Many of us have endured childhood trauma – in my experience, it never truly leaves us. We have to learn to live with it. I liken it to carrying an awkward shaped bag, which we position about our person, in order to live day by day.

But deep seated trauma has a plethora of symptoms; perhaps we’ve not benefited from a healthy maternal or paternal road map, so much of how we conduct ourselves is orientated around our own judgments and navigations which we’ve had to discover all by ourselves.
We might suffer with heightened anxiety, or low self-esteem, and because we are in the dark about many of our emotions, our maps become extremely challenging to read. If you don’t have a traditional family or friends to talk to, then many of our trauma symptoms can cloud our judgement when making decisions.

So it’s extremely important to trust your intelligence as a way to help you navigate your emotions. Intelligence is not academic based. We are all intelligent beings, who, from babies, achieved remarkable feats such as learning to walk and talk.
Additionally, when we remind ourselves that we have intelligence as a tool, then it helps us to keep matters in our conscious minds as opposed to our numb subconscious thoughts.

I don’t mind admitting that I suffer with stress – it often feels as though I’m free-falling through my daily activities. Unhelpful narratives don’t disappear, but they can be “turned down” due to frequently relying on my intelligence to help guide me.
For example: “How am I going to get all my work done today?” might pull at my jelly-head. So I over-ride it by saying to myself: “Don’t worry, Emma, you work systematically and besides, you keep a time table.”
Try to use the tools and skills you’ve gained throughout your life to stay focused and rational, and remind yourselves, as many times as you wish, that you have incredible intelligence to help support you day by day.