Traumatic events by definition stand out from the normal course of our lives. Their impact and repercussions can be so great as to dominate our lives, our thinking, our stories about ourselves, and our relationships with other people and the world around us, sometimes long after the events themselves took place. They can overwhelm our ability to integrate experiences into the flow of our lives. Although our brains are naturally wired to learn and grow from our experiences, traumatic events can shatter this ability and leave us struggling to make any sense of our lives at all. Our lives lose shape, direction and meaning. Their narrative is disrupted.
This is one reason why in sessions with me, we probably won’t talk only about specific traumatic events, but also about other experiences and periods in your life. This can help you put traumatic events in context, find ways to integrate them into the bigger picture of your life, and create a narrative around them that can assist you to go forward in a more positive way.
One way to get started on this process involves creating a visual timeline. In our sessions, I’ll invite you to create a chronological overview of your life – not going into lots of detail yet, but clarifying some of the most impactful experiences, both positive and negative.
Sometimes we use a length of rope to do this, laid out on the floor to represent the course of your life (you can also use a piece of paper, or an iPad or tablet). Along the length of the rope you place either flowers to represent something good that happened in your life or stones to mark difficult events, briefly naming these as you go along. This can be a powerful way to see a fuller arc of your life, and the place that traumatic experiences have in a larger context, which probably includes some good experiences and better times. While it may be challenging to look at some experiences in this way, you may also begin to reflect on the strengths that have allowed you to survive these events, or even find that you have in some way already grown from them. You’ll also see that your lifeline extends into the future – that the rest of your life is a story not yet written.
Once you’ve established this larger context, you can begin to process specific trauma and find ways to resolve and integrate it into the flow of your life. In this way you can free yourself to live more enjoyably and productively, now and in the future.
If this is a journey you’re interested in taking, contact me today.