Reclaiming Authenticity: Unmasking After Complex Trauma and Embracing Self-Love

Emerging from the shadows of complex trauma, we can often find ourselves hidden beneath layers of protective personas - masks that shield us, yet also disconnect us from our authentic selves. In this raw and reverberating episode of Hidden Healing, we delve into the maze of  identity, exploring how we can reclaim our personal agency and find our way back to genuine selfhood.

Starting with my own journey from the grips of complex trauma, we explore how these protective masks form and how we can dismantle them to uncover our true identities. We discuss the transformative power of self-love and acceptance and provide practical and emotional tools such as journaling, meditation, and therapeutic guidance to assist you on your path to authenticity. Beyond the personal, we also delve into the impact of our shared narratives, examining how breaking the silence on our trauma stories can help liberate not just ourselves, but future generations. So let's embark on this voyage together, as we navigate the uncharted waters of healing, authenticity, and reclaiming our true selves.

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This podcast is not meant to take the place of therapy, to diagnose or treat anyone. I have had therapy as recently as 2021 and found it very helpful. I am not a doctor. My only degree is in computers. I am simply sharing tools I have used to help myself grow to become an emotionally healthy person and sharing stories about my journey. Please seek medical help, as I did, if you are unable to cope with life and all that it brings.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Welcome to the Hidden Healing Podcast. Thank you for stopping by to take a listen. I have a few questions for you. Did you grow up with a lot of adverse childhood experiences? Do you live in the toxic stress of fight or flight, feeling constantly triggered by things that make you feel unsafe? Well, you're in the right place. Listen in as I share stories and lessons from my journey in healing from complex PTSD. Listening to this podcast will help you learn to retrain your nervous system so that you feel safe and experience fewer triggers, and learn how over functioning no longer serves you and how the key to healing lies in your identity and your somatic recovery. I hope you enjoy this episode.

Speaker 1: 0:55

Complex trauma often makes us develop adaptive behaviors, as we know, we've talked about this, and some of those adaptive behaviors are creating protective masks or personas that help us really navigate the danger zones of life right that we face on a daily basis. But these masks can also block our true selves. They hide our true selves. They cause us not to know our true selves, which leads to a real disconnection from who we genuinely are, or our genuine emotions, desires and beliefs. And so healing that means peeling back all those layers of survival, the survival self right, the masks that we put on, the personas that we put on the titles that we wear, that help us remain safe without being vulnerable. We don't have to be authentic and possibly be criticized by other people, but as we shed these masks, something beautiful happens as well, because we uncover hidden parts of ourselves that we maybe didn't even know existed, because a lot of our trauma happened when we were so young and, ultimately, in learning about ourselves and fostering the self, love and acceptance we get to grow. So today, we're going to be talking about reclaiming our authenticity After surviving complex trauma. The journey towards healing really involves finding out who we truly are, or answering that question who am I? And the process is really essential because it allows us to embrace our self and our own experience. It allows us to rebuild our identity who, who am I? It allows us to build our authentic identity and foster genuine connections, because now we know who we really are, and so other people can see who we really are.

Speaker 1: 2:51

So the main reason for taking off this mask, though, is for personal agency, and I want to talk about what that is. I looked up the definition, and this is one that I really like. Personal agency is a person's capacity and power to act independently, make choices and take responsibility for our thoughts and actions and decisions. It includes the beliefs and one's ability to influence and shape our own life circumstances, overcome challenges and pursue our own goals with a sense of autonomy and self determination. Personal agency involves recognizing and utilizing one's resources, skills, internal motivations, to navigate and impact our environment. It plays a crucial role in personal growth, empowerment and the ability to shape one's own identity and life decisions. So that's what we're trying to do when we answer the question who am I? Is reclaim our personal agency, being responsible for our own thoughts, actions and decisions. I personally love that so much and it has really been. One of my greatest pleasures is figuring out who I am and being strong in that sense of who I am.

Speaker 1: 4:07

But truly complex trauma often strips away our sense of control and power, and it leaves us feeling really disconnected, not just from ourselves but from other people, from our community. And so as we gradually remove the masks that were formed in our younger years, we regain a sense of ourself and in that is a control over our own lives and a control over our own story and where it goes from. Here. It's also a benefit, because when we find out who we really are, it's like changing from identifying ourselves as this person who survived trauma or who survived a childhood that was traumatic, I guess, and instead of identifying with that, we're making a declaration about who we are, about who we are, not related to that trauma, and that is to me a point of strength that gives me strength inside. But it also serves as an opportunity for us to embrace our stories fully, and anyone who's had trauma knows that it's this narrative that is perpetuated in the United States and a lot of other places as well that trauma should be hidden and it is embarrassing, it's shameful and it should be kept in secret. But and I'm not suggesting by any means that everyone go out and have a podcast, but if that suits you, then do it. You know, and the opposite of secrecy and the opposite of hiding in suppression is not calling it out on the rooftops and in the street. So keep that in mind as well.

Speaker 1: 5:51

But by unveiling authentic selves, in whatever capacity that is for us, we get to transform our trauma into something meaningful and it allows us to acknowledge our experiences, to validate those emotions and to find a sense of purpose and our transparency, at whatever level that is or to whomever we choose, allows us to advocate for ourselves and to become strong and to break the cycle of silence that seems to perpetuate itself and that seems, to you know, pass on from one generation to the next. And so, as you know, I have this podcast, but I also try to talk to my children about all of this trauma, trying to break cycles and trying to encourage them to understand that it doesn't have to be their future right that, because it was my future and my mother's future and my grandmother's future. By talking about this, by being transparent about this, I feel like we can break the cycle Again. I'm not a professional. I might be a professional podcaster someday, but right now I am not a professional. I'm just talking about my experience. So please keep that in mind as we do talk about this.

Speaker 1: 7:11

But on masking ourselves, our true self, it helps us rebuild our own fractured identity and it can lead us to connecting with ourselves once again, which is a struggle that most people who have complex trauma have on a daily basis or a minute to minute basis, because we tend to forget who we are as we put on more and more masks, or more and more roles in life, or hats as, however you would prefer to say it. And so when we peel back each of those layers, one at a time, we get to our core essence of who we are, and the self discovery and the self acceptance it allows us to define ourselves on our own terms and not based on our past experiences, but based on who we truly are at our core, like when we were born. Who were we, and we can start to become that person. Another beautiful thing about unmasking our authentic self is that it changes the way we relate to other people. So, if you think about it, complex trauma causes us to, in a way, kind of be fake. And it's not that we're being fake because you know for any kind of gain other than to be accepted and loved, to have our needs met, but it kind of does is like fake masks that make us so that no one will reject us right. And so by showing our true selves, we get to show other people who we really are, so that they can accept us and support us. Then we get to be friends with those people who are really a true match for us, genuine connections based on being authentically ourselves and we get to be surrounded in a community that sees us and appreciates us. And I want to say that that is. I mean, think about how many pillars that is right there. That's three pillars of healing by unmasking our true self and so answering the question who am I? Is so important, so important. So the things to consider are that, as we unmask, we should approach this with patience, with grace, with compassion and sometimes even with professional support. We want to make sure to be kind to ourselves, because this is a deeply personal process and so it varies from individual to individual, and so sometimes it is necessary to seek guidance that can help us through this process.

Speaker 1: 9:47

I do remember when I was 19, I asked my mom to help me to see someone, because I was having behaviors that kept people away from me. I was judging people really harshly and my thoughts had become all judgmental, all looking at people and not seeing people, but seeing what they did and the badness, just really as a way to try to protect myself. You know, and I didn't want that anymore because it's when I mean, that was an adaptive behavior criticizing everybody caused people to stay away from me, and surely, if people stay away from me, I will be safe, right. So taking off the mask, one layer at a time, caused people around me to see who I truly am and causes genuine connections for me, because my husband is doing the same work that I'm doing and we kind of on our on a parallel journey together, but on our own journey as well, because you know we're we're a married couple, but we both had our own trauma and are both doing our own healing work. That is quite similar and it has even deepened our love for each other because we're able to see our true selves.

Speaker 1: 11:01

Now. It's kind of like, when I think about some of the masks that we put on and how we hide ourselves, we end up like a scared animal who's been abused that you know like. Have you ever seen like a dog that's been abused? And then it, you know, strikes at you and it growls and really what it wants to do is feel safe and be loved. But it has these adaptive behaviors to stay alive, right. And so, likewise, I had a lot of those behaviors that were keeping people away from me when what I truly wanted was to be accepted and loved and to be seen for myself.

Speaker 1: 11:35

So I currently am not seeing anyone right now to help me through this process, but in the past I have seen people off and on. I'm not sure if it was this year. Last year I did again go in to see somebody to help me, because I hit these roads where I can't seem to get past something and then I need a little bit of help, and so seeking therapeutic guidance is always a good tool. And just think about it, like when you have a tool like journaling, which helps you see how you're feeling and get emotions out, helps you feel like you had someone witness your thoughts and emotions. Or if you use meditation to stand behind the waterfall and see the thoughts and observe them as a neutral observer. Or another tool we have is like deep breathing. Seeing someone for therapy is one of those tools that we can also use. So if you've ever considered it or you feel like it might be something you want to do, it's always a good idea. It's always a good idea to err on the side of seeking help right, and so that's what I've always done as well, because we can have many, many tools in inhaling. It doesn't just have to be one.

Speaker 1: 12:52

So today we're talking about unmasking our authentic self, reclaiming our authenticity, and I think that it's worth it. And so not talking super deep about it today, because of course, we're gonna be talking about it more talking about our authenticity and how to be vulnerable, how to be someone that other people wanna be around, how to not take triggers and be triggered, but instead how to be present and in that presence, in that strength of learning who we are and uncovering our authenticity, we're able to have truer relationships where we're not triggered all the time. So that is my thought for this week. What do you think? Have you been already reclaiming your authenticity? Have you been on this journey for a while? Have you begun to see beautiful glimpses of yourself?

Speaker 1: 13:53

I know my husband's not gonna mind me saying this, but for him, something that was really important was looking in the mirror and telling himself he loved himself. I don't really do that. I do look at myself in the mirror, and this past couple of years I started taking a lot of selfies and playing with filters and being fun, because I was always afraid to be judged for trying to do anything that was not neutral, like vanilla, and so I couldn't do selfies because I didn't want people to think I thought too much of myself or that I don't know. I didn't look at myself a lot in the mirror. So learning about myself and how I look and how I feel in regard to that was really important, but I don't know.

Speaker 1: 14:42

What strategies do you use in really reclaiming your authenticity? I'd be interested to know, because each of us has probably our own method of doing it right. Okay, well, I think that's it for this week and I am so looking forward to October, which is not that far away, and October, november, december, last quarter of the year and it's like how did the year come to an end this fast? Well, I will talk to you guys next week and I look forward to any comments, feedback, questions. You guys have reach out to me on my Facebook or on Instagram, at Claire Concepts with Celeste or the Hidden Healing podcast on Instagram, and I'd love to hear from you.