Every story is unique - why trauma is a personal journey beyond comparison or judgement

There can be no judgement call or comparison with trauma - it is subjective and affects each of us in very different ways

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Trauma can affect us in any number of ways and depending on our history, our childhood or experiences in life, we each will react to traumatic events in a different way.

We each have different capacities for managing traumatic events and these can play out in any number of ways such as mentally, physically, emotionally, energetically, spiritually and relationally.

Trauma is a very unique experience to each and everyone of us, depending on our past, the levels of resilience we have within us, experiences that we may have had in childhood and growing up.

And this is how a traumatic event can have a very different impact on two people who’ve been involved in the very same event.

For instance a car crash.  One person could walk away from the car crash feeling absolutely fine, no after effects, no aftershocks. While the other person might be very affected by the car crash. They may experience somatic, physical after effects – pain, aches, tightness, tension, whiplash. They may experience nightmares and flashbacks.  

One could say they’re having a traumatic response to the same situation where their friend may have walked away from that accident absolutely free with no issues whatsoever.

There is no judgement call with trauma.

We each have individual imprints in terms of what capacity we do have to manage different circumstances in life and so it’s important to recognise that nobody’s trauma can be compared to anybody else’s and there are no judgement calls in terms of how each of us handle traumatic events.

The main issue is noticing how events impact on us, whether it be mentally, physically, emotionally, energetically, and how we take that forwards; how we manage, and this is predicated on our level of resilience within ourselves at any given time.

So I offer somatic massage and I offer somatic coaching and I support clients who’ve experienced trauma, whether that’s a long time ago, whether that’s more recently, whether they’re still undergoing aspects of trauma in their lives. And I support clients to increase that resilience. The hallmark of good health in terms of managing trauma, traumatic events, stressful events is the level of our resilience and the greater resilience we have, the better we might be able to handle traumatic events.