What I know about Trauma
- Lauren Jane
- Jul 26
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 25
The most important thing to remember is this To be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become. -W.E.B. DuBois
ﾟ* ⋅ ☽ ˙ . with kindness . ˙ ☽⋅ * ﾟ
Before anything else, I want to say: I love you. I love us. I love you even if your trauma is committing an act the same shape as my harm. I love you, and I am loyal to all of us. We're not here to talk about right and wrong. Wrong isn't in our mouths, never has been, not even in our darkest moments.
I was diagnosed with CPTSD in February 2025 after a year of trauma destroyed the compensations for PTSD i'd been living with for decades after experiencing life-altering violence as a teen.
I know trauma better now than ever; I have seen so many of its colours. And while I cannot participate in any systems or patterns whose result is the destruction of another (I cannot believe harm reduction is a zero-sum game; it is antithetical to the concept), I was desperate to see some good come from a year of hurt. I was reeling from seemingly endless collisions with one of life’s most banal and brutal truths — broken people break people, and I needed to make something, to unbreak something, in order to heal a little bit. So I wrote this. I wrote it for us. All of us. We are here because everyone, everyone, deserves to heal, because our healing creates more safety - that is something trauma taught me.
I am working and learning to be someone who can see the worst, most secret splinter of pain in you and touch it gently and with honour.
This is everything I know about trauma:
There is nothing wrong with you; there never was. Trauma is a biological response.
It still fucking sucks. I spent like a month getting graphic threats, and still, months later, there are moments in every single day where my whole body is convinced it's still happening.
They are just moments, and you can figure out how to love yourself anyway. We speak of the sunlight as “pouring down” but it moves in all directions; it's never poured out. Harm and hurt are like that. So is love.
It's a daily practice with yourself and others; you need empathy. You get better at it really fast
Most people won't want you to talk about it at all
Because it freaks them out, it reminds them of their hurt or their harm or reminds them they can't really protect themselves from anything. Be kind to them. Some people do this thing where they think they can be traumatised by hearing about someone else being traumatised - like some kind of trauma appropriation ( this isn't the same as saying secondary traumaa isn't real, it is saying a lot of people use the word "trauma" to mean they are upset, you can ignore them). Some people can't understand how you're saying it out loud, as though speaking it makes it real.
The most traumatising thing that ever happened to me was dehumanisation, and dehumanisation sits at the root of a lot of trauma and abuse. There is no act of dehumanisation where the perpetrators do not say they were provoked. It is the heart of our wounds, and inflicting it on others can't heal you. Dehumanisation isn't a tool of healing for anyone; it's cop logic laundering harm, it's the prison-industrial complex, it's fascism. This isn't the same as someone telling you not to be angry.
Trauma isn't the opposite of life; it is part of life, it is a time of stolen choices and forced
transformation. Transformative events are times of extreme growth. You can use this time of breaking to grow between the cracks, punch out space in your chest where you discover as much as you can about yourself. Find the lessons in yourself - like glistening beetles hiding under rocks - they are treasures. They are the secrets inside you that make you alive.
Be in bed as much as you fucking want.
Trauma is going to carve a secret about the world inside you. So many people think the secret is that you need to embrace a hardness in your heart, like a stone on the tongue. But the secret is actually that you need gentleness more than anything. If you learn this secret, it will be by finding a world inside yourself and learning to breathe. You are a soft animal, and you need soft animal pleasures. The secret is that you need kindness.
I don't believe it's just a symptom or biochemistry, but if you do, it's ok. I stand with you for whatever keeps you alive. But hurt people hurt people, and you will hurt people even if you don't mean to. Trauma recovery can be a beloved time of self-directed change when it's not holding a gun to your head - and when it is, that's different. Remember, deviation from normal makes you more susceptible to violence. Do not do violence onto others.
it gets better, it doesn't get better, it just changes, it gets better, it doesn't get better, you change, it gets better, it doesn't get better, it just changes, it gets better, it doesn't get better, you change
For me, it hasn't been a single event; it's a colour in the tapestry of my life. Trauma is dirty, messy, innocent and fucked up. It's graceless. If you want to love or support a traumatised person - especially if they are you - you have to let go of a lot of stories you tell yourself. Mostly, we want people to change, but we don't want to see them struggle, especially ourselves. You pretty much need to get over that. Trauma means you will feel feared and hated, you might even be feared and hated - but trauma can show us that we can fear and hate and love ourselves all at the same time. This is a lesson worth learning.
Trauma is a language of isolation, and in a lot of ways, it's so innocent. It sees everything, every colour and scent and sound as only ever about itself, and the truth is there is nothing wrong with its goals; it's only trying to keep you alive. It just happens to be wrong almost all the time.
You are translating every single word every moment all day - it's exhausting. I am saying you adopt a new first language. This is not a metaphor. You learn a new language. I'm very articulate. I score in the 99% on my verbal psychoeducational assessments after trauma - I had to, because my first language is the language of threat interpretation and hypervigilance. The worst thing you could do is forget that kindness is a language too.
You will forget that not everyone knows the inside of trauma; you will forget that it looks different from the outside. You will not notice that many people know the inside better than you.
Blessed are those who walk willingly into pain in pursuit of understanding. All of you are as sacred as a poem
The only way I can think to create a world with less harm is to honour it everywhere, no matter whose it is, to carry it with me with compassion, the way I carry my own.
People create beautiful things in response to the world, because they desire movement, motion, and change. Beauty is something inspiring but possibly dangerous, possibly life-changing. Something that shows us how susceptible we are to change. Make beautiful things.
There is no limit to the number of miserable endings your humanity will survive.
