Unresolved Trauma of Aging
Talking about aging is becoming such a passion and a purpose that I have in my life as I get older. I want to lead other women on this aging process.
Because aging can be tricky. We go shopping, we see anti-aging on so many creams and so many just so many things in the store, helping you “turn back the clock”. Or we see an advertisement where they are pointing out our “creepy skin”. And they're trying to push these things down our throats that we need to anti-age.
We cannot anti-age, it is impossible to turn back the clock. What is possible is to love the older version of ourselves.
What is possible is to take care of ourselves in the best way we can, drinking enough water and getting adequate sleep and an adequate amount of protein and our protein needs increase as we get older.
How about dealing with the stress in our lives and dealing with the trauma in our lives? I really believe that unresolved trauma and dealing with that unresolved trauma in our lives is a major part of why aging can be so hard for so many people. If I gave you a one-pound weight, and I asked you to hold it straight out in front of you for one minute, you could do that. If I increased it to five minutes, you could do that 10 minutes, it would start feeling heavy, but you could do it.
Now, let's say I told you to hold that one pound weight for 24 hours straight. Probably not gonna happen. How about one year straight, it's not gonna happen. It's a small weight. It's not heavy but held out over time, it becomes impossible to hold, it will start to break you down. And that's the way unresolved trauma is in your life. We hold on to these things we don't offer forgiveness, or we don't go and ask for forgiveness, guys, none of us is perfect.
We have all done things that offend people, whether we meant to or not, it has happened. And when we don't go and ask for that forgiveness, or we don't grant forgiveness when it is asked of us, or we don't dig deep and deal with the hurts in our lives.
It affects us physically.
And as we get older, that hurt— that weight, that trauma becomes harder and harder and harder to hold on to. And it affects us physically.
Here are some of the ways that unresolved trauma can show up in our lives:
Chronic fatigue. Our bodies are not created to operate under high levels of stress and trauma for long periods of time. It drains us. Drains us. I read an article that said that those who suffer from PTSD are eight times more likely to also experience chronic fatigue. Think about that. Do you feel that? Do you feel this chronic fatigue? And how many times have somebody said to you well as we get older, well as we get older, here's a pill how many times for anything going on in your life? Have you heard well, here's a pill Why not dig a little deeper? I am not I am not anti-medicine. I promise you I am not I am very thankful for the surgeons who removed cancer from my body. I am very thankful for Tylenol when my head is pounding. And I also believe we can look deeper into finding out where some of these physical symptoms are coming from chronic fatigue, chronic pain, chronic pain, your body keeps a score.
There's an excellent book out there entitled The Body Keeps the Score. It is an excellent book of holding on to trauma and what it does to us physically. If your body is constantly pushed down from trauma effects, you're going to notice that physically chronic pain, chronic fatigue, how about good old gastrointestinal distress, bloating, nausea, abdominal pain could be related to unresolved past trauma, inflammation, dysfunction, irritation, the gut is linked to the brain. Now, this is not to say that if you have physical symptoms, you should not see if there is a physical component to it that is causing it. What I am asking you to do is to dig deep into your life as we get older and we're holding on to this trauma longer and longer and longer and longer.
Our bodies simply can't stand up under chronic headaches, migraines, and the inability to sleep once we get in bed, staring at the ceiling, not getting into a deep sleep.
The Body Keeps the Score.
And when we're holding on to that trauma, it can cause horrible physical attributes that are coming at us physical symptoms. But those physical symptoms may be coming from a trauma that we are refusing to let go of a trauma that we're refusing to deal with, or look at in our lives. I'm not a doctor, and I would never give you medical advice and I would never tell you don't go to the doctor. I do go to the doctor. If I had not gone to the doctor we would not have found my colorectal cancer. What I am saying and what I am begging you to do is to look.
Look at your life. And really, really dig deep. Are there people that you have not forgiven? Whether they've asked for it or not? Are there people that you avoid? Because you know, you've wronged them and you just don't know how to face them?
Are there things in your past that you've never seen a counselor for? Sexual Abuse, unrelenting teasing as a child being bullied. It is not. It is not a slam on you to get counseling, to receive therapy.
They're beautiful, beautiful things. So while you are working with the physical ailments in your body, you are also dealing with things going on in your life. Emotionally, aging doesn't have to be this horrible, horrible thing. But for many, many, many of us, aging hits us hard.
Because our bodies do change physically, especially as women we go through menopause, our bodies pause and they reset. We are told by society that we are to expect weight gain and we are to expect mood swings and hot flashes and there's nothing we can do about it. And that is a lie, as well. One of the things I shared on Instagram this week was that I did my own searching, I started digging deep and I read an article that said sage.
Sage helps with hot flashes and I started adding an organic sage tea bag to my water every day just putting it in my water bottle and my hot flashes all but disappeared with a sage teabag. We get to learn these things together. Aging gets to be a beautiful time. I had someone respond and say, well, as we get older, I guess we're supposed to have wisdom. That's a great point. And I loved the way she worded it we're supposed to have wisdom. Or maybe we could have wisdom. We absolutely will. If we allow ourselves to learn from the stress and trauma that we have gone through in our lives because let's face it, no one gets to be 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, and above, without having some kind of trauma in our lives, we've lost someone or we've been bullied, or we've lost a home we've lost a child, we've gone through the loss of a pet. Everyone, as we age, we end up with these traumas, and with these hurts, it's a part of aging. And if we allow ourselves, we can gain wisdom from those things. Aging doesn't automatically bring wisdom because wisdom is putting knowledge to use.
But we certainly can.
And then we get to share that wisdom with younger people who have not quite been through everything we've been through it is a beautiful, beautiful gift. It's such a beautiful thing to age. And I would implore you to look at the benefits of aging and to deal with things in your life that come along deal with them. Because holding on to emotional trauma is going to give you these “symptoms of aging”, fatigue and sleeplessness. Pain those things come up with emotional trauma.
I want you to think “Wouldn't it be awesome to deal with it now?”