Reframing Trauma as Spiritual Opportunity

Host: Chris Alyssia
Welcome to Ascended Warrior: Soul Codes for a Shifting World. This is your sacred space to awaken, align, and rise in your purpose. So, let’s begin.

Hey, friends—welcome back. I’m your host, Chris Alyssia. Today I want to talk about trauma—and how we can reframe our story so trauma becomes a source of growth and spiritual opportunity.

Trauma touches everyone in uniquely personal ways. Who we become because of it is a core part of being human. A life without pain sounds ideal, but is it even possible? And if it were, would we incarnate at all?

Before we dive in, let’s take a breath together.

Grounding

If you’re seated, feel the support beneath you. If you’re driving, stay focused on the road and simply soften your breath.

Take a deep inhale…and exhale.

Remember: you are not your trauma. Pain and trauma are experiences—initiations—opportunities to build strength.

You are light.

Why I Call Trauma a “Spiritual Opportunity”

When I use that phrase, I’m not minimizing anyone’s pain. I’ve lived through severe trauma myself. By “opportunity,” I mean this:

Before we incarnate, our souls design a lesson plan—a set of experiences that can catalyze growth. Look honestly at life and you’ll notice: we often grow most during our hardest seasons. The moments that require strength we didn’t know we had are the ones that wake us up, change our trajectory, or move us out of what harms us.

Seen this way, certain traumas can function like soul exams—experiences we (and other souls) agree to navigate for learning and evolution. None of this makes trauma easy. It reframes it as purposeful, not punitive.

I’ve sat with parents who lost children—including to fentanyl. The grief is indescribable. From a spiritual perspective, some souls agree to brief lives that profoundly transform the people around them. That doesn’t erase pain; it offers a lens that can hold meaning alongside loss.

Likewise, some souls agree to play the “antagonist” in our story. It’s not about excusing harm; it’s about recognizing sovereign souls, free will, and the possibility that difficult roles can catalyze growth we asked for at a soul level.

Reframing Isn’t Denial

This isn’t, “Everything happens for a reason, so just get over it.” We can be clear-eyed about harm and choose a frame that restores power:

Not punishment for being “bad” in another life.
Not identity (“this is who I am”).
Yes to meaning, pattern, and choice: What am I learning? How do I want to respond now?

When I examined my own history, I saw repeating patterns—clues to the specific lesson my soul was determined to learn. Once I recognized the pattern, the experiences softened and eventually stopped repeating with the same intensity.

My Story (Content: family addiction, emotional/physical abuse)

Growing up, I was extremely close with my mom. She struggled quietly with depression, but to me she was my best friend—yoga, retreats, Star Trek: TNG and movie marathons. In my teens, everything shifted. She began drinking heavily, using drugs, and eventually divorced my dad. After he left, her fear and pain turned into abuse—mostly directed at me as the eldest.

I went from having a loving mother to hearing, “I hate you.” There were episodes of physical violence. Sometimes she disappeared for days. I tried to protect my younger sister. We’d run to my dad’s place; he brought us back because he wanted us to have a relationship with her. He couldn’t grasp how bad it had become.

The deepest wound wasn’t a single event—it was the confusion: What did I do? Why isn’t love enough to stop this? Eventually, I severed contact to save myself. We haven’t had a relationship in decades. In high school I functioned—class, sports, sleep—but I was depressed and isolated, doing everything I could just to get through.

Years later, after the military (where I’d learned to shut emotions down and live from logic), life forced a reckoning. At an Edgar Cayce retreat, during a guided visualization, I saw my heart split into jagged halves. I wept while I “sewed” it back together with a strand of light. Then the memories poured in. I realized how thoroughly I’d buried the pain.

From there, I did the work: felt the feelings I’d been avoiding, explored past-life and “between-life” regressions, read about addiction to understand the chemistry and the chaos. Slowly I could see my mother as a sovereign soul—not a villain, not someone to “forgive” from a pedestal, but a soul who made choices from her own pain and capacity. I still maintain boundaries, but the story inside me transformed:

I learned self-sufficiency and discernment.
I discovered my capacity to protect and to leave what harms me.
I saw exactly what conditional love looks like—and chose otherwise.
I stopped carrying the trauma like a teddy bear I couldn’t put down.

I can truthfully say: I love who I’ve become through what I survived. I wouldn’t change it, because it shaped the woman I am now.

How to Work With Your Story (What Helped Me)

Name the wound. If a memory still grips your body—tight chest, stomach drop, flash heat—there’s unprocessed pain. Naming it is the first act of power.
Feel, then observe. Let the emotions move (safely, with support if needed). Over time, practice the Buddhist stance: observer, not reactor.
Look for the pattern. What repeats? Similar partners, bosses, conflicts, injuries? Repetition points to the lesson.
Choose a new response. When the pattern reappears, try a different move—leave earlier, speak sooner, set a boundary, ask for help, rest.
Reframe the cast. Without excusing harm, experiment with the soul-level view: other people as sovereign beings on their path, sometimes playing hard roles in ours.
Use your “cheat codes.” You came equipped with tools—intuition, resilience, allies, practices. Act like you do.
Find community. Healing accelerates when witnessed. Choose groups or practitioners who help you reframe, process, and release.

This isn’t a straight line. But you’ll know you’re integrating when the same situation arises and doesn’t break you. It moves through you instead of into you.

Where I Am Now

Life is still life. Hard things happen. But today, even with a turbulent world, I feel calm and grounded. I trust that we’re sovereign souls who agreed to help each other grow. My default question after the initial shock is: What is this teaching me? If I’ve seen it before, how can I choose differently now?

That’s the power of reframing: trauma becomes teacher, not identity.

Closing

If this resonates, consider opening that old wound gently—with support if needed—and allowing the frozen feelings to move. Then look again: What lesson is here? What gift did my soul hide inside this exam? Begin stitching the heart with your own golden thread.

You’re not your trauma. You’re a sovereign soul with all the tools you need. The answers are already within you.

Thank you for listening and for sharing this episode with anyone who could use it. For meditations and new resources, visit the website—and send your topic requests. Nothing’s taboo here. We’re souls having a human experience, and the physical drama is only part of the story.

Until next time, my beautiful light beings—love and light.