What’s the purpose of trauma?
There are several answers to this question, partly because meaning is something we create and add to life.
Creation & Maintenance of Trauma
What’s the purpose of the creation and maintenance of trauma?
At an individual level, the main purpose of trauma may be protection. The pain of trauma is an incentive to avoid situations similar to the one initially creating the trauma.
At a collective human level, it’s probably the same. Traumas serve a survival function for our species. When a situation is overwhelming and we feel we can’t cope with it, we create trauma and the pain of the trauma helps us avoid similar situations.
Healing from Trauma
What’s the purpose we find through healing from trauma?
At an individual level, we may get a lot out of exploring and finding healing for our traumas. We obviously learn from the process, we learn how to heal from trauma and perhaps emotional issues in general. We may find we are more mature and humanized. We may be more raw and honest with ourselves and others. We may find ourselves as more real, authentic, and perhaps in integrity. We may have reprioritized and found what’s genuinely important in our life. We may discover the universality of human life and that – even with our individual differences – we are all in the same boat. We may have found a different and more meaningful life path. Our life, in general, may be more meaningful to us. We may have found a deep, raw, and real fellowship with others on a healing path. We may have learned to be more vulnerable with ourselves and others. We may have discovered how the path of healing from traumas fuels, leads into, and perhaps is an integral part of an awakening path. We may discover the deep capacity for healing inherent in ourselves, humans, and life in general.
At a collective level, it’s similar only scaled up and with the extra illumination and richness that comes from the interactions of people with different backgrounds, viewpoints, and experiences. Collectively, we learn about and from healing from trauma. We realize the universality of it, and of our profound capacity for healing. We see that healing from trauma is something we do together and not just individually. We discover that much of what we thought were individual traumas are actually more universal and collective traumas. We discover that culture is not only what gives us much of what we love about human life, but the painful unquestioned assumptions inherent in our culture is what creates much if not most of our pain.
Bigger Picture
What’s the purpose of the experience of trauma in the bigger picture?
If we assume there is something like rebirth or reincarnation, then the experience of trauma provides food for our healing, maturing, and eventually awakening. It’s the One locally and temporarily taking itself to be a separate being going through a reincarnation process and through that healing, maturing, and eventually awakening to itself as the One. The One the adventure always happened within and as.
Traumas seems an important part of the dialectical evolutionary process of humanity as a species and – by extension – of Earth as a whole. The aspects mentioned above and much more go into this.
And it’s part of the play of life or the universe or the divine. It’s lila. It’s life exploring, expressing, and experiencing itself in always new ways. It’s part of the One temporarily and locally experiencing itself as separate.
Note
When I use the word trauma, I mean the traditional one-time-dramatic-event trauma, and perhaps, more importantly, the developmental trauma that most of have from growing up in slightly – or very – dysfunctional families, communities, and cultures.
In a wider sense, any emotional issue, any painful belief, any identification, is a form of trauma and comes from and creates trauma. It’s the trauma inherent in the One temporarily and locally taking itself to fundamentally be a separate being.
Initial notes…
- What’s the purpose of trauma?
- creation & maintenance of trauma
- individual
- protection, avoid similar situations (situations the person feel they can’t deal with, is overwhelming, too much)
- collective
- protect species – the individual learns to avoid certain situations, and others learn through observation and stories
- individual
- healing from & post-traumatic growth
- individual
- learning from/about the process – healing from trauma, healing, how we are put together
- maturing, humanize, humble
- all in same boat, empathy, a wider sense of we
- more real, more authentic, less facade
- strip away what’s unimportant, reprioritize,
- connect with others on the healing path, a more raw and real fellowship (can be)
- possibly new life path
- service to life, wounded healer
- possibly part of awakening/embodiment process
- can help us awaken
- notice what we are bc who is too painful
- incentive to explore (painful) identifications, beliefs, recognize the dynamic, and perhaps apply it to all identifications and beliefs (bc all are potentially painful)
- healing emotional issues and traumas is essential for embodiment, live the awakening in more situations in life
- can help us awaken
- reminds us of our capacity for healing, growing, even awakening
- collective
- brings awareness of collective hangups, their effects, what we can do about it
- dialectical process, part of human evolution
- individual
- bigger picture
- evolution – survival + helps us learn, grow, evolve
- lila – play of the divine
- ….
- creation & maintenance of trauma