I thought this topic need more information as I have been asked recently whether one must get ill on their anniversary. This very question stunned me for a minute, when I asked if that is what they had been told. Well, to my surprise people thought that they had to get ill on their trauma anniversary if they had one. I say if, as not everyone has a specific date in which a trauma occurred, nor some remember them.

There is no right or wrong to this, but there are some facts vs. myths surrounding a trauma anniversary.

The brain plays weird and wonderful tricks on us at times, however; more so than most believe, you actually have control whether your sub-conscious determines the specific day to be a further and ongoing threat to you. Everything we do is remembered, whether you can access it or not, what we see, smell, touch, taste and hear is remembered and stored in our sub-conscious brain. The only problem with retrieving it is whether our conscious can find it, or whether we want to find it. Some information becomes jumbled, some is stored accurately though the conscious simply doesn't want to remember it.

So this means that trauma is stored, in that if sight, sound, touch, taste and smell are all stored within our sub-conscious brain, that means our trauma is also stored. The date assigned to our trauma is typically also stored, as you either know it at the time or someone tells you after you wakeup, depending on the event obviously.

Now because you have this date assigned in your brain, does not mean you must be ill that day for the rest of your life, because in actual fact it is only a date, not the actual date of your traumatic event, being the year and day it occurred. It is the brains conscious way of telling the sub-conscious to punish itself, and punish the conscious mind on the day. It is to a degree, a choice if you like.

If a person heals their trauma, then there is actually no significance what so ever to hang onto the date or trauma anniversary, because in actual fact there is no such thing. The significance off applying a date to the event is yourself wanting to continue punishing yourself for the event over and over. This means there is guilt, pain, emotion still lingering that is unresolved.

If you want to actually become quite technical in this, a date only exists once, which means for an event it is a choice whether you celebrate it or mourn it, life, death, event, etc. You brain will relive an event if you choose for it to do that, however; you actually have the option to no longer be concerned about that date providing you have healed all pain related to the event.

Trauma anniversaries are only as large or small as you choose to make them. They are no different to Valentines day, Thanks Giving, Christmas, Easter, Birthdays, Marriage, Divorce, Death, Accidents and Incidents.... and so the list goes on. You choose to celebrate or mourn any given day. You do this by thinking about the date, thinking about the event, then you choose celebrate, mourn or disregard as insignificant within your life now. If you have truly healed your pain surrounding an event that can be pinned to a particular date, then you should have no stigma remaining surrounding that date, hence when that date comes around the following year, it should mean nothing to you because the actual event was "x" year, not this current year you are within.

You DO NOT have to mourn or have a trauma anniversary, it is a total myth that you must do so. It is a total myth that you must be ill leading up to it, on the day and even after it. Absolute rubbish. You make a choice whether stigma exists to the date or not, because the facts are; that date is actually in the past and not the same day of the following year or years afterwards. This thinking only stems from celebration dates and those of death, typically where people want to hang onto the date, hang onto the person or event, instead of allowing their mind to truly heal the pain and let go. To let go you must heal that pain, which means the emotions.

This topic can be discussed at Trauma Anniversaries Discussion.