Draining the Trauma Pool.

Trauma is energy.

In moments of emotional turmoil, the body has certain ways of purging and processing emotions. But… because we have never built the skills, tools, and muscles to do that properly, because our defense mechanisms get in the way, and because—in those moments of trauma—we are not safe to properly purge and process that emotional energy, we avoid doing so.

It’s like our head says to our hearts, “Ok, we’re not safe right now… so hold on to this pain, and I’ll come back later and deal with it when we’re safe.”

And the heart goes, “OK, I’ll remind you about it later.”

We do what we need to do to keep ourselves safe, we store the energy, and we keep moving.

Now, imagine that you had a big ol’ pool where you were storing all of this trauma.

So, all of the big moments of intense trauma that you went through were like you taking a big tub full of water and pouring it into the pool.

And all of the little moments of emotional turmoil (even things as small as getting frustrated because the traffic lights aren’t cooperating when you’re running late for a meeting) are like you taking a little glass of water and pouring it into the pool.

And now you’re on your healing journey. You’ve finally noticed the harm that carrying around this trauma is doing, and you’re ready to start dealing with it.

So, you go to the pool and you dip a pitcher into it and you take some water out of it, ready to finally deal with it and empty it out from the pool.

Well… which SPECIFIC trauma did the water in that pitcher come from?

Is it at all possible to trace back the water to the initial instance at which you poured it into the pool?

Absolutely not! Because all of the water is mixed together now.

And that is how it is with our trauma.

We’re so focused on trying to find the “root cause” of our patterns, pains, and defense mechanisms, not recognizing that it’s a rich tapestry of all of our combined unresolved emotions.

Yes… some traumas added more water to the pool than others. But it’s incredibly difficult (if at all possible) to truly separate them.

And the thing is… we don’t really care about separating them… do we?

All that we really want is to drain the pool.

But that’s never going to happen if we’re overly focused on analyzing what’s in each pitcher of water that we’re taking out.

Healing isn’t a matter of analysis and tracking down the root.

It’s just a matter of learning to finally process the emotional energy, one pitcher of water at a time.

And when we change our focus to building those muscles, we can finally start draining the pool!