UN-MANIFESTING MY TRAUMAS: Identifying where I had been storing them and effective eradication
Disclaimer: I am writing this article after a careful research of my own patterns and responses to situations at various points in time. As a spiritual person, my intuition is top notch and applying tenets of consciousness to treat an issue has been a mainstay. If you are someone who requires medical help, you may look for more appropriate ways to tackle your demons, it is not necessary that what worked for me should work for you too. This post is only a recollection of my own journey towards healing.
Chronology:
1999: A school teacher casually said Muslims are horrible people. The jokes continued on terrorism, etc. for a long time.
2002 onwards until I stopped visiting relatives: Comments on how I will never look as beautiful as my mother.
2005: A teacher failed me on purpose to avenge my guts for not attending his special tuitions.
2005–06: A tuition teacher went out of line to lay his hands when he got the chance.
2006: A doctor told my parents that unless I lose weight my PCOD won’t go away leading to a meltdown(s) in the house for months.
2006: A teacher told me I would never make it past the 10th grade. The entire classroom laughed and a few oversmart kids did everything to manipulate my decision to move from my hometown for a better educational ambience for the next two years.
2008: Wrongly punished in school for something I hadn’t done.
2009: Locked up in my PG room by my roommate who had a problem with my defiance against her and refusing to be her spot-girl.
2010: Insulted publicly by someone I had a crush on. Repeated every day till he left the area.
2011: Someone took advantage of my innocence and made a scapegoat out of me to escape a dishonourable situation.
2012: Someone from college commented on my lack of social skills and horrible sartorial tastes.
2013: Fatshamed by visitors in our house. Subsequently, borderline sexual assault.
2014: Tagged as ‘mentally unstable’ by someone I thought would be a potential partner. Reason being, he was too protective of another female who had been insulting me and wouldn’t hear a word against her. When I found the truth out, he was actually hitting on her and taking her out on dates.
2015: Mocked on various occasions by a classmate on my first book publication, “She just copy-pasted the entire thing, she is so stupid, how can she even write this? She doesn’t even know to speak!”
2016: Abused publicly for my roots.
2017: Character assassination in public by a friend.
2018: Duped financially.
2019: Lost a lover and friend in someone. He went around flaunting girls in front of me, knowing how hurt I was. It took 3 years to overcome the pain.
2020: Physically abused.
2021: Financial debauchery by a trusted person.
The first time I had entered the gym was in 2018. The trainers were helpful at first and a couple of them seemed to take greater interest in me because I was the one who came with no accomplices. There was a pertinent question posed almost everyday, “Why do you look so sad?” I had no reason to be so even if the money was taken from me under a wrong pretext. I never understood why they all asked me the same question over and over again.
When you are unhappy about whatever situations characterise your life, trauma sits on your face. The stress causes you to bloat anyway and sadness makes a place for itself in your face. Your facial muscles sag and your face gives an appearance of a very rude or unpleasant person. Your childlike cheerfulnesses is lost because at the back of your mind several things are happening simultaneously and you can’t keep up.
I had PCOD until 2022. I came to realise that ever since the doctor had mentioned about my fluctuating weight I had been too critical about the way I looked at my body and treated it. I was never careful with what I ate because in my head, “I am already fat, what difference would it make if I have this one chocolate cake?” I was fine even in the light of not being careful with what I consumed and that was my biggest mistake because the guilt and regret left me even more miserable. The trauma got stored around my middle.
I had a hunchback since my teens. I could never stand straight and always had drooping shoulders because it was a reflex action to stop people from looking at my chest area. Considering too many times I had been touched inappropriately/ without my consent, my only defence mechanism was to prevent people from mlooking at my chest as much as possible. My shoulders and back carried that trauma for years until I decided to own my body parts without wondering if people are judging them for being too big, too rounded or too catchy.
Public insults and I go way back. The number of times someone has completely taken me aback with their choice of words and overshadowing selves because I was touted as an introvert, can even give the reality shows a run for their money for being schadenfreude-coded.
The generational curse around money runs in the family. I had to undo a lot of the learning about money to be able to build newer beliefs about money. It took ample time but I realised it had to happen. It is not a coincidence that my great grandfather who possessed knowledge of the metaphysical and alchemy passed a few of his skills to me as well, making me adept in skills and qualities that no one can explain.
I never had girlfriends because of my infamous encounters with females who left no stone unturned to make my life a living hell. I had carried that trauma from school I have come to an understanding about that. I had somehow cultivated a belief that women don’t like me. Most of my clients are women. And interestingly, most of them have names of those girls who had been toxic to me at one point in time, thereby allowing better memories to plant themselves in my subconscious.
Appearance and beauty were constant occupants of my head. When you are told early on in life that you will never look pretty, you grow up thinking that might be true because someone “elderly” has said that but when you figure out stuff gradually, you infer that there is no other credibility this person owns apart from being one of the “elders” of the house.
Teachers who mock do not do justice to their profession. Anyone who is in the position to impart knowledge must also know to be kind because it is not a graceful act to make someone feel stupid for not knowing something. I carried that trauma till my scholar days and when I was in the place to disseminate knowledge I made a casual remark always, “A teacher was also a student once upon a time.”
Losing a lover and a friend hits you differently than every other pain there ever was. I had to come to terms with the fact that I might not be the person they want because I do not “fit the bill”. A lot of acceptance, self-realisation and introspection made me into someone who didn’t have to wait around to be chosen.
I often hear clients complaining about how their naive nature got them into trouble and if there was anything called punishment for the perpetrators. I have forever maintained my stand about this: what you do is what you get back. Maybe not in the way you have anticipated but the good is never ignored by the Universe. There is magic everywhere. I myself have been too harsh on the self for being too trusting with people and eventually I had to make peace with it because my good morals speak more about me. If I was a good person and someone decided to wrong me, it says a lot about them and not me. They lost me anyway.
Working on my traumas:
I had a massive ego about the fact that I was a good person and kept questioning “How can bad things happen to me if I am so good?” I was wrong there. This is life. There will be good things, as much as the bad ones. If only good things happened, people would become excessively arrogant and humanity would cease to exist. The trauma stored in my face went away the moment I CHOOSE TO LOOK AT THE LEARNINGS A CERTAIN PAINFUL SITUATION PROVIDED. PCOD and related issues died the day I made a conscious attempt to slow down and not turn to desperation at the slightest inconvenience. Emotional regulation has been the required pill in all these cases. The trauma stored on my shoulders and back went away the day I decided to stand upright because what could possibly be so ugly about my bust if people go for similar enhancements to a surgeon? I stopped beating myself up for the times I let my innocence take over because it wasn’t worth it. If I trusted someone, it was because I saw the world like I myself was. I thought of the world to be a good place where good people lived. I chose to see the good in people and even if they did me wrong, I have nothing to lose because I would never be the reason why someone was crying themselves to sleep. Teachers and educators who have been mean hold no importance in my life because they taught me the greatest lesson of mankind- Be more gentle than necessary because there is strength in softness. As far as public humiliation is concerned, all I had to do is be more quick witted and articulate. I chose a profession where words held more significance and if someone insulted me I would just be able to stump them with some clever comebacks. All that mockery taught me to jest, take nothing personally because when people are being obnoxious they are only projecting their insecurities on to you. This is not your battle to fight. Not everything has to be about you and it is OKAY. Physical appearance is a thing of worry for most people because the world seems to be shallow about the same. Zakir Khan, a renowned comedian once said that, “It’s true that a book is judged by its cover but you should be so great a book that people don’t even see the cover.” Those who can understand the intensity of this statement will also know how success can enable you to reach your body goals, desired appearance and becoming magnetic.
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