There isn’t one kind of trauma, and exposure to the same sort of trauma affects people in different ways. Trauma can look different, and it can be a one-time event that has a long-lasting effect on the brain. Trauma can also be repeated exposure to an experience that makes it difficult to handle emotions appropriately. How a person handles trauma can depend on the circumstances of the trauma and the individual’s personality.
Some of the most common sources of trauma are:
Being a victim of domestic violence or being exposed to it.
Experiencing a natural disaster
Undergoing a severe illness or injury
Being a victim of an assault
Witnessing the death of a family member or close friend
Seeing or experiencing an act of violence
Any of the things mentioned above can lead to both emotional and physical symptoms over a long period of time. Some people may be affected by the event right away, while others may take a more extended time to feel the effects. Either way, there is no question that traumatic events significantly impact the mind and body. The impact affects behaviors, emotions and can even affect your relationships. It can even serve as a precursor to drug and alcohol abuse.
What are the long-term effects of trauma?
Traumatic events trigger both physical and emotional responses in those who have experiences with them. The symptoms of trauma can be felt almost immediately in some while in others; they can occur over a long period of time.
With the correct treatment, the long-term effects of the trauma can be conquered. Here is a list of some of the most common emotional and physical symptoms of what trauma can look like:
Denial – you may deny that a traumatic event has occurred
Detached emotions from thoughts and actions surrounding the trauma
Extreme anger or sadness
Emotional outbursts
Experiencing shame surrounding the trauma
Physical responses like shaking
Sleep problems such as insomnia
Breathing problems
Stomach problems
High blood pressure or heart disorders
Development of PTSD
Substance abuse disorders
The two main manifestations of stress and anxiety caused by trauma are PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). This is a specific mental disorder that causes emotional and physical symptoms. The traumatic event they experience may be life-threatening, such as combat, a natural disaster, or a sexual assault. Many people who suffered from the 9-11 continue to experience PTSD all these years later.
The second one is drug and alcohol abuse. People who have experienced a traumatic event are likely to turn to drugs or alcohol to numb the pain they are experiencing and block out the trauma. Traumatic events and their long-term effects on an individual can sometimes be the catalyst for substance abuse. It has been proven that there is a strong relationship between people who have suffered a traumatic experience and those who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. Research shows that one in every four people who have experienced a traumatic event develops an addiction at one time or another. Trauma and addiction go hand in hand.
It may seem difficult to handle the long-term effects of trauma, especially if you are also struggling with substance abuse. Luckily you don’t have to go through this process alone.
There is help out there. There are several different types of therapy available to you.
There is residential rehab and intensive outpatient addiction treatment programs. Through individual therapy and group therapy, there are ways to overcome the effects of both trauma and addiction.
Here are just some of the benefits of this kind of treatment:
Providing a safe and secure environment where you can share your traumatic event
Help to identify the traumatic event and how it has affected your life
Help to identify how a traumatic event is related to your emotional and physical responses, including the descent into addiction
Setting up a support system
Educating yourself on the underlying mental and physical responses to the traumatic event
Reinforcing that you are not at fault. That the traumatic event happened to you and you did nothing to cause it
Building up skills for coping with the traumatic response
Therapy can take many forms, but all approaches have one thing in common, learning how to process these events positively and productively.
There is no question that trauma has a tremendous impact on our lives, but it doesn’t have to define who you are; it doesn’t have to rule or ruin your life. There is help out there. You can learn different skills to cope with the trauma, and you can find a trauma counselor and form a support group. You can take back control of your life and move past this to live a happier life.
“In the cultivation of the mind, our emphasis should not be on concentration, but on attention. Concentration is a process of forcing the mind to narrow down to a point, whereas attention is without frontiers.” J. Krishnamurti
The locals visit our Temple often. Some come on to the grounds screaming, crying, angry, depressed, or otherwise agitated. After a half-hour of talking with our Wisdom Professionals, the formerly forlorn usually leave smiling. Why do so many people come here to see the robe wearers, and why do all these visitors leave feeling so much better than they did upon arrival? Why are the residents of this Temple so much fun to be around? What makes the Monks and Nuns who they are? There must be some reasons I’ll never know, but a few are obvious.
The first is The Big Brain thing, and the team spirit it entails. The second is reincarnation — but this is certainly not the kind of reincarnation you are used to hearing about. These two factors meet at so many crossroads that it can often be hard to separate them, but let’s try to talk about one at a time, beginning with The Big Brain thing.
Everybody’s got a brain and a mind. Many people consider these to be different words for the same thing. Technically, the brain is just a biological organ while the mind is something deeper and more inclusive. But in case it makes you more comfortable to do so, we will use these words interchangeably here. It won’t hurt anything. The words soul or spirit might be more accurate, and consciousness is actually what we’re talking about — but some folks think of these terms as abstractions. We can use the more familiar words “mind” and “brain” for now. Many people seem to find those terms more familiar and easier to understand.
It is widely known that any human uses only a small percentage of his or her mind/brain at any given time. Exactly how much gets used and what those percentages pay attention to having always been very important matters.
The Monks and Nuns believe that each individual carries a deep responsibility to focus the greatest possible percentage of their mental facility on the best, kindest, most loving, and most wisdom-heavy attitudes and functions they can produce. Fulfilling this responsibility is not optional but mandatory for them, as it probably should be for all of us. They recognize this responsibility as a necessity because it affects individual, familial, societal, and planetary relationships — as well as our survival as individuals and as a species.
Directing the use of our minds toward constructive positive ends is not an esoteric or saintly activity to be practiced only by cloistered Wisdom Professionals. It is a very practical and logical activity that can influence every human’s personal life. Material and emotional satisfaction are most comfortably born from a base of mental satisfaction. Happy and compassionate people feel prosperous, regardless of financial income. They don’t often steal from or kill each other.
Whether conscious of it or not, we always think of an action before we do it. There are big advantages to thinking consciously. The residents here know that any action should be avoided if it doesn’t help and that blind emotions bubbling up unrecognized from subconscious depths lead many folks into destructive actions. There are no blind emotions here. By quieting their own mental turbulence, these robed folks clearly see what they are thinking, and then steer it. Everything they do is done on purpose. Nothing gets away from them.
The sub/unconscious type of thought, and the actions resulting from it, are usually fueled by instinctive reactions or habitually programmed mental-reflex reactions. These are all too often based on the memory of past trauma or fear of the unknown future.
The most basic sub/unconscious thoughts are survival instincts and callous self-interest — animal reflexes. All of us live partially under the direction of such instincts. Our DNA has carried these instincts since caveman days. They are a physiological part of us. They cannot immediately be erased, but with proper attention, the nastier parts can be transcended.
Our subconscious minds have inherited yet another batch of characteristics and instincts through the training and information we have been given by schools, churches, parents, governments, TV/media, and so on. These are the conditioned reflexes, the behavioral patterns we have observed and absorbed since birth.
These biological and historical patterns coexist as what can be called “the little brain.” A lot of human actions can more accurately be called knee jerk reactions. The subconscious mind has such an entrenched pre-recorded program of how-to-be and what-to-do in it that we often react to situations without giving any thought at all to our reaction. Many people spend most of their lives controlled by mental patterns that they are not even aware of.
But we have all floated into The Big Brain Thing on occasion. When you and a lover feel like one body, when you feel your child’s pain as if it is your own, when you display “superhuman” physical strength/perseverance/clarity of thought in an emergency situation — at these times we go beyond so-called normal human parameters of feeling and function. We wander semi-consciously into Big Brain mode.
The Monks and Nuns live there. Their conscious focus is on the mind and life that we all share in our involuntary coexistence with all other creatures — animal, human, and divine. They are of the opinion that the similarities and relationships between us all are more deserving of attention than the differences. They believe that the mutually beneficial goals that this Big Brained point of view dictates outweigh personal goals in importance.
Oddly enough, it often turns out that personal goals are much more easily attained when universal goals are given priority!
The concept that all of humanity shares a mutual existence and sort of a universal mind containing great power that properly trained individuals can tap into, somewhat resembles Carl Jung’s Collective Unconscious theory — except with the Temple folks it is conscious, the idea had already been around for several thousand years before the great Mr. Jung was born, and it is considered fact, not theory.
The drop/ocean metaphor is often used to explain it. Most of us think of ourselves as an individual drop of humanity. The people here in the Temple think of themselves as an integral part of a vast ocean that contains all living things. Both views have some truth in them. This “ocean attitude” may seem a little esoteric or even a bit weird to many of us, but it has advantages. All individual problems and personal pains recede somewhat when you pay attention to the bigger picture. The freedom and security that the power of an all-inclusive ocean offers is much greater than the freedom and security available to a single drop of water, or a singular human.
Like most of us, the Temple residents have good intentions. But they are more committed and loyal to those intentions than most of us are to ours. They make that commitment functional by donating their motivation for achievement toward improving life for all of their fellow-creatures, as well as for themselves. They constantly work on improving their little drop (self), but that process is always based on how their drop can become a better drop in order to become part of a better ocean (how improving their lives can improve all lives). They are dancing on their own legs, but a much bigger force than any individual is always playing the tune. All ways.
To put it another way, these Wisdom Professionals have trained their little brains very thoroughly in the concern for all little brains. This keeps them tuned to the same wavelength as that bigger force that both contains and is concerned with the well being of all the little brains — The Big Brain. They have, through dedication and strong effort, actually become a conscious cell in and therefore a bit of a co-creating partner with The Big Brain. Call it God, or Dharma, or The Force, or the Collective Unconscious, or the Unified Field. Whatever you would call an all-inclusive divine resource, they are now part of it. Perhaps we all are, anyway! But they are aware enough of their inclusion in the bigger system, and practiced enough in that system’s processes, to be able to direct themselves to coordinate with it. They consistently, consciously practice moving their minds in an internal direction that benefits everything external as much as possible. Loyalties and actions are at least as concerned with the ocean at large as they are with their own individual drop. This affiliation with the Big Brain governs the lives of the Nuns and Monks and all the choices they make. It directs them as surely as any commander directs his or her troops.
About the Author
Doug “Ten” Rose may be the biggest smartass as well as one of the most entertaining survivors of the hitchhiking adventurers that used to cover America’s highways. He is the author of the books Fearless Puppy on American Road and Reincarnation Through Common Sense, has survived heroin addiction and death, and is a graduate of over a hundred thousand miles of travel without ever driving a car, owning a phone, or having a bank account.
Ten Rose and his work are a vibrant part of the present and future as well as an essential remnant of a vanishing breed.
The books Fearless Puppy On American Road and Reincarnation Through Common Sense by this same author are also available through Amazon or the Fearless Puppy website, where there are sample chapters from those books. Entertaining TV/radio interviews with and newspaper articles about the author are also available there. There is no charge for anything but the complete books! All author profits from book sales will be donated to help sponsor an increase in the number of wisdom professionals on Earth, beginning with but certainly not limited to Buddhist monks and nuns.
If you missed the Introduction to the new book that will be titled Temple Dog Soldier or would like to see several chapters of it that are available for free online, go to the Puppy website Blog section. This is a book in progress. You will be reading it as it is being created! Just like you, I don’t know what the next chapter is going to be about until it is written. As the Intro will tell you, this is a totally true story — and probably the only book ever written by and about a corpse journeying completely around the world!
Choose Positive Living with Sara Troy and her guest Dio Watts, on air from August 17th
First and foremost, Dino Watt is a P.H.D. A Passionate Husband and Dad.
He also just happens to be one of the most exciting business relationship trainers in the world and the author of the #1 International Best-Selling book, The Practice Rx.
As the CEO of Our Ripple Effect, Inc. Dino is an award-winning mentor, trainer, and coach. His programs focus on helping high-performing business leaders Make Love & Business Work™. His goal for all his clients is for them to have more passion for what they do, get more productivity from their team, and create more profit in all areas of their life.
As The Relationship Expert, his passion for what he does stems from the belief that no success in your business can compensate for failure in your relationships.
Dino’s unique ability to help high performers have the greatest success in both their personal and professional relationships has been featured on ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX News, and TEDx.
“Everything you have ever received in life has come from a relationship you built, and everything you will ever receive from here on out, will come from a relationship.”- Dino Watt
All of our shows/interviews are done by donation, if you enjoyed this show please support us here with either a one-time donation or subscribe and support on Patreon.
Sara’s View of Life with Sara Troy, on air from August 17th
Women have never had a hard time speaking to one another, we find those ones we trust and open up. We call each other out, we support each other, we cry together, we laugh and even make fun of each other, so why can’t men do the same? Because it is not masculine enough.
I have just watched an episode Man Enough, where a few guys that we know speak about how hard it is to bear their feelings and the confusion of living up to a macho masculinity. We wonder why men can’t speak to us, well, it is because they can’t even speak to each other, because of this illusion of what a man should be and the image he is meant to portray.
Men, it is ok to be vunreable, it is ok to feel hurt, to be scared, to have fears, this makes you human, it does not take your power away, it instead empowers you and all around you. We are in a world of equality, where we as women and men can share all of life’s dealings. Being a co-parent, being a partner in love, in work in play. Being open with the people you work with, showing your vulnerability and that you are not superman, you are human. We have the Ying and Yang for a reason, balance, a bit of both sides, and being open with yourself, your friends, your loved ones, liberates you and them creating a wonderful place of open conversations with our fear, expectations, or dictation.
We want you to feel enough, so open up, let us see you within, let yourself out, and share all of you, the fears, the dreams, the blockages, and the joys. Let us, on both sie men and women, be there openly for each other and have those inner conversations in celebration of being enough in our own lives.
Ignite your heart and soul with Sara Troy and her guest Elizabeth Power, on-air from August 10th
The power of our spirituality has always been within us, to access it we have to let go of our human crises state that we so often live in. When we ignite that spirit from within, we learn so much more about ourselves and of our divine connection to source (God, Spirit, Source, Energy)
Elizabeth and I are going to take flight into our spiritual selves and share with you our divine presence in order to ignite your own spiritual liberation.
Elizabeth Power, M.Ed., is an international authority on trauma-informed care, change, and resilience. She’s also an Adjunct Instructor in Psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center and a veteran adult educator. Her new book, Healer: Reducing Crises is the first in a five-book series that reduces the time, trauma, and costs of healing from overwhelming events. Her clients include the National Center for PTSD, National Child Traumatic Stress Network, and many more. A frequent conference speaker and trainer, Elizabeth’s target is to teach ways to refocus on skills over sickness.
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