Sometimes I am able to realize my trauma through a comment that someone made.

Examples

‘Oh, so you are the smart one!’ vs looking for praise

• The situation: I am talking with someone about something that I want to do, how I think about it, and how much I am happy to find that I understood it, understood myself, and know what to do. And then I get this comment – not necessarily the same sentence, but the pinch of sarcasm is there: ‘Oh, so you are the smart one! I am happy for you that you figured it out, I wish you all the best with it.’ And then I feel uneasiness, maybe I get angry at the other, maybe try to talk myself out of this situation, maybe I get sad, etc.
• What happened in reality: I was proud of myself that I figured something out. The actual content doesn’t matter, my goal was to get praise. And chances are that I triggered that something in the other person. And strangely, I got the opposite of what I wanted.
• The trauma: Since childhood, I am carrying this trauma that I feel I don’t get praise for. This is one of the most common traumas that happen to most of us in early childhood. Children go through certain stages of development and at one point we all realize that we are actually capable of doing things and we are getting clever. This is a fantastic and healthy step we make. Nothing can be more natural than a child wanting to share this with the world and naturally with the ones closest to him or her. And the trauma happens when the ones closest to us, who we love the most do not recognize this. Usually, they carry the same trauma. Speaking of how family patterns get passed on from generation to generation…

‘Why are you so sensitive?’ vs looking for help in calming myself’ 

This example is more complex, it contains an interplay of different traumas and unmet needs.

• The situation: I am talking with someone about a stressful event that happened to me recently and I am describing how fed up I am, and since then, I am just not able to pull myself together. (And maybe I talk about some other things like how unfairly I think I was treated and all the rest of it.). And the other person has this comment (again, not necessarily the same sentence): ‘Why are you so overly sensitive again? Get yourself together and carry on.’   
• What happened in reality: I got stressed, I could not get out of it, and unconsciously was looking for someone to help me calm down. Instead, I got a message that I should be able to calm myself down (Actually worse, because I was ridiculed also). Did I trigger something in the other person? Probably, since I got a harsh reply. Can I complain? Well, probably not. At least not for the other person refusing to help me calm down: I did not ask for it. (Imagine another possibility: When the other person does go into the game I started and agrees with me and puffs up my anger about the person I described as unfair. Then the whole situation can evolve into a game of two people sharing their victim consciousness. Or who knows where the dramatic discussion will take us in our interplay of traumas.)
• The trauma: Children in their early years do not yet have the capacity to calm themselves down. They need someone to calm them until they get to that stage where they can. When the ones close to us cannot help us we still need to find ways to cope with this. The usual examples are the suppression of our feelings – which will result in depression -, and thinking that there is something wrong with us – which will result in shame. (Imagine yourself as a very small child, or as a baby whose nervous system isn’t yet fully developed. And you don’t yet have thought patterns to help you out either. And on top you are also ‘still’ highly sensitive and truly connected to the ones around you – hopefully your parents and/or people who love you and take care of you. And you face an unsolvable situation at your stage of development.) 

The opportunity

When you can connect the dots from such conversations, you always have a window of opportunity. What works is that I first understand what really happened (connecting the dots), and then I ‘transform’ the trauma.

We are all different and connecting the dots does not have to be this analytic as above. But self-observation and practicing to understand myself better surely help.

The transformation part is truly miraculous. In Psychology practice, it is the conscious revisiting and processing of the trauma. In religion, all regions have an element of atonement and salvation. I will write more about this miracle a bit later and link it here. Sorry, I am not yet there.