The Greatest Trick Your Trauma Ever Pulled

“O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An’ foolish notion”

Translation:

Oh, would some Power give us the gift
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion

~ Robert Burns, Poet - To A Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church”, 1786

There is a famous and memorable line from the classic 1995 movie “The Usual Suspects”, spoken by a guile character about the Devil:

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist."

When it comes to human psychology and trauma, and abandonment, and attachment issues, a different version of this truth plays out every single day: The greatest trick your trauma ever pulled is convincing you that he/she does not exist.

For three decades, I fell for this trick completely. When I looked at my life, my choices, and my emotional struggles, I genuinely believed I was looking at the whole picture. I thought, "This is just who I am." But the real trick was my own belief that there was nothing left to see. I didn't realise that a massive part of my reality was operating entirely in the dark, hidden beneath the surface.

During my teens, young adulthood, and beyond, I was fully aware of the traumatic childhood experiences I had lived through. I had the memories. But I confidently told myself: "I am not affected by it."

I pointed to my external reality as proof. Look at me: I was doing well in school, making progress in life, going to university, pursuing my career, enjoying life, getting married, and starting a family. I was hitting all the usual life milestones. I reasoned that if I was succeeding despite those childhood experiences, I wasn't damaged—I was resilient.

What I did not know, until I truly began healing, was what a thriving mindset and secure attachment style actually looked like. I thought there was only a survival mindset, and I was exceptionally good at it. Because I didn't know what I was missing, I couldn't comprehend how a thriving mind operates, approaches life, and overcomes challenges in a completely different way to a surviving one.

In fact, I thought ‘I cannot abandon my survival mindset, it is the reason I survived what happened and I survive everyday’ ‘How can I abandon my life boat, surely that is madness, and in fact a betrayal’. It was when I healed that I realised, that I reached land, I was not abandoning my lifeboat, but that it has served me, and it can remain safely on the shore. I reached land and I was now free to walk, run, drive or fly to my hearts content.  

How long will you stay on the Wrong Path?

How did I miss the truth for three whole decades? Dr Tasha Eurich, an organisational psychologist and author of Insight, sheds perfect light on this phenomenon. She writes:

"We’ve found that even though most people believe they are self-aware, self-awareness is a truly rare quality: we estimate that only 10%–15% of the people we studied actually fit the criteria. Because 85%+ of us assume we are self-aware, we confidently stay on the wrong track, completely blind to how we actually present to the world."

That was me for over thirty years. I confidently stayed on the wrong track, completely blind to how I was presenting to the world.

The true shock of this blindness hit me just several months ago. I was having a conversation with a close family member. We used to live near each other and socialised constantly when we were both between the ages of 16 and 22.

I was sharing my breakthrough with them—explaining how I discovered my CPTSD at age 36, how I had recently gone through the healing process, and how passionate I now am about helping others see how trauma operates behind a veil, limiting their lives and trapping them in a fixed survival mindset.

My family member looked at me and said, with absolute conviction and in disbelief: “I could see that you displayed signs of childhood trauma at 18 and leaderships skills."

Others see you, even if you do not

I was utterly astonished. I became completely lost for words and said nothing in response, but my mind began racing with overwhelming thoughts:

• Was it really that obvious?
• I wish you had told me when I was young.
• Oh my God, does that mean countless other people—family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances—could see it too over the years?
• How come nobody ever said anything to me?

If I am being completely honest with myself, I am 99.99% sure that if my family member, or anyone else, have told me that my trauma was showing up in my behaviour back then, I would have fiercely denied it. I would have insisted that trauma wasn't affecting my life.

However, there is a 0.01% chance that in the quiet moments of the night, during a brief flash of reflection or a rare moment of insight, I might have felt there was something there to investigate. Maybe, just maybe, that tiny crack of light would have sparked my awakening earlier, saving me decades of hidden pain and being lost in survival mode.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of fear

What complicates this psychological trick is that our minds originally hide trauma to protect us. We block out the horrible moments to avoid reliving them when we don't yet have the tools to process them. It is an act of survival.

But while the mind can hide the memory, the way clouds hide the sun, the wound remains and does not heal until it is treated. Then like the sun, when cloud cover is gone, our soul shines again. The trauma never goes away until we have the courage to face it. The coping mechanism that saved my life at age 7 became the invisible wall that limited my life in adulthood.

The trauma only wins the war if we refuse to acknowledge we are in a battlefield. By writing and sharing my journey on Path to SelfPower, I want to be that 0.01% spark for someone to help they actually present to the world. I want to lift the veil for those who are currently trapped in survival mode, helping them build true self-awareness, step into the light, and turn the tide from surviving to thriving.