Beliefs of love, trust, and safety

Imagine you are a helpless infant, needing your mom to survive. You’re hungry and crying out for your most basic of needs - food. But instead of comfort and nourishment, you are met with the scolding of your mother to stop crying. Your hunger turns to frustration – you start to scream and your mom’s scolding gets harsher. You turn to despair through painful whining, until finally you give up and are trapped in a state of fear and numbness; pure frozen terror. And just when you think it can't get any worse, your mother appears, praising you for your supposed calmness and how much she loves you. This is the beginning of this life’s journey on earth, a beginning that will shape your beliefs of what love, trust and safety are about…

This is only one small example of how most trauma goes back to parts of your childhood, when your needs weren’t met. Anyone who understands the basics of Maslow’s hierarchy of (gifted) needs, knows that if even the simplest of your needs isn’t met, it’ll be hard for you to get to self-transcendence... When a child experiences a traumatic event, their initial natural response is to feel strong emotions such as fear, sadness, or anger. These emotions are accompanied by physiological responses such as increased heart rate, rapid breathing, and muscle tension, and will be vocalized through behaviors such as crying or shouting. However, if the child learns that it is not safe to express or process these emotions, they may ultimately become stuck or "frozen" in the body, leading to physical and psychological symptoms such as chronic pain, anxiety, and depression. This prolonged state can then become a trait - a characteristic way of responding to the world that becomes deeply ingrained in your personality.

Unmet (gifted) needs

Symptoms you may experience today aren’t weird and you are not crazy. You’re also not broken, so there’s nothing to fix. What’s happening is simply the result of a mismatch between your needs as a developing child, and the environment in which you were raised. As gifted kids we may have lacked in receiving what was needed to fulfil our basic needs like any other child. In addition to this though, our gifted needs may not have been met.

Instead of exploring our curiosity, our parents and schools may have put us down for an hour to do homework, as that’s what kids need to do after school. Instead of working with us to find out who we are as unique individuals, our parents may have (unknowingly) abused our resourcefulness to help educate our siblings, they may have used our successes as golden moments to feel fulfilled in their own lives and started expecting more and more of us – to feed their own egos; they lived through our gifts.

Yes - this sucks. And yes - it’s sad, or infuriating, or whatever emotion you may feel while reading this. It can in fact require time for gifted and non-gifted folks alike to feel safe enough to realize and acknowledge that their primary caretaker missed out on important stuff!

You can feed yourself

As an optimist, I like to see it as an opportunity for self-development. You are an adolescent or adult now and can decide for yourself what it is that you need. You decide if you want to start living a more authentic life by cleaning up what’s holding you back. You can feed yourself.

Healing from trauma involves understanding and addressing the root causes of the trauma, rather than merely addressing symptoms. If you’re struggling with procrastination, I’m not going to tell you to make to-do lists, trick the brain with “if I do 3 shitty things on my list I allow myself to get my favorite ice cream”. Yes, these are great tactics, but are nothing more than band-aids.

What we must do instead, is reconnecting with our emotions and needs, developing a sense of self-compassion and self-understanding, and cultivating supportive relationships with others. As a result of this, dramatic changes can happen !

This can be so challenging, especially for (gifted) individuals who may struggle to express or even feel their emotions due to various reasons like decades of frozen terror, overintellectualizing, overrationalizing, or fear of vulnerability. The good news is that by understanding and addressing the emotions, individuals can heal from emotional trauma and live a more fulfilling life !

The Healing Quest: Navigating the Three Phases of Trauma Recovery

Healing from trauma really isn’t a walk in the park ! I won’t deny that it's a complex process that takes time and work. There isn’t « one right way » to do it, but most people go through three main phases:

Phase 1: Safety and Stabilization. In this phase, we're tackling the feeling of being unsafe that often comes with trauma. We're going to learn how to deal with anxiety, flashbacks, and all the other nasty symptoms that come with it. Plus, we might need to create a safe and nurturing space to explore all the crazy traumatic memories we've got.

Finding safety often also means connecting with other people who just get it. They're like our own personal squad of "Enlightened Witnesses (EW)", as Alice Miller calls them. It’s those who have been through similar experiences, so they know what it's like to suffer like we do. They know it's not our fault, even when it feels like it is. In the case of gifted trauma, it's tough for non-gifted folks to really understand what we're going through therefore it’s important that you find EWs within the gifted communities.

Phase 2: Remembering and Mourning. In this phase, you face and process your trauma head-on. That might mean revisiting past experiences and exploring the emotions and physical sensations that come with them. It can be tough and painful, but it's a crucial part of the healing process. You will consciously and safely sit with all those emotions you've been holding in.

Some gifted individuals may find this phase particularly challenging due to their heightened awareness of their surroundings and emotions. Revisiting past experiences can be intense and overwhelming as they may experience emotions and physical sensations more acutely than others. They may jump back into the brain so quickly, that it may take time to start feeling before the healing can happen.

Others may struggle with the complexity of their emotions and articulating them, as they may experience a wider range of emotions than their peers – or the opposite, have never learnt any emotional awareness and can’t feel their body due to prolonged frozen numbness.

However, this phase also presents an opportunity for gifted individuals to utilize their unique strengths, such as their analytical skills, creativity, and ability to make connections between seemingly disparate ideas – healing can go much faster for us. By embracing your giftedness, you may be able to navigate the process of remembering and mourning with greater insight and depth.

Phase 3: Reconnecting and Integration. In the final phase, you take everything you learned from the first two phases and put it into action. You may rebuild relationships, develop new coping skills, and find meaning and purpose beyond the trauma. You'll need to develop a sense of resilience and self-compassion so you can keep growing and healing.

Imagine you climbed Maslow's hierarchy of needs like a skilled mountaineer. After fulfilling your basic needs for safety and belonging, you have reached the peak of self-esteem, allowing you to now pursue your authentic cognitive and aesthetic desires with a sense of joy and fulfillment. You’re free to pursue self-actualization based on your authentic values and desires, how cool!

Just remember, these phases aren’t always in order and they will likely repeat. Rest assured, the first time you go through them is usually the most intense one as you’re building up the resourcing, feeling safe, and self-compassion.

How emotions show up in the body and the brain

In my work I use Pia Mellody's framework to differentiate between healthy and unresolved emotions. "Own emotions", the healthy ones, arise from a person's authentic self and are rooted in the present moment, while "carried emotions" are often unresolved emotions stuck in a trauma loop, picked up from past experiences, or others' emotions (often primary caretakers), leading to dysfunctional behaviors and patterns deeply engrained into your adult personality.

It's normal to experience a range of emotions throughout our lives. When you recognize yourself in many of the statements below, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re experiencing full-blown trauma responses.

Look at it like this: if these emotions become persistent, severe, or interfere with your daily functioning, it may be a sign of a more serious problem. Do some of these stand out more than others? It's important to take into consideration the severity of the issue, how it interacts with our day-to-day life, and whether it's affecting our relationships or ability to meet our responsibilities.