Learning the Difference Between Trauma and Mourning. A Road to Peace.

We live and we struggle each and every day of our lives. This is a given. Little things and big things haunt us from birth till death. 

Learning why we carry so much unhappiness and how to fend it off saves us time and agony. We are taught to feel fear of mostly everything since we are children and separate from our mothers and fathers. We are taught religion which makes our fears greater since they introduce us to death and a promise of eternal pain. No wonder we are a bit mad. Learning how to deal with all of this conclusively helps the quality of our life. 

It recently crossed my mind that trauma and mourning are two distinctly different issues that we have been mixing and confusing forever at our own peril. We need to learn that we cannot let go of the pain of our past without first dealing with resolving our traumas. 

The best example of how to describe mourning that I’ve encountered is to submit our mind to revisit a memory and, for a moment, relive it. This would be similar to pulling an index card from our mind and reading it again while allowing the emotions attached to the moment in time to play out. To mourn is to travel in time and relive our pain then release this pain while keeping the memory intact. Let the pain leave. Let it fly. Feel the peace of no longer carrying this baggage. We all carry too much weight from our past into our present which becomes an obstacle to our happiness. 

The other part of this equation is trauma. The trauma suffered from any event is a scar that remains embedded in our subconscious and is activated by external and/or internal events prompting us to relive the horror of that moment. As you can see it is entirely different from mourning.

An unusual yet clear example of trauma vs mourning was provided by a woman whose dog was bitten by a rabid lizard. The pet suffered a great deal but survived. Eventually, the pet died of old age. The woman deeply mourned the loss of her pet. Whenever she saw a lizard she became angry and distraught wanting to kill it. 

The pain from the loss and the fear caused by the attack are two separate emotional, and psychological issues that need individual repair in order to continue on our path, peacefully. 

Happy healing. 

Thank you for reading.