Over the past few years, I’ve been trying to “heal” and recover from past trauma. If I’ve learned anything at all it’s that there is no “right way” to grow and find healing. It does not and will not go away 100%. This is not to say that you can’t live an amazing, meaningful life with trauma. It is to say that you don’t need to be without to do so.
I always thought that if I could just convince myself to be happy or try to “let go” of my mental illness and trauma then I would be healed and it would all just go away. In case, you were wondering, no it is in fact does not work that way. Over the past few months, I’ve made more progress in my recovery and healing than ever before in my life. And honestly, the major change I made is acceptance. Now, this may sound like some crappy, Instagram-worthy, wannabe inspirational bullshit and in a way, I guess it might be, but it’s also true.
DBT
I can’t give myself all the credit for this ground-breaking revelation. A major part of my learning too and how to accept my emotions has to do with DBT. Which is short for dialectical, behavior, therapy. I’ll get more into the details of DBT in a separate post but basically, DBT is a type of intense talking therapy that was originally created to help treat borderline personality disorder but has since been adapted to help with other mental health conditions and with healing from trauma.
What Is Trauma?
In general, trauma can be defined as any distressing event or experience that leads to a psychological or emotional reaction and has an impact on a person’s ability to cope and function. There is no “one case” fits all situation when it comes to trauma. Certain traumatic events experienced by different people will lead to different reactions. For example, after a car accident, one individual might develop PTSD while for another person this may not lead to a traumatic response. It is important to note that not everyone who experiences trauma will develop C-PTSD or PTSD. There are several different types of trauma and many different factors that determine how a traumatic event will affect someone. Some general trauma symptoms include:
- Denial
- Anger
- Mood Swings
- Nightmares
- Loss of Memory
- Flashbacks
- Fatigue
- Insomnia
- and more
How To Heal From Trauma
Of course, we are all different and trauma doesn’t affect everyone in the same way. But it all begins with acceptance. Accepting what happened or what should’ve happened, accepting your feelings. If you’re anything like me you’ve spent years doing whatever the opposite of validating your emotions is. I used to think that in order to heal from the trauma I needed to feel “normal”(like that’s a thing). I needed to be normal. And guess what? I could not do that. Because trauma is not “normal”. Dealing with trauma alone as is, is hard enough but when you add the additional baggage of blaming yourself for your emotions it becomes unbearable. You are allowed to scream. You are allowed to cry. You are allowed to hurt, yes, even if it’s been a long time, yes, even if good things are happening, yes, even if you’re convinced it’s already supposed to be okay.
Other people may not understand your pain, heck you might not understand your pain but that does not make it any less real or legitimate. Give yourself time and space to heal and remember that healing is not linear and learning acceptance takes time. But it really is worth it. This post is not about learning how to heal from your pain and never having to deal with it again it’s about living your best life with the pain.
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