Why trauma victims can become victorious

PEOPLE with trauma have been urged not to deny the opportunity to get healed because their strength lies in the parts, where they have been wounded.

According to experts, trauma is a term used to describe the challenging emotional consequences that living through a distressing event can have for an individual.

Speaking during a training session on Healing Unresolved Trauma to delegates of the SAWID 20 –Year Celebration Annual Dialogue concluded recently, Mental Wellness Initiative Chief Executive Officer Ms Tracey Kotzen said people who experience trauma can be healed and live a fulfilling life.

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She explained that some people who had traumatic experience tend to reject healing under the pretext of that they are living normal life, adding that they are so reactive to what is currently happening and don’t want to talk about the past.

Ms Kotzen said such decision make them deny the reality that they are living in pain, but simply take it that they are living ordinary normal life.

“In fact, it is important for them to recognize that their strength lies in the places where they have been wounded because if they have survived that initial wounding, they are actually incredibly strong and powerful,” the CEO said.

She said that such strength cannot be activated if they deny the trauma and the opportunity to heal.

The CEO insisted that the way to the best vision of such people is to go through the centre of the thing that hurt them most.

“If they could just capture the idea that their strengths lie there instead of trying to push out trauma aside for the idea of being normal then they will never get to see how incredibly strong and powerful they actually are but once they recognize their strengths and power then, they are unstoppable that any dream, achievement and   goal is actually within reach,” she said.

Ms Kotzen further said; “healing is not just a necessity so that we feel better, it is a necessity so that humanity improves, so that we are not burdened by our trauma but we are in fact released into great power because we have healed from those traumas.”

She further said that, one of the most profound impacts of unresolved trauma is that, it strangles one’s potential because a person spends so much time, energy and effort into trying to avoid the pain he feels and numb by watching television for eight hours in a row, engaging in unfunctional and addiction things such as sex and drugs among others.

“I would even say that someone who spending six to seven hours at a jam in one sitting is trying to numb something. She said when trauma is not resolved it reduces the person’s ability to function, creativity, to think and live in fight of flight mode,” she said.

Ms Kotzen said the victims also try to escape the pain by running away, creating conflict in their environment by sleeping or trust anything to avoid feeling it as a way it reduces one’s potential as human being.

The CEO further said that unresolved trauma takes a lot of energy to keep all that pain at bay and that is energy that a person is not putting into living his best life.

In another development Ms Kotzen said people who work in Gender Based Violence sector need to be supported because according to her organization’s latest research findings at least half of the respondents who said they are sexually abused survivors also work in the gender-based violence responsive sector.

She said that it is a clear cry we need to support people who work in this sector otherwise they will be constantly triggered by the working trauma at their centre which means healing for them is almost always a delayed thing.

Ms Kotzen noted that, they delay their own healing because they must be there for the clients.

“It is vital that healing and psychological safety and emotional containment is provided to people who work in human right space and it shouldn’t be a nice to have but it should be crucial to have otherwise we can lose a lot of people in the sector,” she said.

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