How to ensure your trauma healing is a virtuous circle of post traumatic growth rather than a vicious cycle of PTSD
Jan Normanton • December 26, 2024
Part of healing from trauma is to move from viewing life through a trauma lens and to develop the capacity for all the good stuff - joy, love, laughter, creativity... which conversely supports our resilience building...
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We look after ourselves, we nurture ourselves, we nourish ourselves, get the basics right – nutrition, hydration, motion, relaxation.
And we avoid stress as much as possible, we avoid gossip, we avoid bad news.
We cultivate an environment of joy, we lean into what brings us joy, we move towards people who bring us joy.
And we get enough rest and relaxation and nourish and nurture ourselves as if we were a little child.
This enhances our resilience and keeps stress at bay.
Distraction is everywhere! If we allow ourselves to engage like a kid in a candy shop, taking it all in with gusto, we can end up frazzled and fragmented, feeling less than safe and sound within
Paying attention and tending to our body can pay dividends, engendering trust and allowing us to show up in life in a dynamic and flowing way rather than fixated rules and regulations made up by the mind to keep us safe and based on old paradigms that may no longer serve us.
It’s only through direct embodied experience where can make an informed decision about who we are and then really get to know ourselves. Relying upon the brain is only part of the picture and a skewed one at that full of external influences and second hand beliefs
There can be a disparity between what’s going on in your brain to keep us safe and what’s going on in real time in your body; learning to discern the difference as to what feels true can be surprising and helpful
Functional freeze can be a useful survival strategy when facing trauma, chronic stress and any form of overwhelm; habitualised however, it can become a sneaky way of life, resulting in a life unlived.
Understanding that healing work isn’t linear can help us be more compassionate with ourselves and our process. Consider healing more of an ongoing, ever evolving journey within, that if done consistently, will bear fruit over and over again
It takes time, energy, effort and commitment to do our inner work. Ultimately it’s worth it, if we wish to lead a conscious life and take ownership of ourselves within so that our external world reflects this and we get to live on purpose.
Try a values audit to find yourself if you experience a sense of loss of self or your way in life; this can bring you back to what matters to you and form the foundation of your future self
How to manage triggers that send us into functional freeze. We will always be triggered – that’s life. It’s how we manage the triggers in the present differently to old coping strategies that support us to do differently and to change as we wish
If we base our wellbeing on achieving future goals, we might just be disappointed. If we are clear on how we wish to feel, chances are we can meet these needs both in the present as well as set goals that will align, creating a win-win for our present and future selves
