Trauma is not what happens to us.
That’d be traumatic events:  events that can leave us wounded, traumatized, injured.

“That’s not trauma, that’s traumatic”
-Gabor Mate

Of course, the pain we live now is entangled with the past,  but if we want to heal – or enable healing – it’s both useful and important to distinguish between.

Trauma means wound.

Trauma is not the blow, it’s the wound we carry, the injury, the pain.

Trauma is the pain that comes from holding inside whatever we experienced however we experienced it because no one around us is ready to hear.

It’s the pain we hold inside that others use their power to prevent us giving voice to …
The pain we hold inside because we do not have the words
The pain we face by ourselves because…
well, because that’s how it works in this society…

The core experience of living with trauma, of having been traumatized, is finding it difficult to feel safe in this world, of feeling disconnected
from our selves and from others, and of feeling powerless.

And , tragically, trauma often begins or is deepened and prolonged by “treatment”.

It’s not at all hard to understand – and it’s not at all an illness.

“Trauma is not what happens to us
but what we hold inside in
absence of empathetic witnesses”
– Peter Levine