Trauma experts define trauma and how creative expression helps us heal.
In 2020 I discovered a series of traumas from my childhood. Since then, I’ve been researching and exploring ways to heal while simultaneously investing in my creative process, primarily inspired by Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way.”
Along the way, trauma experts like Bessel van der Kolk and Dr. Gabor Mate helped me understand trauma, how it lives in our bodies, and ways to begin healing.
“Trauma is a psychic wound that leaves us scarred; it leaves an imprint in the nervous system, in your body, in the psyche. Trauma is not what happened to you; it’s not a difficult incident, the war, or the pain you felt. Trauma is the wound that is sustained as a result, which means it can be healed at any time,” Mate shared in a 2022 interview on “The Root Cause of Trauma.”
My creative process gradually led me to a deeper, safer connection with my body. Creativity requires presence and attention, and deepening my awareness brought me face-to-face with many psychic wounds.
In his bestselling book, “The Body Keeps the Score,” Kolk explained the value of theater and communal rhythms in trauma recovery:
“Trauma is about trying to forget, hiding how scared, enraged, or helpless you are. Theater is about finding ways of telling the truth and conveying deep truths to your audience. This requires pushing through blockages to discover your own truth, exploring and examining your own internal experience so that it can emerge in your voice and body on stage.”
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How Mate defines trauma
I hear the word trauma used frequently now, and sometimes the meaning seems lost. A bad first date is not the equivalent of my dysfunctional childhood experiences.
“The word trauma is sometimes used loosely and promiscuously to refer to things that are not traumatic. People who had a difficult experience might say ‘I was traumatized.’ No, they just had a difficult experience. All trauma is stressful; not all stress is traumatic,” said Mate.
Understanding the nature of trauma makes healing feel more approachable, and I connect to compassion more easily when people get triggered.
“If you look at the nature of a wound, it’s raw and open; it really hurts. If someone touches a wound that was sustained a long time ago but hasn’t healed yet, you’ll react like you’re just being tormented all over again. This happens in relationships all the time,” expressed Mate.
He explains how trauma often stops emotional growth and development.
“Wounds scar over, and the scar tissue has certain features: it’s very hard and rigid. So people tend to be rigid when they’re traumatized. It also doesn’t grow… On the one hand, it’s very raw and painful. On the other hand, it even lacks sensation because scar tissue doesn’t have nerve endings in it,” shared Mate.
As a seasoned physician, Mate shares the value of trauma awareness in the healthcare industry since many mind and body conditions stem from trauma.
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How theater supports trauma recovery
While I’ve witnessed the value of creativity in my own journey, I felt inspired seeing the creative process included in Kolk’s clinical, well-researched text. Creative mediums feel like a particularly accessible and joyful healing path.
“Traumatized people are afraid of conflict. They fear losing control and ending up on the losing side once again. Conflict is central to theater: inner conflicts, interpersonal conflicts, family conflicts, social conflicts, and their consequences,” wrote Kolk.
He interviewed the founders of several theater organizations, who expressed how acting brings us deeply in tune with our emotions, despite the cultural pressure to cut ourselves off from how we’re really feeling.
“Traumatized people are terrified to feel deeply. They are afraid to experience their emotions because emotions lead to a loss of control. In contrast, theater is about embodying emotions, giving voice to them, becoming rhythmically engaged, taking on and embodying different roles,” shared Kolk.
Theater involves a collective confrontation with the realities of the human condition. As one of the founders shared:
“Training actors involves training people to go against that tendency. Not only to feel deeply but to convey that feeling at every moment to the audience, so that the audience will get it and not close off against it.”
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My creative healing journey
Cameron’s creative affirmations, “My creativity heals myself and others” and “My creativity leads me to forgiveness and self-forgiveness,” stuck with me and motivated me to embrace my emotional roller-coaster creative work.
“Creativity and emotional healing work together in a synergistic relationship. Artists are healed and transformed by their creative work and become more and more creative as they face their pain. Un-metabolized emotional pain often shows up as anxiety, depression, and/or addictions,” wrote Douglas Eby, psychologist and author of the “Creative Mind” series.
My earlier writing felt like a process of cleansing and catharsis. I’d been working with a depth therapist and finding many ugly shadows in my unconscious (some beautiful ones too). I wrote about things like abuse recovery, codependency, feminism, and the dark side of the technology industry.
Looking back on my creative projects, I’ve gradually moved into more embodied mediums. I started with writing, moved into songwriting and singing, and then started practicing more solo and free-form dancing. I spent a long time feeling unsafe in my body and with big emotions. Creative outlets feel essential to my daily and weekly rhythms now.
Because “The Artist’s Way” creative recovery path caused me to metabolize so much pain, I keep encouraging others to read the book — and do their morning pages, artist’s dates, and creative process, of course.
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Engaging with creativity feels like syncing our inner and outer worlds. Healing seems to happen naturally as I become more in tune with my inner body; I feel more aware when things feel out of balance. Rather than numbing our anxieties, we can use that potent energy to create and connect with excitement rather than fear.
“Blocking is essentially an issue of faith. Rather than trust our intuition, our talent, our skill, and our desire, we fear where our creator is taking us with this creativity. Rather than paint, write, dance, audition, and see where it takes us, we pick up a block. Blocked, we know who and what we are: unhappy people. Unblocked, we must be something much more threatening – happy,” said Cameron.
Find more ideas and inspiration in my previous posts on creativity and healing:
- How “The Artist’s Way” Helps Us Enjoy Creativity
- How Creativity Connects Us to Healing and Love
- 10 Ways “The Artist’s Way” Renewed My Creativity – and Life
Photo Credit: Unsplash, Francesco Ungaro
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