4 Ways to Find Healing After Trauma
Going through something traumatic is never easy. In fact, it can be one of the hardest things we have to deal with throughout our lifetime. It is estimated that every single person will experience a traumatic event at least once in their life. If that sounds shocking, consider this: trauma, at its core, is an emotional response to a highly distressing event or situation.
This very basic definition does not define these types of situations. So, if something causes you a great deal of stress or puts you in physical or emotional harm, it's a traumatic experience. Some common examples of trauma include:
Car accidents
Witnessing or being the victim of a crime
Any type of abuse (which is classified as complex or C-PTSD)
Chronic illness
Natural disasters
Bullying
Regardless of what your traumatic experience is, you aren't alone. Most importantly, you can heal.
4 Ways to Find Healing
1. Research PTSD
Trauma, or PTSD, is a very real mental health condition. While most people associate it with those who served in the military, as you can see from the above list, many more situations cause it. Maybe you went through something difficult and haven't been the same ever since then. In the back of your mind, you might wonder if you are experiencing PTSD symptoms.
Understanding what you are dealing with is one of the first steps to begin healing: research PTSD and the associated signs and symptoms. Get a feel for what trauma therapy entails and if anything resonates with you and your experience. By empowering yourself with knowledge, you will be on your way to starting your healing journey.
2. Go Easy On Yourself
It's not uncommon for survivors of trauma to blame themselves. They grapple with self-doubt and questions, wondering what they could have done differently to prevent the trauma from happening in the first place.
To begin healing, you should shift your perspective and not blame yourself for what happened. Would making a different decision potentially prevent that from happening? Of course, but that doesn't mean you caused the event. We all live with regrets and things we wish to change, but that doesn't mean a traumatic experience happened because of something you did.
It's time to be gentle with yourself and show yourself the grace and understanding you would give other people.
3. Acknowledge It
You can't heal from something that you don't acknowledge happened. It's easy to try and push difficult things away from our minds. After all, the saying goes, "Out of sight, out of mind," right? Very rarely does this saying apply to anything and be true, but especially as it pertains to mental health-related topics.
Even when you don't acknowledge the traumatic experience, it still exists. It's locked away in the deepest part of your mind. The problem with this is that the body remembers trauma, regardless of whether you are thinking about it or not. Doing this will still impact you; it will just be more difficult to understand why you are experiencing the symptoms you are experiencing.
Acknowledging your traumatic experience does not, in any way, mean that you have to take the blame for it happening. However, by acknowledging it, you are already unlocking the parts of your brain trying to keep this experience out of your active consciousness.
4. Therapy
First, let's start by saying that the impact of trauma is profound. Not only can it affect your daily life, but it can adversely cause your mental and physical health to decline.
While the physical wounds may heal easily, that doesn't mean the invisible scars it leaves will. Therapy is a great tool to give you a chance to not only acknowledge your trauma but fully explore its impact in a safe, judgment-free zone. Additionally, EMDR Therapy, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is highly effective in helping to resolve the negative impacts of experiencing trauma.
If you are interested in learning more about EMDR or trauma therapy or have any questions, don't hesitate to contact Sunlight Psychotherapy.
