The last two years of my life have been the definition of trauma.

Without going into detail, in a short amount of time, I lost my dad to suicide, my daughter was born with a rare organ problem, we spent 5 weeks in the NICU and she passed away in our arms. I got pregnant again and had a miscarriage at 15 weeks. Then I bled so much I passed out for far too long, 911 ambulance call, hospital stay, and a long recovery.

I Get What it Feels Like

Tragedy and trauma feel debilitating.

All of that in under two years left me having to force myself to breathe. The intensity of despair mixed with confusion, sadness, and hopelessness felt like a physical pain that if I felt it any longer, was going to kill me. Unbearable and inescapable emotional affliction rushing through my entire body.

I wanted to know how to walk through all of that in a healthy way. I needed to know how to process and clear everything so it didn’t cause mental and physical health problems years down the road.

But how?

That’s what I went searching for. And the good news is, you, your body, and your mind are incredibly resilient. You can heal. You can have a good life after loss, disappointment, tragedy, and pain. And you can release what happened and use it to make you better off than you were before (even if it doesn’t seem that way right now).

How to Release Trauma From the Body

Trauma can and does affect your mind and body. Anyone who has been through something hard can tell you that. But it doesn’t have to stop there. You can actually use it to make you better off than you were before.

There are a few areas that have dramatically helped me move through and clear the trauma.

1. Clearing Prayer: in the world, you can’t see. . .
2. Change how you relate to terrible emotions
3. Energy Psychology
4. Body/Breath Work 
5. Use it

Clearing Prayer

There are very real battles going on in the Spiritual realm. When trials and tragedies happen, there are a ton of things that can happen that need to be cleared to heal the soul and clear cellular memories so the issue doesn’t end up creating physical and life problems in the future.

When you are dealing with any health issue, or after any traumatic situation happens, do this first. Go to the courts of heaven, break what needs to be broken, receive what needs to be received, and deal with the Spiritual Realm first.

Read – Receiving Healing from the Courts of Heaven

There are three important parts to a clearing

1. Repent/forgive: In any trial or trauma, falling into bitterness, unforgiveness, offense, envy, judgment, shame, guilt, etc. is easy to do. AND those energies are the number one block to healing. Really taking time to pray ‘Who do I need to forgive? What do I need to repent for? is so critical to have a clean slate for healing. Repenting isn’t something you ‘have to’ do because you did something wrong. It’s FOR YOU. It clears aways blocks that are holding you back. It breaks strongholds. Forgiving and repenting set you free.
2. Remove: The next step is a good removing of. . . any generational sin/trauma you can thin of, spirits of trauma in general, remove cellular memories, depression, fear, or anything else along those lines – remove them and place them at Yeshua’s feet for judgment.
3. Refill – After you have repented and removed, then you refill. You make decrees and new agreements and new beliefs. You refill with the dunamous power of Jesus and his healing blood.

The act of repenting, forgiving and giving authority to God and presenting your life to Him in the courts of heaven is doing more than we will ever be able to understand and leads to healing and blessing both in this life, and eternity.

The Spiritual realm will affect the physical body and the mind. Making changes in the Spiritual always leads to healing and life in the physical.

Any traumatic moment or memory is an opportunity for clearing what may have gotten in and replace it with life.

I also like to take communion during this time of prayer as a physical act of having Jesus’s blood wash away what needs to be gone.

Change the Way you Relate to Terrible Emotions 

Make Space

When trials, tragedy, or even just stressful times come along, you’ll want to distract yourself. With social media, with Tv, food, alcohol, being busy. The last thing you will want to do is sit with no distractions, but that’s what it takes to have what needs to be healed come up.

That means wherever you turn to numb or distract yourself, really try to give it a break.

One morning upon waking up with heavy sorrow, I felt God say: “The moments of grief, hopelessness, heartache, anger, disappointment, sadness, fear, anxiety, depression – I need you to change the way you see those times of pain. Those are sacred moments for me and you. Those are the moments where the veil is the thinnest and I can be the closest. In those moments your heart is broken, which makes you open for the light and healing to get in, and you can receive more. I take the broken pieces and put them together in a way that is even more beautiful than before. Those are the moments I can do heart surgery on you, taking what has hurt you and giving you what you need. Those hard moments that you don’t want to feel, I want to take what’s coming up and clear it from you so you are ahead of where you were. It’s coming up, give it to me so you can be free.”

To have what you went through make you stronger and better off than before requires the space to let out what has been put in during that time. You’ll know what needs to come out because you’ll feel it come in waves. Often heartbreaking, anxiety, disappointment filled waves. When you make space in stillness, those emotions begin to surface but that’s happening because you are making space for them to come up, get out, and get healed. That’s a good thing.

But it’s one of the hardest things you will ever have to do in your life. Face, feel, and sit long enough to let God heal what comes up, knowing that wave of despair is a signal for a sacred moment. To separate your thoughts from the enemys. To sit and allow him to take whats coming up. Literally grabbing it off yourself and giving it to him. Drawing near to him so he will draw near to you and do the heart surgery you need. Taking what needs to be gone and giving you something in return. He always wants to leave you better off than before. After every wave of despair. After every tragedy. After every disappointment. There is never a limit of making you more whole and healthy in every area of your life. But it takes that time set apart when you are feeling the horrible pain to let that exchange happen. Then, a release takes place where you know you are different, in the best way.

I know I am different after those moments because thinking about what usually made me sick and beyond disappointed doesn’t have that emotional charge anymore. I can think about it without feeling the despair. That’s healing. That’s exhilarating.

What the enemy wants is to block that exchange and healing. By offering bitterness, hopelessness, judgment, and comparison. By looking at what everyone else has and you don’t. By having you become so busy and so distracted that you end up avoiding and numbing what needs to get out. With social media. With alcohol. With TV. With shopping. With food. With video games. Anything that is taking your attention. When that happens, the pain won’t get out. The pieces of your heart will stay broken. And you’ll keep feeling the anxiety fear depression them stab your mind.

Power is knowing you are going to feel really, really hard things, and making space to lean into the lows so you can come back up with a new resilience, healing, perception, and awareness of life.

Power is getting awesome at feeling really handling things. And not labeling the hard emotions as ‘bad’.

Power is knowing thoughts and emotions are not you, you are the one witnessing them. Not all thoughts are your thoughts. Knowing you can feel fear and hopelessness without partnering with it. The practice is being aware and present with what you are feeling and thinking without believing it.

Power is allowing the pain to cause you to seek and know God like never before, getting rid of all the distractions, knowing He has something bigger and better for you and your life, and it’s time to step into it.

Fully feeling whatever is coming up and stopping to have a sacred moment with God when they do will move you through the process and give you the power that pain has brought you to. One that can always make you better than before. That’s what He wants, to Heal and make you closer to Him and His plans for you through every trial.

Run towards the pain and it will run away from you

The answer to pain is in the pain. -Rumi

The cave you fear to enter contains the answers that you seek. -Joseph Campbell

It’s true.

We are taught to run towards pleasure and away from pain. Like feeling anxiety and depression and despair is a bad thing.  Those emotions are not bad, they are neutral. Your resistance and thoughts about those feelings are what makes them bad. When you actually acknowledge what’s coming up without making it ‘bad’, then those energies can move through and release. 

One of my mantras when I am feeling terrible emotions is: “I am awesome at feeling hard things”. Peace is the willingness to experience the full spectrum of emotions. I know I can feel anything and be okay. I know emotions are an important roadmap and signal. If I can be okay with and do practices to move through the excruciating emotions, then I know I can do anything. 

Not all thoughts are your thoughts 

Of course the enemy will come at you strong with all thoughts and feelings of destruction and ‘life isn’t worth it’, ‘it’s too hard’, ‘i can’t go on’ during times of stress and trauma, that’s when you are most vulnerable. To be able to just whiteness those destructive thoughts and realize they are not you, you take your power back. 

That’s a skill. To be able to recognize in the moment you are having the anxiety and depression filled thoughts that those thoughts are not you. Because it’s actually hard to separate yourself and not get caught up emotionally when you are in a triggering situation, but the more you practice being able to stop and just observe what is coming up without reacting or believing it, the better your life will get and the more powerful you become. 

Energy Psychology

When a traumatic situation happens, your body stores it in your cells, known as cellular memories. These cellular memories can trigger the immune system causing health issues and they also trigger mental and emotional imbalance.

When I say energy, I mean the literal electric currents and charges to our bodies, not some kind of weird New Age “energy”. Energy psychology is a way to physically clear the body from traumatic electrical emotions.

Forms of energy psychology include:

1. EMDR
2. EFT (tapping)
3. Splanka
4. Thought Feild Therapy
5. Emotion Code

The best way to describe energy psychology is this;

Say you drive up on a wreck in the road where rocks have fallen down off the mountain. You can talk about the rocks on the road, where they came from, what they look like, how they fell, how they are blocking the road- But that won’t move them. You can even figure out another way to get around the rocks – but what you want to do is just remove the rocks from the road.

Talk therapy most of the time won’t actually move the blocks. It can help you understand the blocks, but not get rid of them. That’s what energy psychology does, it removes the blocks from the body that are causing the mental and physical problems.

Use Your Body

A lot of times it’s hard to think your way out of painful emotions. That’s where using your body to change your mind comes in.

Whatever happens to your mind happens to your body AND visa versa. Meaning you can use your body to change how you feel and think (and you can also use your mind to change your body – but more on that later).

This is an important step – using your body in many ways – breathing, moving/shaking, exercising, tapping ect. 

You need to activate different pathways in your body that create the chemicals reactions to release what’s stored and change how you feel.

Moving and breathing practices help move through that traumatic energy that has been stored. 

Explore breathing and movement practices that resonate most with you and DO THEM when you are feeling the despair, depression, and hopelessness. 

When I am feeling the heaviness, anxiety, heartbreak, depression – I know I need to do something will my body to help them move through.

One of the best things you could do after feeling the adrenaline of a traumatic situation is shake. I learned this from a woman that teaches police officers and our military how not to have the trauma cause problems in their body and life.

In the wild, after an animal is done being chased, it gives a good shake and moves on. The act of jumping up and down and shaking your body releases that energy/molecules that have the potential to get stuck. 

When in doubt, tap and shake it out 🙂

Use It

Trauma and trials will either make you or break you, but either way, you will never be the same.

The reality you experience depends on how you think about what happens to you. It’s not about what’s happening, it’s about how you are relating to it. It’s about how you process it, what you are going to make it mean, and what direction you are going to take it.

The lens with which you view your trials determines the fruit (or lack thereof) that can come from them.

Hard things will happen, always. And those hard trials can be the very catalysts that form you into the person you have the potential to be. The person doing things you never dreamed you could do.

Pain can be turned into power.

With every situation, you can go multiple ways – you can use it, or it can use you.

It can use you, shading your perception as hopeless, powerless, weak, ‘why me’, overwhelmed. That’s never the truth. The enemy doesn’t want you to know that every trial can actually benefit you extremely and can give you more than it takes away. He wants to make you feel powerless when really, trials add to your power more than you can understand. They are the weight to build the muscles you want that only come through heavy resistance. The exercise that builds up your endurance so you will be able to face anything life brings with ease. When you choose to walk through a trial with an open heart, a door that opens to your next level of potential and influence in a world that needs strong people that have had to lift a lot of weight. You can use them to add to you.

Even though you wouldn’t choose to go through what you have been given, you can choose to use it to become healthier, stronger, and better than you were before. That doesn’t mean you pretend everything is okay or think you should be positive or think you should feel full of faith instead of anxiety. No. Using the situation is facing the heart-wrenching emotions and learning how to heal and move through the darkest of seasons. Knowing that facing that kind of pain is what’s transforming you, refining you, and making you a powerful person.

There’s no hero’s without a battle. Battles hurt, but they can bring rewards.

The most transformation often comes out of the trenches of pain because you can access places you couldn’t go before when you’re in the midst of it. It’s causing you to dig deeper because you have no other option, and it’s the digging in the greater depths that gold is found.

Pain and tragedy can actually give you the insane drive and focus to draw closer to God than ever before, shut down distractions instead of run to them, and break down all of your walls until you are in a place of total surrender and dependency, and that is creating a future and eternity you can’t even imagine. It’s impacting people that need what you have now from getting through it.

Your body reacts to your perception of what’s going on, not what is actually going on.

Your perception activities your nervous system, DNA, and hormones – in a good way or in a bad way.

So really, you don’t need to ‘manage your stress’ you need to ‘manage your perception of what is going on around you”. We are meant to handle incredibly hard things – it’s not the hard things that cause problems, it’s how you react and think about those hard things. Crazy.

Everything you do – your thoughts are affecting how your body responds to it.

If you believe that the pain and trials are making you better, they will! If you believe they are hurting you, they will.

Always Remember

Every day will be different. The range of emotions you will experience will be insane. Okay one moment, a wreck the next. That’s normal! Give yourself patience and grace. Being present with whatever you are feeling and taking steps to walk through it, knowing it’s okay to feel really hard things. In fact, it’s one of the only things that can make you a world-changing human.

You will never be the same, you can actually be better, more resilient, and focused on what actually matters. More prepared to do what only you were created to release to the world. More immune to fear, and worry, and stress.

Whatever trauma or tragedy you have gone through, I pray complete healing and rejuvenation throughout every cell, system, and organ of your body. I pray your mind will be filled with divine wisdom and perspective that leaves you in awe and wonder. I send the shalom, love, and healing blood of Jesus to fill your spirit, soul, and body.

And really remember, whatever happens in our short stay on earth, we will look back at it and wish we would have told ourselves to just hold on, this life really is just one second, one blink compared to eternity.