Why Trauma Disconnects You From Yourself

When I was a kid, I got put in a separate classroom during lunch and recess.

It wasn’t meant to be a punishment, but it’s where they put kids with special needs. We sat in that room while the rest of the class walked past on their way outside.

Some days they’d stop at the door and laugh at me.

When I think back on my childhood, I know there were good moments. I can reflect on them if I try. But the moments that come up first, without me even trying, are the hard ones. The classroom. The laughing. The feeling it left me with.

I’ve wondered for a long time why that is. Why the traumatic events stay louder than the good ones, even when the good ones actually happened more.

I recently met Patrick Teahan, a clinical social worker and one of the most trusted childhood trauma educators in the world, and I asked him, “What is trauma actually doing to someone underneath the surface?”

His answer was simple. Trauma disconnects you from the world, and it disconnects you from yourself.

When I told Patrick that I remember the traumatic events more than the good ones, he didn’t try to talk me out of it. He just said, “That is a big deal.”

He didn’t try to tell me I should forget it because it was a long time ago.

He didn’t blame it on the fact that kids can be cruel.

He affirmed that it did matter to me as a kid, because a nine-year-old brain has zero power over what’s being done to it. All it can do is hold on to it.

I think a lot of us are carrying a version of this..

A moment nobody else remembers, that quietly decided how you interact with the world and everyone around you.

So I asked Patrick, “If trauma disconnects you from yourself, how do you reconnect?”

He teaches something called Dialoging.

You take a piece of paper and write with your dominant hand, then write the response with your non-dominant hand.

Your dominant hand is your adult voice. Your non-dominant hand is your inner child.

It’s a simple way to ask the part of you that got disconnected a long time ago what it’s actually been carrying. And to finally let it answer.

If you want to learn more about healing from your childhood trauma wounds, check out the ​full conversation with Patrick Teahan.​

Let me know how it helps,

Lewis