Hiking trails are maintained by two things:
- Park rangers come in, and actually clean them up.
- People walk on them, and over time their shoes dig and move earth around, so that plants have a harder time growing over the path.
Now, if people stop walking on a trail and it is not maintained by rangers, then all of that brush starts to come in and re-claim this place, making the path smaller and smaller until it eventually goes away.
How does this relate to trauma healing? When it comes to healing from trauma, there is a very interesting thing that happens: The person or event will come in and cut a big ol’ clear path through your brain. That path is the trauma, the stimulus itself or the original offense. Then, every time that you tell the story, you are walking on the trail over and over again. It is just like the concept that neurons that fire together, wire together. Over time, the trauma gets deeper and deeper, and reinforced to the point where it consumes your life.
This reinforcement through telling the same story is exactly what happened to me. I started thinking about my trauma 24/7 to the point where I almost committed suicide twice. Soon, every single excuse that I ever had in my life was based on the same perspective, “Oh poor me, I can’t do this because of that”. I repeated this until one day, I stopped telling the story. I decided to say, “You know what? That trail, that neural-groove in my brain, I don’t care how deep it is.” After giving myself enough time with this (and enough water, food, nutrients, sleep, and all the things that a body needs), the trauma trail started to fill itself in.
Now about a year later, I don’t even know what I was upset about. I literally cannot remember. I know it has something to do with growing up and my parents, but the neural rewiring has completely taken place. The programming is gone simply because I stopped telling the story.
That is what I hope for all of you. Start filling your trails in. You cannot change what happened in the past, but you can stop digging it in further. If you want to get started but don’t know where to start, I’ve got you covered. You can check out my course, Healing (e)Motion: Trauma Release Exercises for People With Stress.
I hope that information is helpful. As always, have a happy and healthy rest of your day (and get out for a hike)!