Trauma as toolkit
Lean into YOUR strength
Trauma can be a weapon for good. It can be alchemized into purpose. It can become a sphere of pink light around you instead of a shadow above you. Too much?
I’m not gaslighting here. I’ve been through it. I have my wounds, and I respect yours.
I’m forty-five years old and only in recent years have recalled some of the worst things I experienced as a defenseless kid. The visceral experience of shame is something I’ve begun to understand and track in unlikely places and moments. It’s becoming liberating.
I’m not going into that right now. I want to help you.
This young man whom I coach, he lived in a tough environment inside a confusingly nice container. Confusing because being loved and supported and assaulted by the same person creates unstable footing for future relationships.
Jake (we’ll call him) told me a story about playing in a basketball league at 11 years-old in a community far less privileged than where he lived. His mom got him the new Jordans. The coach stopped practice a few minutes in and said, “ok let’s stop looking at Jake’s shoes and play basketball.”
As a child, Jake went skiing, took homemade lunches to school, could read before the rest of the class, and was taught a perfect baseball swing. He was read to before bed.
And it could all fall apart at any moment – more so be ripped apart.
Jake learned to see it coming, but there was no getting out of the way. He learned what he thought was stoicism but truly got really good at freezing.
When you’re a kid, you forgive a lot in a scenario like that. You don’t really have a choice. The house calms down. There’s another nice dinner on the table, and another activity tomorrow.
This type of environment makes it hard to act with confidence later in life. That’s exactly why I’ve been working with Jake. He’s learning to trust that he can be safe to speak up for himself.
Jake is in his late twenties now. He has struggled to articulate his experience within relationships. We have explored a clear pattern of holding in legitimate feelings and desires to the point that he could see no other option other than ending relationships.
If it’s not perfect, it must be wrong, because disagreement can lead to violence. This is what he learned.
Now, Jake is learning that the ability he developed to delay reaction in order to survive a volatile childhood is a strength he can use as an adult. It can be a powerful tool if wielded appropriately, or it can leave him stuck neck deep in shit if he falls into the trap of over-using it.
The coping mechanisms you developed through your hardships are skills to be used at the right time – but not all the time.
In Jake’s case, sometimes his girlfriend isn’t wrong, and neither is he, but his programming tells him that it’s unsafe to share his perspective. When we have childhood traumas like Jake does, the concept of sharing how one feels seems inconceivable – even dangerous. Just as foreign is the idea that you could share how you feel without making the other person wrong, because when you’re a child, and you’ve got an adult throwing things at you, the adult is wrong, full stop.
People like Jake end up staying too long or leaving too soon. He can change girlfriends but will still carry his own content along to the next relationship. No one is immune to this but we can drop the baggage by learning how and when to use what we know in a different way.
What if Jake – and you, and I – could see the skills that we’ve learned from the rough times in our lives as tools to be used in the right scenarios? There’s going to be a time when someone really needs the hammer, drill, paintbrush, or saw that you are uniquely able to provide.
Ask yourself:
If my life was my curriculum, what am I now prepared to offer to myself and others?
In our last session, Jake brought up a younger male friend. Jake felt hurt and abandoned. They had been very close, hanging out almost every day, but grew apart. Jake told me he felt his pal now only reached out for support, but didn’t do much to maintain the relationship outside of that.
What I’m about to offer is not a suggestion that you keep pouring water into a cracked bucket relationship, but an example of a reframe using the paradigm that the particular capacities you’ve developed because of your life challenges are a superpower.
Jake and I worked this out:
He’s magnanimous and that’s special. He is able to hold space for people with a greater than normal capacity. He can choose when to use this gift, and when he does, he can look at it as a blessing.
At the end of our session, Jake came to his own reframe. He decided that the friend we were discussing was like a little brother, and so of course Jake was in the position to hold space, to be magnanimous. He could expect from himself what his life classroom had taught him to offer, but did not actually need the same from his friend.
Through our work, Jake shifted from feeling undervalued, to seeing himself as a magnanimous friend, and man amongst men!
Whatever you believe your trauma to be, it can be a weapon for good, some kind of sonic love device that you secretly wield to be a good friend to yourself and others.
Take a few moments after reading this piece to ask yourself, how do my lessons prepare me for who I am today?
There’s gold in there that’s worth the digging.
With love,
Benjamin
P.S. 1 female share spot open for the May 23-29 Ibiza Soul Alignment Retreat & July 19-24 Yellowstone Soul Alignment Retreat bookings are now open!
