Healing trauma: what diving into the unknown teaches me.

I started writing this yesterday, on the plane from Oaxaca back to Playa del Carmen.

The feeling is that of returning home.

It is fun to think that a little less than a year ago, in March of 2024, we landed here into a complete unknown.

I have been enjoying these experiences very much over the last year: landing in places I do not know only to discover within a short time that I feel at home there.

The last six weeks were devoted to exploring more of what used to be unknown in Mexico, and meeting more parts of myself as a result.

My sense of home within and without has expanded.

I am filled to the brim with memories, experiences, insights and gratitude.

Wladimir and I spoke about this last night: how easy it’s been for us to love Mexico. How much we enjoy and appreciate the landscapes, the culture, the people. We mused on how seamless it was to adapt in Playa del Carmen almost a year ago. It took us a few weeks to establish a new normal.

We both really enjoy our simple and comfortable life here.

Of course, what I consider comfortable now is very different from what I thought I required for a comfortable life even ten years ago.

I was still too enthralled by consumerism as solution for my insecurities. I couldn’t have chosen then the life of simplicity that I enjoy now. All the things that I thought I needed then did provide a very thick buffer between me and the world. And I needed protection then.

It is only now – after giving up all that I used to feel so precious – that I can see how little I need for a happy life.

My husband – to his own surprise – feels the same.

Removing the physical baggage we’ve accumulated over decades of our married life has brought us closer together.

It is as though all the stuff we’ve acquired as the buffer against the world actually became a buffer between us.

By eliminating all the layers of padding, we freed ourselves to relate to life and each other from a more honest and less armored up place.

Sharing this new adventure into the unknown became an unexpected and a well-timed reminder of what drew us together all those years ago.

We were able to demonstrate to ourselves and to each other how free and resilient we are. We’d forgotten that over the years.

When confronting the unknown, the outside references we tend to grab onto for our sense of safety are no longer there. We lose the habitual identity and with it the set patterns of behavior, thoughts, and expectations.

When the familiar crutches and buttresses are removed, we are left to our own devices.

In the unknown our inner impulses come into prominence.

In the unknown we get to meet ourselves.

Because when our habitual patterns are interrupted we become temporarily freed up from our default responses.

Ability to tolerate the discomfort and disorientation that ensue in the beginning of something new is what eventually leads to discovery of new options, new possibilities, new choices.

This is the path to growth, evolution, and ultimately to healing!

When we remain in the known and familiar for a long time without challenge, we tend to become more set in our ways, and come to more rigid, binary thinking.

Binary thinking is about “either/or”: something is either right or wrong, good or bad, us versus them.

Binary thinking is actually a trauma response.

During our developing years we may have found safety in following rigid, strictly defined rules and concepts imposed on us from outside. The resulting binary thinking is perpetuated through staying loyally attached to what we inherited as truth without questioning.

Whereas healing happens when we collect new evidence that shows our past beliefs and assumptions as not the whole truth.

Healing happens when we can tolerate several truths at the same time: from “either/or” to “both, and.”

Binary thinking is exactly what we observe in our society right now.

Stuck in fear and survival, divided and mistrustful of others, we can easily become threatened by those who may have a different opinion or do not look, speak or dress like us.

To stop causing harm to our human brothers and sisters, other sentient beings and the the planet we live on, we need to find new evidence of the truth about the world we live in.

This is what I feel I’ve been collecting for the last ten years: new evidence about myself, about other people, about the world we live in.

And it is humbling, this search for new evidence.

Because in order to receive this new evidence, I need to allow myself experiences that challenge me, that create discomfort, and bring into bold relief my own conditioned and inherited fears and assumptions.

During the last six weeks of travels my youngest daughter was my frequent companion in exploring new places, markets, beaches. The other two girls did not seem as invested in rooting in the new places: tethered to their life elsewhere they were here as a temporary distraction to that life.

On the first morning in Puerto Escondido, my youngest daughter, Daria, and I went for a 30-minute walk to the local market. We were navigating the unknown. We both became very aware that we did not look like everyone else. My daughter expressed discomfort at being a foreigner. She felt as if all eyes were on her. She felt exposed. She was intensely uncomfortable with the attention she thought she was getting.

Walking next to her through it all I was very aware of how different my experience was from my daughter’s.

Like her, I was scanning the environment, but while my daughter’s body was relating to it from stress and threat, my body wasn’t threatened and I was able to find evidence that we were safe.

For example, I noticed that there were many women present, which felt comforting. I saw that everyone was busy doing their own thing and not really paying much attention to us. I did not notice any behavior that would give reason for worry, and I trusted my inner calm.

I brought Daria’s attention to the fact that her discomfort was not caused by anything actually happening in the present moment. We were walking the streets during the morning hustle and bustle, undisturbed. She was able to see that her experience was not in response to what was going on in the present moment. Her experience was driven by her beliefs about what is safe and the emotions those beliefs triggered in her.

Of course, my daughter’s self-consciousness and lack of safety in an unfamiliar and foreign environment reflected not only her own life experience; she was recalling her ancestral inheritance, and tapping into collective experience of women everywhere.

We bought some cheese and eggs from a stand ran by an elderly woman, then some fruit and veggies from a stand ran by a family with young children. Smiles and words and money were exchanged.

We were part of the human family, engaging in timeless human activity and exchange that happens everywhere in the world.