Who are you?
I'm you.
I'm just a soul that is seeking to be the best version of what God has created. I started this journey in a fallen or broken world, a life with trauma.
Why am I like you?
You have trauma, like me. The very essences of being born is traumatic. We leave the warmth and safety of the womb and into an imperfect world to imperfect parents, or whoever cared for us, whoever fed us until we could feed yourselves. We all process and react to this trauma differently. The details of this trauma are not that important, but what is important is understanding how that trauma has impacted us over our lives.
So, what is the "trauma"?
First what is fear? Fear is the absence of love, just like darkness is the absence of light. Pure or unconditional love or agape love unfortunately is unattainable for us on earth. We can get close to feeling pure love, but it's not possible for us to fully experience it. Just like we only see a small spectrum of the visible light through our eyes, we can never see pure light, for the simple reason our eyes have limitations. So is our capacity for love on earth, like our eyes, so is our capacity to have pure love, we all have fears. To be human is to have fears, which is good, fears keep us safe.
Trauma is the realization of a fear.
I may have the fear of being cold when I get out of a warm shower, but I only realize this fear when I leave the warm shower and begin to get cold. Now this is very minor fear, I've managed this fear on a daily basis so this trauma from realizing this fear is nearly non-existent. The consequences of getting out of the shower are very minor, I know how to deal with this fear, I know if I dry off and get dressed this fear of being cold will be resolved.
There's lots of fears we have, if there's a noun or a verb in our language, we have found a way to fear it. For example, we fear being emotionally and physically hurt, we fear the unknown and we even fear fear and we fear love. This fallen world really is a fearful world, it's been this way since the beginning, and it needed to be this way for us to survive... so fear is not bad, it just is.
Fear on its own is ok, but when the fear of being unloved or neglected becomes "real" it becomes trauma. By "real", I mean when the fear, whether it actually happened or not is felt to have happened it becomes traumatic. This is essentially the placebo effect, if you believed and felt neglected as a child, even though externally and by all public opinions you had a great upbringing, it's the same as if you were neglected. Fear and trauma are personal, no two people are the same. To be human is to have fears and to have trauma.
To prevent any misunderstanding, the purpose of acknowledging trauma is NOT to direct blame at someone (e.g. I'm this way because my parents treated me this way). The purpose is to first acknowledge that we all have trauma, your trauma is not lesser or greater than mine, because it's personal.
Trauma is not only childhood trauma (although that is unique), but even fears realized by adults can be dramatic. Such as the fear and realization of a debilitating disease or injury or death.
I am you, I have trauma.
Spoiler alert:
I've had to overcome a lot of trauma, childhood and adult. The result of this trauma and my unhealthy ways of coping with this trauma lead me down many destructive paths. This SEEN NOT SCENE journey is the story of how I've overcome not only my trauma but also addressed my fear through love.