Put Some ICE On It

Healing is not random. It is not something that happens just because time passes. Healing is intentional, and it follows a process. The ICE framework—Identify, Communicate, and Embrace—is a structured way to understand how trauma affects both the brain and the person, and how a person can begin to move from survival into healing. Many people want healing, but they do not understand the process that leads to it. ICE is that process. It teaches you how to locate what hurt you, how to release what hurt you, and how to rebuild who you are beyond what hurt you.

Play #1: Identify Your Trauma

Identifying your trauma is the foundation of healing because awareness always precedes change. Trauma can be defined as a deeply distressing experience that overwhelms your ability to process it in the moment. When trauma happens, it does not just sit in your memory as a story. It gets encoded into your brain.

To understand this, you have to understand how the brain works at a basic level.

A neuron is a cell in the brain responsible for sending and receiving information. These neurons connect with each other, and the repeated connection between them forms what is called a neural pathway. A neural pathway is simply the route your brain takes based on what it has learned through experience. The more something is experienced or repeated, the stronger that pathway becomes.

Now here is where trauma comes in.

When you experience trauma, your brain creates a pathway rooted in survival. It is not trying to help you thrive; it is trying to help you survive. So if you have been hurt before, your brain begins to send signals that say, “Protect yourself,” even when there is no real danger present.

I saw this in my own life.

When I was younger, I lived by a saying: hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. At the time, it sounded wise. It sounded like I was being mature. It sounded like I was protecting myself. But what I did not realize was that I was training my brain to expect hurt. I was strengthening a neural pathway that assumed something bad was always going to happen.

So even in moments where things were good, my brain was still preparing for something to go wrong.

That is what trauma does.

It teaches your brain to live in survival mode, even when you are no longer in a survival situation.

As I explained in From Hurting to Healing, when an injury is left untreated, it does not stay in one place—it spreads. The same is true for trauma. If you do not identify it, it will spread into your relationships, your decisions, and your identity.

Identifying your trauma is not just about saying, “This hurt me.” It is about recognizing the pathway your brain has been using and making a conscious decision to interrupt it. You cannot create a new neural pathway if you are unaware of the one you are currently operating in.

See next Sunday for Play #2: Communicate Your Trauma

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