Understanding Trauma and the Path to Healing (Part 2)

Reclaiming the Self – From Suppression to Self-Compassion in Trauma Recovery

In Part 1, we explored how trauma is not just about what happened to us but about what happens within us as a result: how trauma disconnects us from our sense of self, from others, and the world. Healing, then, is about reconnection. In this second part, we look more deeply at how trauma impacts the body, the role of self-compassion in recovery, and the societal structures that shape our pain.

Suppression and the Cost of Disconnection

In modern society, we are taught to suppress our inner experiences from an early age. Children are often asked to "calm down," "sit still," or "stop crying" without being supported in how to do so or are left alone to cope with overwhelming, intense emotions. We learn to push down emotions rather than understand and process them. Over time, this learned disconnection from our emotional and bodily experiences becomes our default way of coping. The result? We become strangers to our own inner world. We mistake intensity for danger and stop trusting our emotions. We manage discomfort with distractions—scrolling, eating, working, drinking, or staying endlessly 'busy'.

Eventually, the cost of this suppression shows up in the body. Research increasingly shows that trauma plays a significant role in chronic illness, autoimmune disease, anxiety, depression, and addiction. These symptoms are often misunderstood as purely medical or mental health issues, but they are frequently rooted in unresolved emotional pain.

When we disconnect from our emotional world to avoid pain, we also disconnect from vitality, creativity, and joy. The pain itself isn't the problem; what makes it unbearable is the absence of holding. When there is no one there to connect and support us through the pain, it becomes overwhelming. And so, we suppress, dissociate, and adapt in ways that eventually create dis-order and some form of illness.

The Inner Work of Reconnection

The good news is that healing is possible. Every human being has a core, authentic self. Trauma doesn't destroy this self—it creates a disconnection from it. Healing is about returning to it. To begin this journey, we need more than insight. Intellectual understanding is not the same as healing. We need to feel safe enough to feel—to connect to what may initially feel like "too much" with new support, presence, and compassion.

This is where attunement comes in. Attuned relationships are the foundation of healing. When someone sits with us and our pain without trying to fix or change it, something shifts. Their presence says: You are not alone. Your experience makes sense. You are not too much.

As Gabor Maté states the centuaries old wisdom, "Safety is not the absence of threat but the presence of connection." When we feel deeply felt by another human being, our nervous system relaxes – that is how our bodies register safety on a deep, implicit level.

Self-Compassion: The Turning Point

Ultimately, the healing of trauma requires the remedy of compassion as the antidote to shame, the balm for pain, and the gateway to re-connection.

When we begin to feel compassion toward ourselves, when we stop blaming or shaming ourselves for our feelings, everything starts to change. Self-compassion is what allows us to hold our pain instead of disconnecting from it or being swallowed by it. It helps us say, Of course, I feel this way. Given what I've been through, this makes sense.

When we reconnect with our pain in this way, it doesn't just hurt - it teaches. It softens us, opens us, and reveals the truth, goodness and beauty we had to abandon in order to survive. The most potent healing doesn't come from removing pain but from learning how to hold it and respond to the need embedded in it. And from self-compassion flows compassion for others. As we learn to be gentler with our own wounds, we naturally become more available, more present, and more attuned to those around us.

Collective and Cultural Trauma

Individual trauma rarely, if ever, exists in a vacuum. We are shaped by the ecosystems we live in: our families, communities, and broader social systems. Modern Western culture tends to separate mind and body, prioritising individualism over community and rewarding competition over connection, profit-making over meaning-making. Addictions, chronic stress, overwork, and consumerism are not personal failings. They are symptoms of a larger system that encourages disconnection and numbs pain rather than tending to it.

When we begin to heal individually, we also begin to challenge the systems that benefit from our disconnection. Healing becomes a political act, a way to reclaim agency and sovereignty and rehumanise ourselves and each other. This is especially important for survivors of collective trauma - those impacted by war, genocide, colonisation, or systemic discrimination and oppression. Their healing cannot be complete without being witnessed by the community, without being able to speak with dignity, be heard, understood and appreciated for who they are in their own right. Listening to survivors is a collective responsibility and a pathway to cultural restoration.

From Fragmentation to Wholeness

Trauma fragments. It splits us internally and socially. The healing journey is about building the capacity to hold all the fragmented parts with presence and understanding without taking sides. We are not labelling parts of ourselves as good or bad - just being with what is. We can pause and reflect rather than react. We can notice when an old story is driving us and choose something different, genuine and authentic. We can reclaim our agency not by forcing ourselves to be okay but by staying connected to our needs, desires, preferences, inspirations and inner truth.

Healing is not about erasing the past. It's about expanding our capacity to be present with ourselves and others, even when pain is part of the picture. We learn to metabolise the pain, integrate it, and grow through it. Post-traumatic growth happens when something breaks us open, and in that opening, a new life begins.

In the End, It's About Presence and Attuned Relating

The greatest gift we can offer to ourselves and others is presence - real, grounded, attuned presence. However, we can't offer it if we're not wholly here. Trauma pulls us into the past, into survival mode. Healing returns us to the present, where life is unfolding in the here and now.

Let's create more attuned connections. Let's listen more deeply, relate more gently, and hold each other's pain with kindness to reweave what was torn. When we do this, we begin to remember who we really are, and we are not only healing ourselves but also supporting the self-healing mechanisms of the world.

 Join me for the immersive, Healing Trauma workshop and gain the insights and tools to transform trauma with a deeply integrative, mind-body approach.