Simon Benn explains how trauma episodes get stuck in the brainstem, which can't tell past threats from present ones. A single triggering thought can snowball into a cascade of emotions, but bringing that unconscious material into awareness and meeting it with love and patience can dissolve it. You are larger than any single episode.
Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Thriving Adoptees Podcast. So today I'm going to do another short and sweet episode with just, just, just me. So with just, just me today looking at ending trauma. And by ending trauma, I'm talking really about a traumatic episodes. So trauma is stuck in the, in the, in the brainstem, which is the, um, the first part of the brain to, to, to, to, um, to form. And the brainstem is— so it's the oldest bit of the brain, and it's Yeah, it's, it's stuck there, and then it's, it's triggered by stuff that happens because the brainstem can't tell whether the threat is here and now or in the past. It doesn't— the brainstem can't tell the time, so we can't differentiate. between an old event and a past event and a current event. So when we talk about ending trauma here, we're talking about one particular episode. I wanna make that clear. So what does it look like? What does it look like? Now, what's it look like? Well, it doesn't look like anything, it's not a thing. So we're gonna use a metaphor to put some, to put some— Flesh on the bones, uh, flesh on the invisible bones. You know, I explained this last time, um, like the invisible man. We can't see his shape, the shape of his body, until he puts his clothes on. We can't see the shape of his head until he puts his bandages around the head. So the metaphor— metaphors allow us to put shape on something that we can't see. thoughts and our feelings and our trauma. Because what, you know, what is trauma other than thoughts and feelings? Very compelling, very scary thoughts and feelings, but it's essentially what it's made of. So the metaphor that I came up with, and I don't know if I came up with this one myself or I heard it from somebody else. If I heard it from somebody else, I'm sorry, I can't remember who it was, so I can't credit you. Sorry about that. It feels— it feels true when I'm triggered. It feels like an avalanche to me. It feels like an avalanche. So it starts with— starts with a little individual thought or event or an individual feeling. And that looks like a— just a little pebble of snow. And the snow sets off down the mountain gathering more snow, so it's, it's becoming more and more— bigger and bigger. It's bigger and bigger, and it's, it's made of It, it's, it's made of feelings, isn't it? It's made of fear, it's made of insecurity, it's made of anger, it's made of frustration, it's made of injustice, it's made of all sorts of really horrible feelings that we wouldn't wish on our worst enemy, and yet it's happening to us. And as the avalanche progresses and rolls down the slope, it gets ever more destructive and inclusive, so it's picking up all sorts of Native, native thoughts about others, native thoughts about ourselves, regret, animosity, disgust, challenge beliefs. It's going, it's causing, it's just getting bigger and bigger, more and more. Destructive. It's gouging a hole in the snow down into the ground underneath the avalanche. It's picking up everything in its wake— stones, pebbles, boulders, hedges. So feelings and thoughts all running out of control. and it's doing damage, like we do damage to the other people that we're around. We lash out, our behavior isn't what it normally is. And it gets steeper and steeper and it gets more and more vicious and it's horrible. It's horrible. And then somehow At some point, maybe it comes off the steepest part of the mountain and it hits the flat and it starts to slow down. And then it comes— eventually comes to a halt when the 10— the, the, um, the acting out, the, the, um, the Maybe tantrum's too small a word for it. The attack is, is over. The child has sobbed themselves to sleep or run out of energy, the energy that's required to put into this thing. Obviously looks slightly different in adults, maybe with I remember, you know, just getting out of the house. I'm, I'm causing chaos here. I've got to get out. I've got to get out of this situation, take the dog for a walk. And it runs out of steam. And then the, the sun comes out from behind the clouds, and its, its power, its warmth Bears down on this avalanche, and slowly but surely, the, the snow is melted, and it becomes a— eventually it becomes a puddle of water, and then it evaporates. And there's there's nothing, there's nothing there. So what does all that? What does all that mean? Well, we're making somebody once said until we make the unconscious conscious. It will— we will call it fate and it will rule our lives. So by bringing this trauma out, out from the darkness, looking at it, bringing the light of love and awareness and understanding. Yeah! Trauma-informed trauma understanding. Then we melt it, and we melt it with understanding and love and time and patience. And remember, this is one traumatic episode. It's not a once-and-done thing, because you can— sure as eggs are eggs, there's gonna be another avalanche. In the future. Hopefully it's going to have a little less power than the last one. But we all— these are— if we simplified it just to just feelings, trauma is made of feelings, and feelings always come and go. They're not essential to us. They're not an essential part of us. They are the avalanche on the mountain of who we truly are. So we're bigger than the avalanche. And the story that comes to mind to to explain, to express that is a story I read about an addict. And this guy was a— he called himself a terrorism tourist. He got— he almost got shot in the in the Balkans, in the, in the, in the Serbo-Croat War. Um, he almost got shot. A guy had a gun, put a pistol in his mouth, and the guy, the British guy, just laughed at the futility because there's nothing he could do. This guy could just pull the trigger. And the guy didn't pull the trigger because he thought it was funny that this bloke was Laughing in the face of death. This guy got addicted to the highs, and then he got addicted to heroin. He decided to take heroin for a while to see what it was like coming off it. So he planned to take heroin for 2 weeks, and after 5 years, he came off it, and he came off it When he realized that he was bigger than his addiction. When we realize that we are bigger than our trauma— our trauma is not us, we are not our trauma, we are the whole universal God. People different— people express it different ways. And the trauma is something that Sits on there. Sits on us, sits in us, but it ain't as big as we are. Hope that makes sense. If you've got any, um, ideas about other topics I could do on this podcast, please email me and get in touch on social. My email is simon@thrivingeroptics.com. Thanks all, bye. Bye.
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