Lesson 2: You Don't Know What You Don't Know

Many trauma survivors try to fix themselves before even understanding what trauma is or how it has affected them.

They jump straight to solution seeking when they don’t understand the problem. This wastes time—something we find ourselves racing against. We don’t have time to burn when our relationships are falling apart, and the frustration we feel can lead to detrimental coping mechanisms.

You must understand your trauma before you can begin to successfully recover.

What does that mean? It means transforming yourself into a student. Chances are good that you jumped headfirst into a post-trauma journey without knowing much, if anything, about trauma and how it affects those within whom it decides to nest.

It seems obvious that if you don’t understand trauma, you’ll have a very difficult time untangling yourself from it. But nothing is obvious to the trauma survivor. The world around you is a sped-up cyclone of chaos and debris. It’s dizzying. And at the same time, you can feel like you are frozen in time, and it’s numbing.

Don’t get down on yourself for not having made more progress than where you stand at this moment. The truth is that you’re at a place now where you can move forward! Understanding trauma is the first step.