Dr. A'Shellarien Addison defines trauma as any experience that makes you feel unable to breathe, and describes how untreated trauma shows up as headaches, anger, eating disorders, and irritability. She uses a glass metaphor to explain three levels of pain, from cracked to shattered, each requiring different healing: affirmations for minor cracks, professional help for deeper breaks.
Chapters
Welcome to A Healing Moment with Dr. A'Shellarien Addison Addison. These are your moments where you take a little respite for yourself and you say, you know what, I need a little pick-me-up. This is the part of my day where I just need to hear an encouraging word. I need to know that it's okay not to be okay. So every day I'm going to come to you with a few minutes of encouragement as we talk about it's okay not to be okay. Today's topic is trauma. Trauma is anything that makes you feel like you can't breathe. Trauma is contextualized to you. Nobody can tell you how you should be impacted by your trauma. Trauma could be from a person. Trauma could be from a place. Trauma could be from a thing. It could be something you experience, a person who has harmed you, and now your emotional response to that trauma leads you to this place. And the challenge for us is, what do we do when trauma collides with our faith? When trauma collides with our faith, we have a few options. We can address it. We can act like it's not there, or we could pretend it's something else. Whichever way you choose to deal with it, the truth of the matter is it's still going to be there. It's still going to be there. Even if you compartmentalize and you shove it to someplace in your head, you shove it to someplace in your heart, you shove it to your gut, it's going to manifest some kind of way. It's going to manifest in headaches, It may manifest in passive-aggressive anger. It may manifest as an eating disorder. It may manifest as an angry person. The truth of the matter is trauma is trauma, and how it affects you is up to you. A hurt that hasn't been dealt with has no time frame for healing. So in this moment, in this healing moment with Dr. A'Shellarien Addison Addison Addison, We want to acknowledge the things in our life that has caused us trauma. Maybe it was a person, and now you have to figure out what do I do. I'm not going to get an I'm sorry, I'm not going to get an apology. Or it could be they couldn't give you what they didn't have, and you just have to learn to accept that. So when you consider your trauma, be kind to yourself. Be kind to yourself. Give yourself some grace and say, this trauma wasn't my fault. This trauma, I didn't bring it on myself, if that's the kind of trauma. Now, sometimes we willingly walk into foolishness and trauma is a result of that. Whether you walked into it, whether you were dragged into it, whether you were pushed into some drama, it's still drama and it still needs to be dealt with and it still needs to be handled very carefully. Trauma causes pain, so I liken pain to a glass. So when you have a glass, it could be cracked, it could be broken, or it could be shattered. A cracked glass, you pick up the pieces, you put the little pieces inside the big piece, you put it in the trash. Cracked, broken, is you got more smaller pieces, but most of it is kind of together. You could pick up the pieces of where it is, right? Now, shattered is it could be anywhere. You don't know where the shards are, you don't know where, um, the pieces might have flown. They could all be in one place, it could be in another room. So what does that mean for us? That means that the pain in your life could be so shattering that there are pieces of pain in places that you don't even know about, places that you haven't even discovered yet. So no matter where your trauma has affected your life, the level of pain in your life has to determine the level of healing that you need. So if your pain leads to cracked, then okay, maybe some stuff you can deal with. I can say, listen, say some affirmations. If by chance it's broken, maybe there'll be some more help. If it's shattered, you absolutely need my help. You absolutely need my help. So thank you for joining me on this healing moment with Dr. A'Shellarien Addison Addison Addison. Until next time, be kind to yourself.
