Relational Trauma Leads To Anxiety, Stress & Helplessness

Because there is no healthy mirroring happening in an emotionally immature society, our truth and reality are constantly denied, ignored, ridiculed, or not acknowledged. As a result, we struggle to fully understand and connect with ourselves. This creates a highly anxious and stressful environment.

Especially for a young child who becomes increasingly reliant on external validation because of that. Subsequently, when we don’t have the power to stand on our own yet as a little child, it will make us feel helpless and trapped.

We might find ourselves resenting those around us, feeling angry because we depend on them while they expect us to hide our true self. In some way, this is a true recipe for feeling relationally betrayed and the foundation for relational trauma.

How Helplessness Creates A Distrust In The Collective

Both the absence of healthy mirroring and the unpredictable stressful environment are a recipe for a us to lose our trust in ourselves and in the world around us. Moreover, it causes us to create and internalize deep-rooted negative beliefs about our own worth.

We tell ourselves things as: ‘I am not worthy to be loved, seen, or valued for who I truly am’. ‘I am a bad person.’ ‘There must be something wrong with me.’

This distrust in the collective, in others, in ‘we’, makes that we live in survival mode constantly from a young age. Furthermore, to stay safe, we create a false self and coping (or survival) mechanisms to deal with the heavy grief and pain that come with growing up in a society like this.

Emotional Suppression: The Root Cause Of Our Diseases

To process the heavy and intense emotions and learn how to cope, we need emotional mature support as children. But because of the emotionally immature society we are living in, that has its direct influence on the family system and thus our parents, we don’t receive such support. This results in emotional dysregulation or the suppression of our emotions entirely.

Slowly, over time, by suppressing these emotions, we ‘forget’ our emotional pain and relational trauma (or ‘betrayal’). While subconsciously it is still there, stored and suppressed in our body, impacting our choices, behavior and relationships. This unresolved pain and grief may later surface as mental, emotional or physical suffering.

Moreover, it results in us feeling a profound emptiness or loneliness, restlessness, stress, depression, or burnout later in our lives. In that sense, one could argue that emotional suppression is the fundamental reason for our illnesses and mental health ‘disorders’.

How To Heal Relational Trauma: Experiencing The Opposite

Relational trauma and its consequences really are one of the biggest wounds of our time. It asks of us to become aware of it, and to sit with it, process it, heal it and integrate it.

But how do we do that?

To heal our relational trauma we have to experience the opposite of what we have experienced as a little child. We have to have the experience that we are safe to express our authentic self, and that we are accepted, loved, seen and valued for that.

This will give us the experience that it is safe to be who we truly are and to know that we are able (or ‘allowed’) to protect ourselves (set a boundary, share a preference) if ever there is something that doesn’t feel ok to us.

From Self-Abandonment To Presence

Next to this, we have to have the experience that someone is present with us and with all that we feel. Without wanting it to get away, or trying to fix, solve, deny, mock, ridicule or diminish all that we feel. But how? How do we create such an experience in a world that isn’t ready for this yet?

We have to create this experience ourselves. Especially as an adult, we are the ones that are able to give this to ourselves first. This means: to not abandon ourselves anymore when heavy or intense emotions arise, but sitting with our grief, anger, sadness and fear, and listening to it.

In conclusion: we have to learn how to be and stay present with all that we experience and feel.

We Heal In Relationships

So, we have to stay PRESENT with ourselves. No words, no solutions, no distractions, no workshops, no courses, no books, no social media, no alcohol, no superficial relationships, no talking, no doing, no numbing. Just being present. Feeling our emotions. Being a witness to our deep relational and emotional wounds.

And when we dare to do that and experience more self-trust again, we can ask others we deeply trust, to sit with us and let them be a witness to all that we are. 

Healed People Heal The World

That will heal our collective relational trauma and will help us to slowly trust the collective again. Subsequently, it will help us to resolve the emptiness we feel inside. In addition, it will help resolve our loneliness and helplessness. Because when we are connected to ourselves again, we will feel connected to the world again. 

Furthermore, when we feel connected to the world again, our depression, anxiety, and burn-out will dissolve. Because when we heal the relationship with ourselves, we will heal our relationship with all that exists. We will be able to see ourselves as part of the entire eco-system again.

And then… we can go and clean up the mess we made on this planet. Awake, present, resilient, emotionally mature and fulfilled. For healed people heal the world, and healing is what our world so desperately needs. 

This Is How We Can Help You

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