Processing Trauma

I've seen my fair share of that at the Ryder Trauma Center in Miami during my medical training . If you've seen any popular medical show , you've seen trauma as well . There's another definition of trauma , which is defined in terms of human psychology , which means an emotional response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event .

That emotional response could initially be even small , but if the disturbing event is repetitive , then the cumulative emotional response can translate into trauma as well . In this podcast , I'll use the term trauma in its psychological context . In this podcast , I'll use the term trauma in its psychological context .

Professionals describe three types of trauma Acute , which is a single event like rape , accident , assault , natural disaster , death of a loved one . Chronic , such as from a chronic illness , ongoing physical , emotional or sexual abuse , war or political unrest in the country . Third type being complex trauma , which is a combination of the above two .

To some extent , acute trauma can also evolve into chronic and complex , also leading to PTSD and such illnesses . As a high-performing Muslim woman , it becomes extremely important for you to raise your trauma IQ . If you don't think you've had any trauma , that's great , alhamdulillah . I want you to listen to this podcast anyways .

Just be curious about the concepts that we discuss in this podcast to see if anything comes to surface that might be keeping you from living your best , most successful life . So in this podcast , we're going to be working towards raising your trauma IQ . This is the trauma intelligence that we can raise .

I love that there's an intelligence quotient about everything these days . This helps us gain more clarity through the flexible definition of intelligence rather than the rigid definition that most of us grew up . Learning Point of raising your trauma IQ is to identify what factors are at play that are shaping your daily life .

If you have signs and symptoms of irritability , anxiety or panic , difficulty with sleep , unreasonable amount of mistrust , distractibility , lack of self-care and self-compassion , flashbacks , fatigue Any of these can be symptoms of previous trauma .

Now , with any of these , if your symptoms are severe enough that you are non-functional , meaning you cannot hold a job , maintain personal relationships , keep up with your personal hygiene or get out of bed , for that matter , then you need professional help . Life coaching is not for you , but for everyone else .

I have great news , meaning if you can perform all of these actions , even if in the past you couldn't and you got some help through a licensed mental health professional and now you're a functioning individual , or if you've always been a functioning individual , then you're in the right place .

Raising trauma IQ helps people that are functional and that consider themselves to be high performers . It helps them achieve even higher levels of success performers . It helps them achieve even higher levels of success . For now , here I'll be addressing high performers , but the concept applies to everyone .

Most of us consider ourselves to be high performing despite of the trauma that we might have had . What I want to offer you is that you are a high performer because of your trauma , not in spite of it .

This definition becomes important because when you are considering your trauma as something to overcome , it will always show up as a limitation that you have to work through , something that you might have to fight through . That is why most high performers cap at a certain level , because everyone can only fight that war to a certain extent .

After that , the mind and the body become exhausted , even if you're averaging a higher performance than everyone else . If you are to stretch your goals , you might not be able to overcome the limitations that your brain presents to you . Like I said , you will be able to do it to some extent , but then exhaustion will set in .

After some time , fatigue will keep you from fighting through those limitations . This is a classic picture of workaholics , or people seeking extreme thrill and risky behavior that they call adventurous , but they're all actions to escape the trauma .

This happens when you're either tired of processing the trauma or you've never attempted to process it and you've just buried it deeper and deeper . So , going back to , what I'm actually offering is that your success is because of your trauma , not in spite of it .

Looking at it from this lens makes it a part of your journey , something that was always supposed to happen , which is the classic definition of qadr . You accepting your trauma does not mean that you're condoning what happened , especially in a circumstance of abuse , unknowing what happened , especially in a circumstance of abuse .

I find clients fight this point of view tooth and nail because they think if they accept it as something that was supposed to happen , they're agreeing with what happened and therefore somehow allowing it to happen . What I will prove to you is that quite the opposite is true .

By accepting your trauma as a part of your journey , you are freeing yourself from the constant battle of fighting it . This does not mean that you somehow brought the trauma upon yourself or you enabled the abuse or that you are condoning it . This is not victim blaming . This is quite the opposite . This is empowerment .

Accepting your trauma as something that was a part of your journey frees you from the burden of having to constantly fight it , because when you're constantly fighting your past , you're fighting reality .

This frees up a lot of your mental real estate more processing power that when you show up in life as a high performer and create big , hairy , audacious goals , also known as BHAGs . This is a term that was coined by James Collins and Jerry Porras in 1994 in a book called Built to Last .

When you create these big , hairy , audacious goals , you don't make the failures mean anything personal about you . At each failure , you don't say to yourself it wasn't supposed to happen for me . I am always making mistakes . Why does this happen to me ?

If you have unprocessed , suppressed trauma , you will immediately revert to your previous memorized emotions of the trauma state and self-blame to your previous memorized emotions of the trauma state and self-blame .

When you don't internalize these mistakes , when you don't make failures mean anything personal about you , that's when you find your highest and truest level of success . Because if you stop failing because of your fears of rejection , you will not learn . Success is truly built on a pile of failures .

So raising your trauma IQ doesn't only include identifying the source of the trauma . It also includes identifying where is it that it's currently showing up in your life while not resisting it . So to help you identify your trauma better , there are multiple assessments you can take . One of them is an ACE score , which stands for Adverse Childhood Experience score .

I'll include the link in the show notes . I highly recommend that you take this assessment and start by recognizing where it all started and where it is still showing up in your life , because it is showing up in your life one way or another and capping your progress at a certain point . Unprocessed trauma especially shows up in personal relationships .

Whenever it's time for you to get close and intimate with your partner , or in your close personal relationships with your children , the memories of the trauma resurface and your personality turns into the authoritarian type .

If you're finding irritability , reactivity , if you don't have clarity of your goals , if you're constantly second-guessing your decisions , if you're believing other people's criticism about you , it is highly likely it's because you have unprocessed trauma . For me , as a type A personality , it was showing up everywhere in my life .

Once I accepted that I have unprocessed childhood trauma and that it was my struggle , I became curious about it . I stopped going into fight and flight mode every time a traumatic experience came up for me . That's where I found my true joy and fulfillment , and that was right .

On the other side of identifying and accepting and processing trauma , my ACE score is 4 . In case anyone is interested , the highest you can get is a 10 . An ACE score of 4 or more is associated with adverse health outcomes , including heart disease , cancers and addictive behaviors .

This is secondary to chronic stress that you might be unintentionally cultivating by remaining unconscious towards your trauma . I mention my score because if I can do this , anyone can Investigate your struggle , just by being curious to see if trauma is still affecting you .

If the rest of the journey seems too scary , find me for for life coaching at islamiclifecoachschoolcom . I do offer a free consultation . The fruits of your labor . The result you find at the end of this work raising your trauma IQ and working to solve it oh my god , you guys , it is so rewarding , just so good and it is so worth the effort .

So you guys all know that I can never end a podcast without mentioning how complete our religion is . The concept of qadr as it relates to your past gives you a level of acceptance that you don't find in other traditions .

It says things happen the way they did because Allah meant it for you , because he knows what's good for you better than you do , because he does not burden any soul more than it can bear . For a non-believer , accepting of the past can take months to years to process . Your belief in qadr helps you process it right away .

Your past happened the way it did because that's how it happened . End of story . You didn't make it happen . You might not have deserved for it to happen , but it happened .

If it was written for you , that was a part of your journey in this life . If you cannot completely process it right away , just on the basis of qadr , that's okay as well . So now that becomes a part of your journey too . I pray to Allah that he guides us in understanding the past .

I pray that he keeps us on His religion while we are embarking on this quest to debunk the power that the past and the trauma hold on us . May Allah grant us all the strength and the courage to face our fears . May he grant us the reward for struggling in His path , understanding His design and ultimately submitting to Him with all our hearts .

I will speak to you guys next time .