On (Not) Writing Your Trauma
A Trauma-Informed Personal Trainer’s Approach To Sharing Your Story Thoughtfully
I spend a lot of time reading and writing about trauma because I am a trauma practitioner, educator, and writer. My book, Lifting Heavy Things: Healing Trauma One Rep at a Time, is a guide to turning any movement practice into a healing practice. It combines personal narrative, research, and practical exercises. Despite being both niche and cross-genre, It reached number one on Amazon’s “Pain Management” and “Weight Training” lists and was among the top ten books for “Healing.” It was featured by NPR and has garnered international attention and support from trauma and fitness organizations. And yet, the thing that one might expect to find in this kind of book — my personal trauma story, the reason for my coming to this work and keeping up with it for seven years — is nowhere to be found. Instead, my trauma story takes up all of two characters, set against a beautiful blank page:
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There is a lot of value in sharing one’s trauma story in a safe way with people you trust. But that kind of disclosure is not my approach to teaching and coaching from a trauma-informed way, so I felt no need to change my routine in the context of a book. In that sense, I’ve come to attribute the book’s success in a large part to the fact that I am authentic to my practice in my writing, and hopefully recreate what it might feel to have a movement practice with those elements.
What Happens Without A Trauma Informed Approach
Bringing a trauma-informed approach to all my work is imperative because I am teaching people who are coping with trauma about trauma itself; the very word “trauma” tends to stir up feelings that can be dysregulating to anyone. When that happens, a reader or client won’t be able to take in the information they are seeking from me because that nervous system dysregulation reduces their capacity for critical thought.
Have you ever read a book or even a social media post that hit close to home and suddenly found it hard to focus or afterwards felt like you must go straight to sleep? Those are signs of being overwhelmed by the experience of reading.
When you get overwhelmed by feelings, the survivalist part of your brain, called the limbic system, prepares you to fight, freeze, or flee — also known as the stress response. When the limbic system takes over your body, another part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex responsible for higher-level thinking, goes offline, like a flipping a light switch. Without the input from the prefrontal cortex, essential functions for processing trauma such as critical thought, attentiveness, and memory aren’t available. It may not seem like it, but this is a good design. It allows you to process the situation and respond faster than you can with the higher thinking parts of your brain; speed is important when you need to act fast to stay safe and say run from a bear or jump out of the way of an oncoming vehicle. The problem arises when you are dealing with something less dire like reading a book that is reminding you of past events, and your limbic system responds as if you are at risk of being back there or are back there.
I want my readers to be able to stay present and thoughtful while reading. I want them to feel seen, recognized, and as if they are gaining tools from reading what I have written. I also want to feel safe and grounded when I share myself with the world.
What We Are Doing in a Trauma-Informed Approach
Trauma-informed writing tends to the nervous system of both writer and reader so that all parties are more likely to stay present for the experience of the written work. It’s self-aware of both how the writer approaches their writing practice and in understanding how their words may impact their readers. Keeping this in mind makes my writing a more enjoyable and healing experience both in its practice and consumption, because neither my audience nor I winds up stewing in unprocessed emotions and mental disorganization.
If you are writing about trauma for yourself or for an audience, self-awareness is fundamental to keeping the act a safe and healing experience for all parties. For example, self-awareness enables me to know when to make space to pause both as writer and reader, when to ask for critical feedback and receive it, allows me feel safe to be my authentic self in a public forum, and it helped me produce a published work that is in alignment with my personal and professional values.
Whether you are writing a personal essay you hope to publish or are posting about an experience on social media, if you do so without self-awareness you expose yourself to reactions you may not be ready for and readers are left feeling stirred up without resolution or any lessons learned.
Honor Your Boundaries and Remember Your Reader
Before I wrote Lifting Heavy Things I was nervous. I really wanted writing this book to be a safe experience for me. Later I realized that in doing so I would be making a better book to read. With the help of a literary coach and my therapist I prioritized self awareness — starting with my own boundaries around writing and sharing. By reading first drafts of what I had written it was you can tell when I was less self-aware as I wrote. My writing suffered— it was confusing and disorganized. Lisa Weinert, my literary coach would read a draft and ask, “how long did you sit and write for? Did you take a break?” She could tell I hadn’t paused and come up for air and out of my own experience. That approach is fine for journaling but not for writing for an audience—especially if you want your audience to learn from you.
When I look at those drafts, I can see how it would be upsetting and confusing to read what I wrote when I wasn’t practicing good self-care. I was writing about some really hard times in my life. In my book I explore challenging topics such as trauma, self-esteem, body image issues, chronic pain, and injury. Going forward as I wrote and rewrote passages I explored the edges of my own boundaries and then I respected them. In doing so I was able to produce a book that connected with others while I tended to both my and my audience’s nervous system. The first step in doing this is honoring your own boundaries around what it is you are ready to share.
The biggest example of this is that I chose not to share my own trauma story. I have never shared my story publicly and in continuing to respect my own privacy I am honoring my own boundaries. And I am modeling how people can be on multiple platforms helping others and can also get help without disclosing any story that they wish to keep private. While yes, we need to confide our trauma story to someone who will meet use with empathy and hold space for us, we do not have to share it repeatedly, nor publicly, not even when seeking support with trauma symptoms. You don’t owe anyone your story. I chose the empty brackets as a visual representation of how I hold space for my experience without divulging too much, even as it created a space for the reader to insert their own story and see themselves in the experience.
Afterwards, I explain in my “Author’s Note on Privacy” that people share their own traumas for a variety of reasons — but I am not so certain that most people understand that they do not have to share to ask for help or be of service. While yes, it is fundamental to healing from trauma to share with someone who can hold the space and meet you with kindness, you need not share your trauma story widely, and you can respect your own boundaries even when seeking help.
This begs the question, “how do I know when I need to hold space for myself?” In future posts I will share more about knowing your boundaries and setting up a trauma informed writing practice.
To learn more about choosing to share your trauma story and about how a movement practice can be a healing practice check out Lifting Heavy Things: Healing Trauma One Rep at a Time.
(Originally published on Medium on March 22, 2022)