Primary wounds, trauma and nervous system regulation.

The first thing I want to tell you is that the word TRAUMA isn't exclusively associated with catastrophic situations that happen in life.

A trauma can have been something everyday that you weren't able to process, translate, or integrate. Something that happened to you, that impacted you, and where you felt there was no one who could explain what was happening in a simple way — that is, translate it into simple, age-appropriate language so you could process the emotions that were stirred up by that event.

Generally, the feeling of "I can't count on anyone", "no one's going to understand me" or "no one can help me" are the ideas that arise when we go through a traumatic episode. If this happens early in childhood, we're not even aware that these ideas crossed our mind. This means they happen almost unconsciously, and that's where the wounds of early childhood can form.

If these are situations that last over time, that repeat, they shape our behaviour and make us develop survival strategies to adapt, because, being so small, it's impossible to survive in isolation. So it's the need to keep belonging that makes us develop these habits and survival behaviours.

Early childhood wounds are the consequence of similar, repeated traumatic experiences at a young age. What's more, they translate into behaviour and habits that, at first, were protective and allowed us to continue, to survive, despite the energetic, mental and emotional cost they carried. Because, simply put, we couldn't survive alone and isolated.

As the years go by, we grow up, and these survival responses keep operating from a largely unconscious place. The trap here is that we're no longer children. We can survive without belonging to a toxic or dysfunctional environment, but we don't know that, or it's very hard for us to accept that we can leave those spaces.

There are many emotions entangled with the desire to leave what's toxic or dysfunctional: guilt, loyalty, fear, shame, terror, etc. Emotions that hold back our impulses to look for a life more coherent with who we are, a life aligned with our true essence.

This emotional agglutination causes bodily and mental reactions we're familiar with, such as: mental fog, exhaustion, procrastination, avoidance, and more. Our nervous system, with so many emotions triggered, doesn't know what to do, becomes overloaded and collapses into insomnia, changes in appetite, sleep disturbances, stress and anxiety, among others.

That's why it's important to start with routines to regulate the nervous system first: breathing, walking, dancing, singing, and many, many more techniques that allow us to recalibrate. Otherwise, we wouldn't even be able to hear those past beliefs and survival strategies that are still operating and sabotaging our wellbeing in the present.

It's possible to gain wellbeing. Recalibrating the nervous system is the beginning. Listening to ourselves comes next. Releasing the pain and putting everything back in its place crowns the process.

When you start your path toward wellbeing, you realise everything happens at the same time, and you learn to surf the wave. That's how you become the master of your own life.