Traumatic events stop time. The body is overwhelmed, the mind is at a loss as to how to compartmentalize it, the emotions overlap and spill into each other. It’s as if everything freezes. This is a powerful survival mechanism. In order to survive we must separate from the traumatic event. We are subject to time and time moves along whether we are ready or not. We have no choice but to leave the trauma frozen and behind. It lives perfectly preserved in what I call the trauma dimension. This provides a temporary reprieve, and we think we have moved on. But we have not moved on. A part of us lingers in the trauma dimension hoping to reconcile and heal this part of us. When we feel stuck or healing doesn’t seem possible, we try to forget the trauma altogether, as if it didn’t happen or wasn’t “a big deal.” This is minimizing. It too is an important part of our survival mechanism. Minimizing allows us to transfer the information hidden in the trauma onto a map, that can then be folded up and put into our pocket. We need that map for later, when we have the resources, safety and tools to return to the trauma and resolve it.
The trauma dimension is important. When it comes time to face the overwhelming effect the trauma had on our bodies, we return to the trauma dimension to experience it, to learn about ourselves and those things that were unavailable at the time of the crisis. We have the emotional distance and mental awareness to return and find proper compartments to organize what happened and come into meaningful relationship to all the emotional upheaval that would have suffocated us in the moment of tragedy. The trauma dimension holds all of the unthinkable truths, the cruel injustices, and the cold reality intact and untouched until we are ready to face those things. It also allows us to enter our trauma from a different angle. I am reminded of scenes from Charles Dickens novel, A Christmas Carol when Ebenezer Scrooge is guided by the Ghost of Christmas Past into his former life. He is shown the truth from a perspective that was unavailable to him when the events happened and only with the benefit of hindsight can he revisit his former self and see the truth that was always there but somehow inaccessible when he was caught in the maelstrom of pain and rejection.
This is the value of the trauma dimension. It holds our pain trauma until we are ready to resolve it. But it can seem as if we are broken when we discover this frozen part of ourselves. It is like that version has not aged a day or even an hour from the moment they froze in time. The trauma holds them captive. And as a result, those parts never grow up, never evolve and change into integrated wholeness. This can make us feel damaged beyond any repair and unable to live normal lives. We might notice that sometimes the frozen self that was traumatized is activated and takes over the driver’s seat. This is normal even if it is distressing and sometimes humiliating. If you have been traumatized at age six and something triggers that six-year-old, frozen in the trauma dimension, then you will feel and sometimes act like the six-year-old that never had a chance to mature and grow up in a normal and natural way. But that is okay. The fact that the six-year-old is stuck in the trauma dimension is not a problem. When the trauma is reconciled, that is to say, deeply understood and she can act according to her needs and desires, she can instantly make up for the lost time. She comes from the trauma dimension where time doesn’t exist. So, she can be healed and evolve without the need for linear time. This is the beautiful magic of the trauma dimension. Nothing is ever truly lost.
