Can Mindfulness Heal Trauma?

Trauma is a big word these days. Big T, little T, all the t’s. Everyone is becoming aware of their own trauma and wanting to heal it. So can mindfulness heal trauma? The short answer is yes, but it's not that straightforward. Read on for more details!

I think to understand how mindfulness helps trauma, we must first understand what trauma is. Trauma happens when something overwhelms the system. This is why childhood trauma is pretty much universal. As children, our systems are easily overwhelmed simply because we are small and don’t have a fully developed brain. Overwhelm can take place when too much happens too fast (like an angry parent hitting) or when too little happens for too long (like neglect). But trauma is not the thing causing the overwhelm. If a caring parent apologizes, does not hit again and tells the child that was not ok, the child will most likely not be traumatized. The trauma is what happens inside the child’s mind that says “I’m a problem” or “I’m wrong” when no one helps the child to understand what happened. The trauma is the belief that helps to make sense of an overwhelming circumstance, not the circumstance. And the younger this belief gets created, the more ingrained and problematic the trauma will be.

Mindfulness can help us become aware of our harmful beliefs because it allows subconscious thoughts to bubble to the surface. The brain is in a relaxed state, so more of it’s processes are brought to awareness (kind of like how weird stuff pops up in your dreams while you sleep). But here’s the rub - when we bump up against something we believe, it can hurt us again. So let’s say I’m in meditation and my old belief of “I’m the problem” comes to consciousness, that’s the same as me going to school and my teacher singling me out as “the problem” in class. I believe it, so hearing it, seeing it, becoming aware of it hurts like hell. It is re-traumatizing. Also if I had an abusive parent (one who hit me over and over again), it would have been a survival mechanism to believe I was a problem because accepting punishment would have helped me maintain attachment and maybe appease my parent. Believing my parent was problematic and attempting to make them stop could have resulted in worse physical abuse or even abandonment. So now when I bump into “I’m a problem”, not only is that hurtful, I don’t want to let it go because it was so important for my survival. So hearing it again reinforces it.

Without mindfulness, on the other hand, we have a much harder time becoming aware of our harmful beliefs (our trauma) because they don’t pop up as words or direct thoughts, they pop up in our every day interactions as feelings and behaviours. The feeling of being a problem might compel us to act out, drink or shop compulsively. There’s no actual conscious thought. It’s the memory of feeling threatened.

So as a therapist, I do a lot of inquiry into my clients’ childhoods and ask a lot of questions like “what did you take away about yourself from that?” At first, clients can’t always answer. But over time, they begin to realize that those harmful beliefs came out of survival - an attempt to make sense of a world that really didn’t make sense (it never makes sense for a big adult to hit a small child). With mindfulness, they can now hear those beliefs pop into consciousness without being re-traumatized. Now they can choose not to believe and to let it go. We also investigate and allow the body feelings. Those bodily sensations now become a clue as to what subconscious thought is happening and we can actively bring it to the surface in our day to day lives and choose to not believe it, and to behave differently. With practice, the belief loses its power and the trauma heals. If a client doesn’t practice any mindfulness, it will take much longer, much more repetition of the same cognitive exercises to help the client choose different thoughts. It’s not impossible to heal, but it’s a lot harder.

So to answer the initial question, yes mindfulness heals, but doing it on your own can be really challenging. So if you’re struggling with your mindfulness practice, or feel bad after meditating, you’re not alone. You may just need some guidance from an experienced therapist. I wish I had known that therapists could help with mindfulness when I was starting out my own healing journey. When I had challenging meditations, I didn’t know who to talk to. Back in 2009 / 2010 when I started meditating, mindfulness wasn’t as big as it is now. All I knew was that it could help me heal my chronic pain, so I often pushed through those challenging moments. This led to a lot of struggle and lack of understanding of what was happening in my mind. See my blog post on the dark side of mindfulness to learn more. To better understand yourself, your e-motions and your mindfulness practice, seeing a therapist can help untangle things and clarify the challenges you’re facing.