Moving Forward by Looking Back: How to Free yourself from Childhood Trauma and Live in the Present

“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.” - Dr. Peter A. Levine, PHD

Last week I visited my high school girlfriend in Maui, and seeing her again brought back a lot of memories—many good, but some painful.  

My friend’s mom passed away when she was 14. Her father was never emotionally or physically available, and she had no one to talk through her grief with. I tried to be a good friend, but at age 14, I didn’t know how to do that other than by sharing food and a comfortable home. At 18, my friend walked away from San Diego and moved to Maui, where she’s lived ever since. 

But there’s a saying: “wherever you go, there you are.” In other words, you can’t leave your past behind simply by walking away from it.

 Like my friend, I also dealt with grief at an early age. When I was 11, my grandmother (my primary caregiver and closest friend) passed away. Like my friend, I had no one to discuss it with. There were so many emotions inside me, and I couldn’t make sense of what I felt, I just knew I was in pain. Of course, my grandmother didn’t choose to abandon me, but that was the way it felt to me.

Rather than trying to understand, everyone pushed me to move on. My grief was upsetting to them. So I shoved it deep inside. But that’s never a healthy approach, and as a result, I developed severe depression a few years later. Healing only came when I finally realized that I alone had the power to free myself from this trauma by working through it.

Your issues are in your tissues

The body stores all your experiences in your physical body and nervous system, and over time, that weight adds up.

That’s why it’s important to create time and space to feel your childhood trauma. It takes a lot of courage to do that, but being brave enough to step into the dark now will help you bring light into your life in the future.

Why revisit the past at all? Because if you can hold space to truly understand and process your childhood events, you can release the past forever and find true inner freedom. In my experience, this is the only way to declutter your mind and body and free yourself from being held captive by the past.

While dealing with heavy emotions definitely isn’t fun, it’s better to get them out in the open than to keep all that pain and tension trapped in your body. We can get addicted to distractions like work, alcohol, or simply staying busy, worried that as soon as we slow down, our emotional pain will catch up with us. But that’s not a healthy way to live. 

How to free yourself from past trauma: a 6-step process

Here are six steps you can take to start moving forward:

1. Write down 1 or 2 of the most challenging, traumatic events from your past.

2. What emotions do these events bring up for you? Maybe abandonment, fear, shame, disappointment, or a sense of not being good enough?

3. Have these emotions come up often in your life? Write down how they’ve shown up in different situations. 

4. Without dwelling too much on the story of what happened, just allow yourself to feel these emotions. Sit with the pain; breath into the physical sensations; cry if you need to, and feel your grief for 5 to 20 minutes. 

5. Repeat this process daily until the emotions start to feel less intense.

6. Get all the support you need, and don’t rush the process of healing.

I designed my self-guided meditation course, Reclaim Your True Self, to support people going through this process. If just thinking about taking these steps overwhelms or scares you, this course is a gentle way to breathe through your emotions and start healing.

Imagine what life would be like without the fear that if you slow down or don't distract yourself, the pain of the past will catch up to you, and without the guilt that stems from not being emotionally available to others because you aren’t emotionally available to yourself. 

While it may be scary, I believe in you! You’re stronger and more capable than you know, and just like I did, you too can process your trauma and free yourself from the past. Just take it one step at a time, be kind to yourself, and don’t forget to breathe.