From Trauma to Wholeness: Restoring Your Body's Wisdom

A personal story of navigating the path from childhood trauma to adult healing

Dear friends,

Welcome to another edition of Beyond Self Improvement! If you missed it, here’s last week’s article: The 3 Biggest Mistakes I Used to Make When Setting Boundaries.

In today’s essay, you’ll discover how childhood wounds shaped my life and explore the path to adult healing in this candid reflection. If you’re new, consider subscribing below to join our growing community and get the next essay direct to your inbox:

I want to tell you a story about healing from childhood wounds in my personal life. I share this not to place blame or victimize myself but to openly talk about something not often discussed. Perhaps you can relate and will feel inspired to explore your healing.

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My mom picked me up late regularly—from school, soccer, you name it.

I was the last kid on the playground, waiting a half-hour to an hour after all the other kids had gone home. Over time, waves of anger, confusion, and sadness would wash over me. What could she be doing that’s causing her to be so late? What’s more important than remembering her son? I imagined it was because she had so much shopping to do, which helped ease the feeling of abandonment.

Sometimes, in my haste to leave when she arrived, I forgot things on the playground, like my favorite sweaters.

Afterward, I’d beat myself up for forgetting them, adding shame to the hurt. And then my anger would return to my mom. It’s her fault for picking me up late. Looking back, I can see the self-destructive behavior of losing my belongings was an unconscious expression of the rejection I felt from my mom's unreliability.

As a child, I didn't understand the deeper dynamics at play. All I knew was that I felt like she didn’t care about me.

The worst experience was after tee-ball practice when I was 7. My teammates were picked up one by one until I was the last kid in the parking lot. The next wave of kids were dropped off, practiced baseball, and were being picked up. By now, it was dark, and I felt a pit in my stomach, realizing the gravity of my situation.

My mind went from hopeful, “She’ll be here any minute,” to despair, “How am I going to get home?”

Then, a mom saw me crying in the dark and asked gently if anyone was coming to get me. Between her care for my well-being and realizing no one was coming for me, I began that crying that only a kid can do. I didn’t know my address, so the woman looked it up in the phone book. When I was dropped off, my mom was cooking dinner in the kitchen.

“How could you forget me,” I asked. “Oh, I didn’t forget you,” she replied as if she planned to finish dinner before jumping in the car to come get me. Her lying made me even angrier.

In college, I waited a half hour after cross-country skiing in the dead of a Minnesota winter. It was a bone-chillingly cold day as the wind blew snow across the golf course. My hands were so cold, and I was so angry. What the fuck? Who leaves their fucking kid outside in the middle of winter? Doesn’t she know how fucking dangerous it is, especially after sweating?

I desperately wanted to smash my ski pole against a nearby pole, but I knew her red Honda would come into view as soon as I did.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and swung the fiberglass pole as hard as possible. Just then, my mom’s car rounded the corner. I tried to straighten the limp pole to no avail. I felt ashamed for losing my temper and didn’t want my mom to see what I had done.

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So, what exactly is psychological trauma?

I like the definition: "When your system is overwhelmed and cannot process what's happening." For children, trauma wounds us at our core and remains with us into adulthood unless it’s resolved. Kids internalize feelings of rejection as indicators that they are somehow unlovable.

Fearing abandonment (and possible death), the child relinquishes their True Self in favor of a False Self they believe their caretakers will like better.

This abandonment of self leads to what Jung called a neurotic split between our true and false selves, which often doesn’t get reconciled until a mid-life crisis forces us to, if at all. While the conscious mind may forget childhood experiences, the body never does. All of our suppressed "unprocessed" emotions remain stored in the body as traumatic holding patterns, silently sabotaging our behaviors, relationships, and overall well-being.

Unless purposefully felt, processed and released, trauma haunts us for life.

It leaks out in unforeseen and unfortunate ways, for some, that can look like co-dependency, alcoholism or workaholism. For me, it showed up as deep insecurity, low confidence and low self-esteem. I was chronically anxious and depressed. I was stubborn and inflexible—mentally and physically. I became perfectionistic to try to be beyond reproach.

I didn’t apply myself in school or sports. If you don’t try, then you never really fail. My mom’s tardiness contributed to these traits, but it was not the sole cause. Again, my purpose here is not to blame her.

By the time I was an adult, I had been subconsciously carrying around the pain, shame, and anger of being routinely left behind for years.

Anytime anyone was late meeting me, I'd experience irrational levels of anger and resentment. When my ex-girlfriend kept me waiting for over an hour, I was practically shaking with rage. Another time, a first date left me waiting at a bar for thirty minutes. By the time she showed up, I was fuming inside.

Naturally (or perhaps unnaturally), I suppressed my anger and never said anything. The following Monday, my co-workers said she had died in her sleep. I never found out why.

It wasn't until I started meditating that I began connecting the dots between my intense emotional reactions and the times my mom kept me waiting. Mindfulness and breathwork provided some in-the-moment relief but didn't uproot the underlying wound. For that, I needed to go deeper—into the body itself, where traumatic imprints live.

This brings us to the powerful weekend healing immersion I recently participated in, the Deep Waters Experience.

I’m usually skeptical about workshops, but this caught my attention mainly because I appreciated the founder’s tweets, and he was a no-BS guy on the phone. Deep Waters turned out to be one of the most healing experiences. This intimate group process, run by trauma expert Dr. Bob Beare, allowed me to finally express my suppressed rage and reconnect with my inner child in a safe, loving atmosphere.

Over those few days, I was guided to energetically re-experience and finally process the hurt, fear, and anger my childhood self had obediently suppressed decades earlier.

It was profoundly uncomfortable at times. Tolerating and fully feeling those long-banished emotional states put my nervous system on high alert. However, the DWE staff facilitated a healing experience that my body and psyche have longed for since childhood. Before the retreat, the thought of those experiences brought up deep grief. As I sit here today, I don’t feel any negative energy.

However, I felt gratitude for the kind mom who picked me up as a little boy.

While it's an oversimplification, healing childhood trauma requires feeling the stuck emotional energies to help your body's intelligence integrate and release them in a safe space. Only then can you begin unlocking your true, unbounded nature.

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My childhood experiences of feeling abandoned and unloved had a real and lasting negative impact.

But I now know my mom loved me as best she could. If she could have loved me better, she would have. At the same time, I intentionally pick my stepkids up on time every time because I want them to know I care. Of course, that doesn’t mean I couldn’t be late.

By doing my inner work—slowly chipping away at the false identities and armor formed from childhood conditioning—I’m finally reclaiming my intrinsic worth, rediscovering my authentic self, and realizing that I matter.

And that’s the greatest gift I could give the little boy who had convinced himself otherwise.

Keep healing,

Ryan

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