True happiness? Maybe it’s about reprogramming the brain backend by undoing trauma.

Undoing traumatic memories might be one of the most powerful ways to reprogram the subconscious mind and create a life of presence and happiness.

We are all traumatised! There is no way anyone could get rhough this existence without undergoing small and/or big trauma.

Even what we might consider an insignificant event, being bullied in school, being slightly neglected in the first years of childhood, getting told we were fat, or that our school bag wasn’t cute enough, can leave a mark that will dictate how we relate with people and experiences for the rest of our lives.

We keep on running away from those memories using the most creative, adaptive adjustments: drugs, work, sex, shopping, gambling, compulsions: all strategies designed to disassociate us from that lingering, buried and intolerable feeling of inadequacy and shame.

Good news: this can be undone and the process of undoing those painful memories to come out from the other side of trauma, can be the most meaningful, liberating and elevating act of self-love we could ever do for our own selves and for those who surround us.

What is happiness?

Maybe the way to truly find out, as the spiritual healer Gabrielle Bernstein says, is “to go through what happiness is not. What takes us out of that presence of joy and presence?” Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing, continues “Trauma is the inability to be present.” May it be then, that trauma is the root cause of unhappiness, ‘cause it hinders the ability to be present? And, once again, trauma can mean going through huge catastrophic events or simply being terrified by a thunderstorm in our cradle, as we were infants. Truth is though, that we all have it.

Me? I am definitely not traumatised, it’s all good… is it, though?

Some of us might think that nothing major has ever happened, that could be reconnected to a too relevant traumatic experience. As mentioned before, there is no such thing as a life free of trauma. Intriguing enough, trauma is most often covered, hidden in our subconscious. Like the tip of an iceberg, we only perceive a small part of it. Our nervous system carefully disassociates from it by taking distance from reliving it, by disallowing us to be in touch with it. It is an ingenious survival and protective mechanism, set in action in moments when our system was overloaded by the power of that event.

Even if we can’t recall the experience, that memory still lives within us and it affects multiple areas of our life, in ways and at times, that we oftentimes struggle to fully recognize. And the most discouraging consequence of that - seemingly irrelevant - circumstance might be a life-long lasting sense of feeling inadequate and unlovable.

Disassociated vs Present

Being wholly present in the moment is an universal gift, is the ultimate human purpose of experiencing one’s existence to the fullest. Acclaimed spiritual teacher Eckart Tolle has written a couple of best-sellers on “the power of now.” However, presence is largely under-applied in our daily life, first because we usually soar fastly from one duty to the other and even more because we have never really trained to practise it.

Trauma unfortunately throws us even deeper into that spiral, spinning into that set of creative adjustments and protective mechanisms that will keep us apart from that state of complete presence. Similar to a mouse on a wheel.

Workaholism, substance use (and even more abuse) sex obsession, and compulsive behaviours of various sorts, all fall into the category of dissociative behaviours that, to keep us away from re-experiencing that traumatic memory buried in us, also keep us away from experiencing life for what it can fully be.

From stigma to truth - what do the experts have to say?

To add to that, our societal agreements do not like to talk openly about unpleasant, discomforting or undesirable stories. We have built sets of unspoken and (at times) even very outspoken accepted traits that, we assume, will make us appear desirable, strong and successful. Vulnerability, pain, suffering and trauma definitely do not belong to those, so much so that we could define them as impermissible. Result of this: stigma, “a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance.” It keeps us away from sharing our traumatic histories with others and next to that, it keeps us away from being able to get to the other side of it, from unfolding it, undoing it and resolving it. Not sharing with our closed ones, for example, blocks them away from the power to help us.

One of the most renowned researchers on trauma, Dr. Gabor Mate’, sees in trauma, “the cause most responsible for all pains of our times.” Wars, injustice, violence, self-destruction and perpetuative tortures: all rooted in trauma, most of times childhood trauma. Next to him, most experts in genetic and transgenerational trauma agree that the strongest dysfunctions in families as well as in organisations are born from shared or individual traumatic experiences.

So if we all have it, and if it effects our lives so much, wouldn’t it be easier to just start talking about it openly?

What to do then to undo traumatic experiences?

“Going through the journey of undoing the storylines of the past, to such a point and level that they no longer have an hold on your nervous system, brings to reorganising your reactivity and your relationship to yourself…. allows you to establish what is called in somatic experiencing a felt sense” says G. Barnstein. To embark on that journey of self discovery and disclosure, so much has been done in the field of psychology, psychiatry and healing practices, that it is hard to keep track, and even harder to choose from.

Even though any of the following suggestions need and must always be discussed with a professional psychotherapist or psychiatrist, some of the most effective practises to heal trauma have so far been:

Psychoanalysis; EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing); Somatic Work; Imagery Rescripting; Tantra Practices; Breath Work; Dance Therapy; Yoga & Meditation - and so the list might actually continue.

Long story short - let’s reprogram the backend.

Trauma is an integral part of our existence. There is no human being in this reality who has become an adult without going through it. And there, buried and hidden in the deepest layers of our subconscious memories, trauma constantly performs a sound that echoes in the soundtrack of our life story.

Taking the courageous choice to confront those memories by accepting and facing them, reprograming the backend of our past experiences can be the most noble act of self-love that one can ever do.