Out to the Edges... Working With Trauma

Expanding to the Boundaries

Recently I showed a new collection of watercolors at my recently opened gallery. My favorites had these boxes drawn by hand in colorful ink, some loosely penned and imperfect, others perfectly square. Each were filled with watercolor studies of skies and clouds that met the edges of each box, but didn't cross the brightly colored solid lines.

Several people asked me at the opening how I got the watercolors to stay within the hand drawn boundaries. I explained that watercolor paper isn't like tissue paper. The pigment doesn't bleed into the paper like a dye. The color only goes where the water is painted. You can paint water into any shape and add colors that will swirl and blend and dance within the water while still maintaining the original boundary.

In the Shape of Trauma

Today, I was thinking about healing and how the relationship between trauma and healing is similar to the way I've been working in watercolors. The trauma we experience creates the shape of what we can heal. Each with a unique set of circumstances and parameters.

When trauma heals, it is an alchemical process, transforming it and us completely, but only within the shape of our trauma. This can effect everything else in our lives, but what we are able to heal, extends only as far as our trauma reaches.

Out to the Edges... Working With Trauma

NOTE: continue this next process ONLY if you can explore your issue without triggering a trauma response of fight, flight, freeze, or even faun when you think about it. Too intense a physical, emotional, or mental response means asking for help may be a better way to proceed. In that event, my recommendation would be to reach out to me or another EFT Practitioner for assistance.

In order to heal and transition it, begin by getting to know your trauma. When it started, all the ways it makes you feel, what thoughts it brings up within you, who or what triggers it, where in your body you experience the various aspects of it, what you fear about it, what's the most confusing or mysterious thing about it, and if it feels like it's even all yours, are several things to consider when you're exploring the shape of your trauma.

I am constantly checking in with my clients' higher selves to understand where the trauma is, and with my own higher self to know the best way to resolve it. Trauma is expansive. In fact, it isn't always limited to only this lifetime or even what you're able to remember. Its boundaries can reach into your past as far back as the womb, your past lives, your entire biological or chosen family lineage, your cultural or gender community, your belief systems, as well as your individual, dual, or collective contracts.

Feel out to the very edges of your trauma and see how far you can sense it. Get to know it, try and understand the shape of it. Connect in with your higher self and get curious about it. Let your higher self and the trauma inform you. Simply pay attention to it. All of it. The more you know it and honor all that it has to share with you, the more healing is available to you through it.

healing

Healing is both very simple and extraordinarily complicated.

It is in the full knowing of what lies within the boarders of an issue all the way out to it's very edges, honoring all the angles of it, and, just like pigment added to clear water, as healing moves through, allowing it to change you from the inside out.

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Want to Connect With Your Higher Self?

If you'd like some help in connecting to your higher self or have a trauma in your life you'd like help releasing, I'd love to work with you. Set up a session or schedule a short check-in to chat about an issue you'd like to get my eyes on.

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Angela Hed Vincent (she/her), owner of True You Tapping, is an EFT Master Practitioner and Energy Medicine Practitioner.

She helps her clients honor and release emotional trauma and energetic density, using their biggest challenges as catalysts for transformation, so they can more fully embody the truth of who they are and the unique purposes they are here to fulfill.

Interested in working with Angela? You can book a one-on-one session here.

Angela introduces something new to the world of wellness and transformation. She has developed a unique approach to burnout recovery and intuitive development, and continues to create innovative programs to help people find their balance in various aspects of life.