I talked a bit about this topic here, but I want to say it here with my whole chest and all the sanctified audacity and genuine humility in the world that:
Yes.
Yes, you can heal all your trauma.
We just need to adjust the wording in the question.
That is because you cannot heal all your trauma. You can’t, you do not, heal any of it.
So, let’s ask like this: Can all my trauma be healed?
And there’s the true yes.
For once you get going with the process and keep going with it—not out of grim determination but out of joy and resonance—then it, the process, works through you. You become the space for the healing to occur.
The more the space you have capacity to become: the more the healing happens in your body. The more your bodily wisdom can do its/her/their/his thing.
In this way: yes, fuck yes, absolutely, all your trauma can be healed.
As you more and more become the space, though: it will less and less matter whether all your trauma gets healed.
That is because you’ll be less and less future-oriented.
And that is because you’ll be more and more enjoying each bit of the present moment—each bit of the puzzle, the grand, grand Mystery you’ll feel yourself a part of.
Each part will feel so good. And the trauma healing will happen faster and faster.
And you will feel-know bodily: there really is no future. And so, what happens beyond this particular right now: It won't matter.
Mentally, conceptually, what I'm saying may not make sense. This is because we’re looking at somatic knowing, bodily truths. Not concepts. And so, while you may be like, “Huh??”, perhaps your body is recognizing/resonating with the above words.
***
Here’s the question I think is underneath “Can I heal all my trauma?”
That question is: Am I entitled to heal all my trauma?
And the answer is Yes. Yes fucking fuck yes, you are.
I really hate this idea that if you carry a lot of trauma. that the best you can hope for is an okay-level life. That you’ll always be marked, at least a little bit. That you’ll never be able to be really happy like other, “normal” people.
It’s just not true—or rather, it doesn’t have to be.
And why the fuck should you have to suffer more on the whole for your whole life, just because you suffered a lot already?
The answer is, you shouldn’t! And you don’t have to!
But the reason this “okay at best” idea is so infused in trauma work is because trauma largely is treated in in the mainstream, and thus in most trauma work, as pathology.
And so, most trauma work carries pathological tones. It’s heavy. Somber. Worst of all, there’s an absoluteness to the heaviness and somberness—a subtle “this is as good as it gets” quality or, at best, a subtle "it gets better but not, you know, great."
This pathological lens, as helpful as it intends to be, ensures the trauma can never all-the-way quite leave.
In other words, trauma healing must be non-pathological.
(Which means trauma itself must not be treated as pathology, but that's a whole 'nother thing. I'll get to it sooner or later, but I address it some here.)
And if trauma healing is non-pathological, it has to feel good.
Which leads to the next question in this four-question series: Can it?
Can trauma healing feel good?
We’ll look at this tomorrow.
(But the answer is that yes, trauma healing can feel good. Even further, it must feel good in order for it to be lastingly healing. More tomorrow!)
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