Closing the File Drawer on Trauma

Picture the most organized office you've ever seen. Every document has its place. Every memory, every experience, every moment gets sorted, classified, and filed away properly. The drawer slides open when you need something, you retrieve what you're looking for, and then it closes with a satisfying click.

This is how our minds are supposed to work. Experience something, process it, understand it, file it away. Next.

But what happens when the system breaks down?

When the Drawer Won't Close

Trauma prevents you from closing the drawer on a memory.

Think about it. You've got this beautiful filing system, and then something happens. Something big. Something that doesn't fit into any of your existing categories. Something that your brain can't quite make sense of.

Or an emotion your brain wants to protect you from.

So instead of getting properly filed, it becomes a crumpled ball of paper sitting on top of the drawer. You can't read it. You don't know where it belongs. And every single time you try to access any other memory in that drawer, there it is. Blocking your view. Preventing the drawer from closing.

The system is jammed.

The Cost of Disorganization

This isn't just about one memory. This is about everything that comes after.

When your filing system is broken, when that drawer won't close, it affects every subsequent interaction with your mental filing cabinet. You reach for a happy memory from childhood, and there's that crumpled ball of paper in the way. You try to access a lesson you learned last year, and you have to navigate around the obstruction.

The trauma isn't just about the original event. It's about the ongoing dysfunction it creates in your ability to process, store, and retrieve everything else.

This is why some people seem stuck. Why they can't move forward. Why they keep bumping into the same problems over and over again.

Their filing system is broken.

The Path to Repair

But here's the thing about systems: they can be fixed.

Here’s a three-step process for getting that drawer to close again. It's elegant in its simplicity and profound in its implications.

Step One: The BETR Assessment

Before you can fix something, you need to understand how it's broken. The BETR check asks you to examine where the memory is creating friction:

Body: How is this showing up physically? Tension, pain, restlessness?

Emotions: What feelings are attached and unprocessed?

Thoughts: What story are you telling yourself about what happened?

Relationships: How is this affecting your connections with others?

This isn't therapy speak. This is systems analysis. You're doing a diagnostic on your filing system to understand exactly where the jam is occurring.

Step Two: Pattern Recognition

Reflect on what past experiences have led this particular event to stick with you more than others.

This is where it gets interesting. Why did this experience turn into a crumpled ball of paper while others got filed away neatly?

The answer usually lies in your existing filing system. Maybe you have a folder labeled "Times I Wasn't Safe" that was already pretty full. Maybe your "Trust" folder was already damaged from previous experiences. Maybe you never developed a proper filing system for certain types of experiences because no one taught you how.

Understanding the pattern helps you understand the problem. And understanding the problem is the first step toward solving it.

Step Three: Integration

Reconnect the trauma to who you are now so you know where to file it.

This might be the most important step of all. Because here's what happens: we try to file traumatic experiences using the filing system we had when they occurred. But that person, that version of you with that particular filing system, isn't who you are anymore.

You've grown. You've learned. You've developed new categories, new folders, new ways of understanding the world. The experience that couldn't be processed by your old system might fit perfectly into your new one.

But you have to consciously make that connection. You have to take that crumpled ball of paper, smooth it out, and look at it with your current eyes, using your current filing system.

The Ongoing Practice

Trauma will keep jamming up the filing system until you take the time to smooth out that ball of paper and find its right place in your memory.

This isn't a one-time fix. This is ongoing maintenance. Because trauma, like clutter, has a way of accumulating if you don't stay on top of it.

But once you understand how the system works, once you know how to diagnose problems and implement solutions, you can keep your filing system running smoothly.

The Choice

Every day, we have a choice. We can ignore the crumpled papers on top of our drawers, working around them, letting them accumulate until our entire filing system becomes dysfunctional.

Or we can do the work. We can smooth out the paper, figure out where it belongs, and file it away properly.

The drawer will close with that satisfying click.

And we can move forward, filing system intact, ready for whatever comes next.