Episode 3: Interrupting the Trauma Cycle and Honoring the Wisdom of Avoidance
Trigger warning: This blog post and the accompanying episode contain material that may be potentially triggering for survivors of domestic violence. Please take care of yourself, and remember to anchor your attention in the present moment with your breath, an object, sensations of gravity, or sounds. If you need to pause the recording or stop listening in order to regulate, I won’t take it personally. My intention here is to channel that energy for those of you who may feel stuck or trapped in abusive relationships, and offer you real applicable skills for taking your power back, and embodying the worthiness and self-love required to stand up for your right to safety, reclaim your voice, and recover your sense of self.
My friend was ready to give up on herself, when she texted me a picture of the bruises on her neck from where her abuser choked her.
“It’s my fault because I keep going back,” she wrote. “I’m in a trauma bond. I know it sounds crazy but I miss him so much when he’s gone I end up answering his call and giving him another chance because I wish so badly he would actually change… I don’t tell anyone because I KNOW it’s up to me to stop it for good. And it’s something broken in me that can’t help but to go back… I started it by being avoidant.”
In having the courage to ask for help, she was able to recognize that her self-hatred was keeping the door open to being abused. When she reached out for support, she gave her wounded and avoidant parts the message that she actually did deserve safety and care. She then found the strength to finally stand up for herself, and put an end to the cycle of violence.
Being avoidant is NOT an excuse for someone to physically or emotionally assault you. You are worthy of safety and care, and you deserve relationships that are soft and gentle. Healing avoidance and interrupting the cycle of generational trauma is possible when you start by healing your relationships to yourself, and letting yourself be enough.
Our language matters. When we talk to ourselves in a way that disregards our rights to peace and safety, when we don't believe deep within that we are worthy of care and kindness and attention, this can get played out in our relationships. This becomes how others relate to us as well because we're kind of carrying that belief system with us into our interactions and our conversations. It might be subtle, and we may not outwardly express these things, but it can show up in the embodied way that we carry ourselves, in how we care or don't care for ourselves, and in the way that we may or may not stand up for ourselves when we're under the threat of physical or emotional attack.
So many of us as very young children, even inside the womb, experience these wounds to our belonging and these threats to our worthiness that become a part of how we relate to being alive. Listen to this episode to learn practices and strategies to rewire your essential worthiness, honor the wisdom of avoidance, and interrupt the cycle of reactivity and stop perpetuating generational trauma.
How to interrupt the trauma cycle
Honor the wisdom of avoidance. Running away from relationships may have been what kept you safe from being abandoned, exiled, betrayed, or neglected in the past. Avoidance is your brain’s really intelligent response, especially in this situation where your system is trying to tell you that this person and this relationship is dangerous. However, the strategies you developed when you were deciding how the world worked may no longer be useful in the present moment. See if you can acknowledge that avoidance had an important, protective role, and that now there may be other options and different conditions than those that created the situation of not belonging when you were young.
Say it out loud. Believe you are worthy of safety, care, and attention reinforce this with your language. Surround yourself with affirmations and positive messaging, enough to counteract the persistent negative messaging coming from the media, generational trauma, and your programming. Each moment of attention to yourself is a radical act of self-love that rewires your brain. Each time you give yourself the opportunity to turn your attention inward, you are sending yourself a message that you are worthy of care and attention. You are enough. You deserve care and attention. You are worthy of safety and love.
Learn to pause in moments of reactivity, anchor your awareness in the present moment, and feel your feelings rather than think your feelings. Give yourself some space to choose a response rather than react. If avoidance arises in your relationships, take some time to notice what you feel and give yourself permission to have the experience you are having.
Spend time with your wounded child parts. Gather and surround yourself with images of yourself as a young child, during the time when you learned to be avoidant. Notice what arises in your body as you connect with this younger, wounded part of yourself. Is there anything that your avoidant parts want you to know? What needs weren’t met? Or is there something that they want to say or hear? As you engage in this inquiry, what shows up in your felt experience?
Give yourself opportunities for rhythmic sensory input. Drumming, dancing, playing a musical instrument, walking, swaying, and rocking are all ways to soothe the parts of our nervous system that developed in an unpredictable and threatening environment.