Do I Have Suppressed Trauma? Your Body Will Tell You

Hey there, folks. Welcome to my channel. I'm Brooke Richey. I'm a 20-year vocalist, musician. I am a film composer, musical playwright that's budding, an indie rock artist, and also a trauma survivor. I've experienced a surplus of trauma in my life starting as young as age 9, and that set me off on what I like to call a trauma train. And I was stuck on that train for about 20 years till I hit my breaking point in September 2023, where I was trafficked by a vacation rental host. So I decided to make this channel because I think there's a lot of people stuck in their minds like I, like I have been, and I want to help you. I really believe that our minds are malleable, that our experiences don't define us. That our actions don't even define us. Those are opportunities for growth and for learning and to develop, to develop yourself. So it's just all about self-awareness. So I— this series is on suppressed memories. I shared in my last video that I recovered a 15-year suppressed memory just by using my voice, and I'm here to help you start that, that journey. So where do you begin? Where do you begin? To even try to uncover a suppressed memory, and why even do it in the first place? I'll start with the why. You want to uncover a suppressed memory of trauma because it's keeping you locked into a reactive lifestyle. It's keeping you locked into all the fighting and flighting that you did to ignore that experience in the moment. So for me, I was 15 years old when I had A tra— tragic? It— I mean, it was traumatic. It was so traumatic that I shut it out, and by the next morning I had forgotten what had happened. So I was 15 years old, and that set me off in this 15 years. So my first trauma starting at 9, but the traumatic event at 15 is really what set me off into reactivity. Because then I knew for certain, oh, this is just how life is. I don't want anything to do with this. And having shut down that memory, that means that everything I was feeling in the moment of it also got shut down as well, which is living in my body— was living in my body for about 15 years. So this is why you want to do it. Some people I know There's so much taboo around trauma, and people will look at victims and survivors and they will assume they're attackers, that they're abusers. This isn't true. This is absolutely 100% not true. The difference between an abuser, attacker, and a victim and survivor is what you choose to do with the abuse you received. That's it. And even if someone gets on a track of abusing and neglecting others, um, or systems and things, you know, they are also a human and they can adapt and learn. But you can't make anyone learn anything. That's, that's the whole point. So if you're resonating within any of this, if you're like, yeah, I feel like I got these tendencies from XYZ experience, or I'm experiencing, um, A lot of tension around certain relationships or in different environments. Those are all associations to your suppressed trauma, if it is suppressed. There's other trauma that you might have association to that you might also need to work through. Those can be 2 separate things. But here's where you start. So I'm— let's, let's look at my life real quick. So I was 15 when I had this traumatic event happen. I suppressed it by the next morning. It stuck in my body for 15 years. About seven years in, so this for me is around the time I'm 21, 22. I start realizing, oh my gosh! My knees are really weak. My hips hurt all the time. I was a commuter. I was going to work across the city into another city every day for work, and I would be on the transit, and I'd be like, why are my hips so freaking tight? And I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know. That your hips actually store emotions, especially for women and femme folk. It especially is stored in your hips. So this was going on, and I would get to work and I would be walking up the stairs to get into the building and my knees would buckle. My knees would literally buckle and I would have to catch the railing. I'm 21. So this is a huge indicator, physiological Symptoms and flare-ups, huge, huge, huge indicator that there's suppressed trauma and suppressed emotions, things that have not been addressed and processed in your system. So that's number one place where to look and where to start. So to talk a little bit more about this, it all will snowball on itself. That was just a start. It got worse. And this is why you want to pay attention from the get-go. Um, and, you know, don't get paranoid like I did. I definitely got paranoid, uh, because I would go to a doctor and I'd be like, hey, this is going on, and they're like, you're fine. I'm like, no, I'm not, but thanks for the $15 copay you charged me. And so yeah, like, it will snowball on itself. So for me, what this looks like, and To be honest, it could— this could look very similar for someone else. I had a knot of tension in my lower right back because— and that's where everything was being stored. Everything got stored in my lower right back. And so because it was being stored there, then what happens? My right hip gets hit, gets weak, my left hip gets weak, and the— my right leg pulls up by a whole 3/4 of an inch and After seeing a chiropractor about this, he told me my pelvis was turning inward. My skeleton was actually turning inward on my body. I was kind of like caving in. So this is why you want to do this. This is why you want to uncover and process this trauma, because the alternative is you're going to cave in on yourself and you cripple and you die. Like, that's Like, to be blunt, that's what's gonna happen. And so thankfully, you know, you can get on that track to start treating your physiological body. And, um, that was my first step. It was seeing a chiropractor because along with all of that going on, I was experiencing nerve pains. So I would get these pins and needles in my fingers, everywhere in my body, a lot in my breasts. Um, in my legs, like it was just everywhere. Everywhere I would experience these, like something was inside of me pricking a needle out to my skin. Like, um, it was painful for a few seconds and then it went away. Um, there'd be a lot of like ridiculous muscle spasms going on. And this is different than a Kundalini awakening. Very different. This is like, this is a pre-pre-pre-pre-pre to a Kundalini awakening. So don't get these two confused. This is the part where like you're actually physically in pain. A Kundalini awakening, you're not in pain. It's just a lot of relief, um, going on and a release going on. So, um, yeah, I had that going on. I was like, okay, it's time to do something about this. Someone suggested go see a chiropractor, go see this guy. And he tells me, well, I've seen a lot worse, but we need to work on connecting your brain to your body. And then I started crying because I realized how effed up I was, and to have it be so subtle was the thing. Um, so that's where you start. It's with your— it's with the physiological symptoms. Gotcha. Going on in your body, because anything that's emotional or spiritual, unprocessed, is going to be stored in your body. And that, my friends, I think it wraps up this video. Um, what you can first do is talk about what's going on in your body if you're not ready to even reach out for help. I understand this. I understand how difficult it is to feel like you can't reach out for help, that you You can't ask for help. So start with yourself, okay? Record a voice journal, start talking about the things, start talking about how you feel that you're in pain, okay? So for me, like, I started crying when this guy told me, like, we need to reconnect your brain to your body. And then later that night, I actually cried for 4 hours nonstop. Just uncontrollable. It hit me out of nowhere, just like emotional release out of nowhere. And the guy didn't even do like the standard like cracks and stuff. All he used was an activator gun. So the thing about this is the activator gun is like a crucial like, um, uh, concept to hold here because the pressure you feel It's a pressure point. When you feel like there's so much built-up pressure around doing this thing, that's actually your body saying, okay, I recognize all this pressure. Or it's not your body even saying anything. That is— that's an invitation for you. That's what it is. There's these pressure points of, oh my God, I can't do it, I can't do it, I feel like I'm gonna die. But actually, it's an invitation for you to say, wait a second, I'm feeling pressure around this. That means I can do it. It just doesn't feel like I can. That's it. And that is going to give you such an upper hand on your healing journey, um, on accessing and releasing these suppressed memories that I know are awful. Um, but if you don't— like, this is, this is the thing— if you don't Look at it, it's just going to be a dead weight in a locker that you're dragging around with you for the rest of your life. And I didn't want that for myself. And if you're here resonating with this, I don't want it for you either. I think there is a better life that you can live than carrying around dead weight. Deadlifting is another thing I'll talk about in another video. See you guys in the next one. Bye.