When Your Five Element is Actually a Learned Trauma Response

As I scratched the surface on the Earth type, I felt like I was reading about my internal world. The parts of me that most people can’t see. What they don’t know about me. The struggles in my life. How much responsibility I naturally took on. How much guilt I felt in letting someone down. How empty I felt in moments. How tired I was. How my list never dwindled and I could never seem to catch up. How resentful I felt. How I was emotionally and energetically bankrupting myself.

No one could see how depleted I was.

In addition to acupuncture visits, I had already been in therapy with my own therapist, addressing how I was giving too much of my good away. I wrestled with answering questions like “What would it look like to hold on to some for myself?” “What is my good?” “What do I need for my self?”

Chinese medicine fit perfectly with therapy and the great awakening of mine. Except instead of an awakening, it felt like burnout fueled my burn-down. My old self burned down to the ground. All of it. There was little left that resembled me.

As I sifted through the ashes, I examined each piece and considered what I wanted to resurrect and what I would leave in the pile. How I wanted to live and work and play. What fit for me and what I had outgrown. Midlife is funny like that - I’ve heard women speak about how they are all out of “fucks” but I never realized what it would feel like. Or that it would happen to me.

I have said to my clients - “Your ways of coping once worked brilliantly. They kept you safe and helped you survive. But you have outgrown them so they no longer work like they once did.” I was in that same place myself, where what I had been doing, how I had been existing, no longer worked for me.

In learning more about Chinese medicine and the Five elements, I wondered if I was really an earth type. Could I possible have a stronger element?  I wondered if my “Earth-ness” is a result of being born into a family where I stayed safe and loved by helping. I wondered if my Earth type is instead a trauma response. If it’s not my true nature.

As a child, I babysat my brothers as a help to my parents (when in actuality I didn’t have a choice). I listened attentively to my mother, becoming her confidant and the keeper of secrets. I anticipated the needs of others and showed up, in order to feel good about myself. I unconsciously took on responsibility, feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders, for the hope of being acknowledged, valued and loved. I often felt like the most responsible person in the room; this only fueled my over-responsibility.

Much of my life, including my youngest years, were in service to the other person. Mission trips with my church, volunteering to feed the homeless, visiting nursing homes at the holidays, helping at church functions, being a “good Christian” and all that went along with it.

There did not seem to be another option in my family. I knew that I did not have a choice. As kids, we weren’t “allowed” to rebel, so I dutifully filled the role of helper. My rebellion happened behind closed doors and in small ways, for fear of being found out and reprimanded. Or worse, disapproved of and rejected.

I began to break free from the identify of “helper” when I headed off to college. I chose to study marine biology, enthusiastic about starting over. I was far from home where no one knew me. Unfortunately as I struggled with classes, discouragement took over and I believed I needed to change my major. Instead of allowing time and space to make a wise choice (and seeking out a school counselor), I did what I knew I could do - be a therapist.

Now in midlife, I see how my career choice was born out of my earliest traumas. Out of being the helper and the listener.

Today, on the surface I seem to resemble much of the personality of the Earth type. But I can’t help but wonder if my true nature is aligned with a different element. I wonder how much is nature and how much of my “Earth-ness” was shaped in me from my environment.

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