumatized place.


It can really lead to like a victimized mindset, which says, "I am a victim, period, I'm a victim, my life is governed by the fact that I was a victim, something really bad happened to me. And so I have now the right to go through the world, you know, perhaps a little bit insensitive to others, because I'm ultimately the victim." And I see a lot of people really go through the world, like this way where it's like, you know, I'm the one that's had it the worst, and then we'll sit and compare, like, you see people from different groups sit around and compare like, "Well, no, we haven't the worst."


Now. Well, we have it the worst.


No, we have it the worst.


And like, I promise you, like that's not a battle that you want to win, like, sitting around, trying to focus on all the things that happened to you bad. And even trying to explain to others how bad it was. And then going through life with this chip on your shoulder like, Well, life has been so bad for me. So now I've got a blah, blah, blah. That's not healing at all. It's coming out of trauma.


And so I think that really the first thing is to dis identify with the trauma. I'm not saying to like be in lala land and plan like, Oh, it didn't happen. Like that's also that's called delusion. That's not helpful. But I think it is helpful to say, that is not a central part of of who I am. Just like how, for example, we'll have a like a bad day, right? But the bad day wasn't really a bad day. The whole day wasn't bad. It will just be like in a 24 hour period. Maybe, let's say 10 minutes were bad. Total right? Let's say we had five minutes that were bad here. Five minutes that were bad here, total. But then something in our mind will be like this was a That day, because I'm focusing on these 10 minutes of bad things that happened. And the mind keeps replaying them, and living out of those bad things, as opposed to just saying, you know, I had a 24 hour day 23.5 of those hours were really, really good. A few minutes of that were not so good. It was a good day. You know, I mean, right.


And so I think that's what we do with our lives, like, Will will say, like, you know, 30 plus years of my life for great, I had all of these successes, you know, love and happiness, and all of these happy moments and joy. But my life is traumatized. Because this happened to me when I was four. Should it be? You know, and I think that Sure, yes, some of those things can be very hurtful for us and difficult for our minds to process, especially when we're children. Or even as adults, we all experienced trauma at all different ages. But I think that the question really becomes, am I identifying out of this thing that happened to me? Am I living it out continuously, even now, years after it's been over with? Is my personality even created by a traumatic event that happened to me? And then you start to ask yourself, like, is that what I want? Like? Do I want to be acting out of all of my traumas? Or do I want to be acting out of like joy and healing, and peace, and I think freedom.


To me, freedom is not acting out of your trauma. I think that's a huge deception. That freedom is like, I'm free to be myself and live out. And that's, that's true on some level, like, yeah, like, everyone should be free to be themselves. And to live, whatever is their truth is, for the most part, you know, if you're not hurting other people, for the most part, I think we should be free to do that. But I think the biggest deception is that freedom is living out your traumas. And to me, that is a huge deception. Yes, people like we live in America, I'm from the United States, like, people should be free to live in the way that makes them happy and joyful and whatever. But is it healthy? No, to live out your trauma as your truth? No, it is not. It is not healthy, to live out your trauma as your truth. And I think that's been one of the greatest deceptions is that, you know, everyone should just like, relax and just do whatever and just whatever. And, you know, what's happened is a lot of unhealed people, I think are out here, living out their traumas as their truth and saying, Well, my truth is that I'm just a blob of blonde that depended on all of this. And, sure, that is who you are right now. And that is what you felt that you've needed to do in order to protect yourself or to be able to navigate the world in a way that works for you right now, with all of the traumas that you have.


But what if you could live in the world without all of that? That's freedom. To me, freedom is, wow, I'm no longer clouded by the negative feelings of what happened to me as a child, wow, I'm no longer angry at my mother. Well, I'm not angry at God anymore. Well, I've totally released all of that, that I felt like I needed to do out of my ego out of my pain out of my lashing out. Well, I feel so much better now that I was able to let that go. That's freedom.


To me being be living out your traumas, as your truth to me is that is being in shackles. That is that is truly to me. Living in the prison of your own trauma is saying that I am so traumatized by the things that happened to me that I can't escape the trauma, that my whole identity is now bound up within the trauma that happened to me, and the anger at these people. And the negative emotion that to me is far from freedom. That's not freedom. That's being totally mentally bound. That being totally, your emotions, and everything are now clouded. You're not totally clear because you're you're everything you do everything you say, even the things you were everything is coming out of a trauma place, as opposed to a place of freedom and joy.


And so that's kind of why I wanted to talk about this because I think, you know, I'm not saying I found total freedom, but I have found increasing levels of freedom from my own personal traumas. And from a lot of the things that I was doing, that I thought were liberating for me at one point that I realized were just acting out of pain acting out of hurt, lashing out, you know, I'm living out my truth in a way that was really expressing a lot of the Uh, hurt that I had experienced, you know, so my truth was like a lot of hurt. And so I'm gonna go out, go to the world, like, you know, like a bull, you know, and just like, let out, you know. And so yeah, I mean, I think that's cool if that's how you want to be like, I was like that for some time. And I called that freedom. But I was not free, I was deeply traumatized and delusional about that, and I was living out, you know, literally living out my traumas as my truth, not realizing that it was hurting myself.


And so I think the ultimate solution is to heal from those traumas, heal from that anger, heal from whatever has happened to you that that causes your personality that change or causes you to act out. Instead of doing that, I think the more peaceful place, the more free place is to totally let it go all together, into forgive whoever it was, that hurt you to forgive whatever higher being that you consider to be out there, if it's God, you know, finding a place of letting it go and saying that, at least in my belief, that there is some type of purpose in everything or some type of journey. And so instead of holding on to that anger, holding on to that trauma, beginning to ask the question of what has this taught me? How has this helped me along my journey so that I would become the dope, amazing person that I am today, as opposed to, oh, well, this happened to me. And so now I'm gonna go through life like this way, like, okay, that's having a chip on your shoulder for real. But you can say, this happened to me. And now I can use it to teach others. Or now I can use it to elevate myself in some way, or now I've learned something about the world that I would have never gotten if that didn't happen to me. And so I have hurt over it. But I'm grateful that I'm such a strong person today. That is a healed place, as opposed to coming out of like, a trauma place. And so so that's really it. Like, I just wanted to talk about how do we really let go of trauma.


You know, I'm someone who, you know, you guys know I talk about it was actually diagnosed with PTSD. And so I was in a place and for a number of years, where I was deeply living out my truth of my traumas is the best way I can explain it, and it did not lead to beneficial results. What led to beneficial results was was really letting it go. And so I hope that's helpful for somebody.


Always, you know, I love you guys. And I will see you on the next one.


Peace.






 

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