Weekly Insights: Healing Trauma, Self-Judgement & Learned Helplessness...

Have you ever had a deep scar that took you years to mend and heal, only to have a single experience take you right back to that original wound? This has recently happened to me, so I have taken some time to research the "why's" to try and help myself heal yet another layer of a very old wound. When a child has been abused, and a family or community doesn't support that child, it can create a life-long scar that helps to perpetuate the continued abusive patterns long into the adult years. There is a term called "Learned Helplessness", where a victim with this type of background has a deep-seated belief that no matter what they do, the abuses by others will happen anyway. This mentality opens the abused person up to continuing the cycle of not speaking up and out, leaving them feeling like they will never have the power to shift this experience and heal. In general, the wounded person no longer trusts people - even the ones closest to them like their family or community. They may weigh the pros and cons and decide that there is no point in speaking up because it will only make things worse. There is self-judgement that takes the blame off of the abuser and back to the self, adding to the deeply conflicted feelings that one deserves to get hurt this way again. There is a break in emotional development when a trauma happens to a child. If the childhood abuse was normalized, ignored, or silenced, certain coping mechanisms will develop in that abused child over time. Abused people holding onto trauma may find themselves in situations that feel challenging to deal with. Instead of speaking up and out, they stay silent, avoiding all forms of confrontation and putting up with the abuse. Sometimes they go numb and don't even feel pain, anger, or sadness anymore. Physicians and Psychiatrists have noted that childhood abuse causes "ripples of pain" that can leave scars for 50+ years after their abuse first occurred. This is because our childhood is the foundation from which we build our entire lives. Abused children turned adult feel that the outcomes for their lives have already been decided for them. They feel they don't have a say because their sense of "control" has been stripped away from them. So how do we move forward when we have found ourselves as adults acting out victimhood over and over again?

The most important skills that an abused person can learn and grow with are healthy boundaries, ownership of one's thoughts, feelings, and choices, and assertiveness to speak up for what is right and what is wrong for oneself and for others. This can be taught and enforced weekly with counseling or therapy, but it can also be part of a longer self-healing journey that may or may not be supported by healing protocols, private practices, and/or personal sessions with professionals. Restoring trust takes time and it takes having experiences with people who have decided to join this healing journey with us. There must be an environment of trust in one's surrounds with the people who are invested in this healing process. Meditation, plant medicine, emotional therapy, healing protocols, and more can be extremely supportive along the way. These traumas take time to heal. They are deep wounds that can sometimes leave life-long scars. The best thing is be patient and take action every day to help create a sanctuary of inner peace and healing.

So, here is my recent story, for those who are interested in hearing what prompted me to write on this topic...

On Mother's Day, I was gifted a manicure-pedicure, and immediately accepted the gift with excitement. Since becoming a caregiver, I have not spent a lot of time giving back to myself, so this was a real gift. Everything was great until the pedicurist started working with me. She cut me and made me bleed, she bruised my leg, and she burnt my foot. I was given three separate opportunities to speak up for myself and I didn't do a thing. When I got home with these small injuries, my husband questioned me about how I could possibly allow her to do this to me. I meditated on that question for the last few days and have had some deep revelations for my personal healing journey that I wanted to share with anyone who feels called to listen. My behaviors are just one example of what so many people do daily. Whether it be staying in an abusive relationship, not speaking out when there is wrongdoing in the world, or silently witnessing abuse and not getting help for someone in need when we have the power to do so. These situations are a daily experience for some in this world that we live in. Why do we go along with this kind of behavior when we know inside it is wrong?

For me personally, this is about power and control. When I was young, I was molested by my sister's husband. The entire abuse was about someone I hardly knew having power over me, and me being silenced to never talk about it or address it. I was supposed to continue to have this abuser in my life and in my family without any support in fighting back, and I had no say in that decision as a minor and a child of a family in denial. Again, power and control kept me looped into a long and painful cycle of traumatic experiences. This continued until I did my own healing work and started to awaken my true self under all of the layers of shame, guilt, sadness, fear, and disappointment. This was when my voice to speak up for myself emerged from deep within... so I thought. Fast forward to Mother's Day 2025 and the Universe asks me through this experience if I have really learned how to speak up for myself. The answer was surprisingly "no". I wanted to say something in that moment of pain, but I felt frozen inside and just bit my lip instead. Looking at this topic deeper, I found that my reaction is nothing new or different than so many others. It is also a wonderful reminder that this self-healing work is an every day thing. It ends when I make the choice to not allow it in again. I have more "control" over my life than I think I do, and my healing journey is a wonderful example of the rainbow of experiences that so many people are working on as we speak. I hope that my story can help anyone else who is experiencing a cycle of trauma and the process of healing the scars that are left behind. Self-Love and patience are the keys to unlocking the transformational process. One day at a time, Love will help us find our way!