In my personal and professional work, I have been drawn to understanding, unpacking, and healing trauma. Over the course of my career working with individuals struggling with the aftermath of trauma or in recovery from a traumatic event or childhood, I have come to realize that three key ingredients are crucial in the healing process. While it may be possible to heal without these, they do make healing so much easier, quicker, and more fruitful. Utilizing and integrating these tools also helps make healing long-lasting, preventing individuals from unnecessarily exposing themselves to more traumatic/stressful situations, averting challenging future events/happenings from turning into significant PTSD symptoms, and aiding in overall quicker recovery.
What is Trauma?
Trauma encompasses deeply distressing experiences that provoke psychological, emotional, physical, and/or psychosomatic reactions to overwhelming or harmful events, often posing significant threats to one's overall health. This can result in a range of distress across emotional, mental, physical, social, and spiritual domains. The impacts of trauma can be immediate or enduring, affecting an individual's well-being and daily functioning. Manifestations of trauma may include flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, depression, and challenges in regulating emotions. Various events such as childhood neglect, familial alcoholism, sudden loss, economic hardship, racial prejudice, discrimination, oppression, exposure to violence, and instances of abuse (physical, sexual, or emotional) can trigger traumatic responses.
The Aftermath of Trauma
I have worked with individuals recovering from various kinds of trauma (sexual abuse, narcissistic/emotional abuse, domestic violence, career trauma, childhood abuse and neglect, grief, etc.). Although there is a range of ways that trauma and PTSD manifest in individuals, there are also many similarities. I find a lot of commonalities in the following ways: feeling hopeless/lost/overwhelmed, moving fast/staying busy/impulsivity/unhealthy or harmful coping, and ignoring own feelings/needs/not being present or silent with self. There is a chronic state of dysregulation that leaves individuals feeling unbalanced/ungrounded with themselves and the present moment. I often find that accompanying depression results from people being stuck in the past and anxiety from being too focused on and obsessed with the future. There is self-abandonment and mistrust of self leaving individuals feeling out of alignment with themselves and the world around them, causing them to feel lost, crazy, or hopeless.
The First Ingredient of Healing Trauma: Faith
Healing is made much easier when you have faith. When I say faith, I mean faith in yourself, in healing (and that healing is possible), faith in a Higher Power, or faith in anything greater than yourself. One of the key facets of trauma is feeling alone/isolated as well as needing to control the external environment and how your healing journey should look (control provides a false sense of safety). Having faith or believing in something greater allows survivors to release control and surrender into the process; it is basically a way to get out of your own way. Now, this becomes tricky because many of us have experienced significant religious and faith-based trauma. This is beyond the scope of this article, and I will address this issue in a different blog post.
I want to make clear that when I speak of faith, I do not mean start going to church and practice a religion dogmatically; in fact, this is sometimes grounds for more trauma and disconnection from self. It is important that you discover what faith means to you and how you can incorporate it into your life. I recently heard a man share a story about his recovery. When he was in the early stages of his recovery, he lost faith in life, in the world, and in himself. He started out by going to the park and spending time crying every day by a tree; he first started having faith in this tree. After some time, he started having faith in the park and, later, in nature. He then expanded his faith into believing and trusting in the universe, which became his higher power and is still his guiding force today.
I wanted to mention that many clients find comfort in utilizing nature as their anchor/point of faith. The laws and tranquility of nature can be easier to relate to than a specific deity, especially if one has religious trauma, which is so rampant in today's world. Nature has a rhyme and a reason to it, and all beings are subject to it. Personally, I believe in a God/the universe, but I do not understand this as a personified being in the sky, nor does my higher power have a gender. For me, believing in a higher power means trusting that everything is always working out for my highest good. The tools and the resources that I need at any given moment are always provided to me. I have never been left without support or the necessary things that I need in my life, despite going through very challenging circumstances at times.
Believing in a higher power or having faith allows survivors to release the burden of needing to know or control everything. What is needed to be shown to you will become available to you in its due time. For those having difficulties with this topic, I encourage you to look back and evaluate moments when you experienced something challenging. Did everything end up working out ok? Did you receive support when you least expected it? My point here is that everything always has a way of working out when we look back. So why then, do we stress ourselves in the present moment with needing to control every aspect of every situation and making things more stressful/challenging for ourselves instead of surrendering, releasing control, having faith in something greater than us, and staying in the present moment?
One other thing I wanted to speak to regarding faith/belief is that the power of the mind is incredible. Whatever we set our minds to has a significant influence over us, our environment, and our reality. For example, if you believe that you are not worthy or are not a good person, you will find this and attract this into your life. If you believe that healing for you is possible, you will find opportunities and answers in places you may have otherwise overlooked. If you believe that you can't be healed, you will create this reality for yourself. Be very mindful and intentional with your faith and beliefs. This can make a huge difference in your trajectory of healing.
The Second Ingredient of Healing Trauma: Slowing Down
The second important part of healing trauma is slowing down. This is important for a number of reasons. The first one is that when you experience trauma or PTSD, your nervous system gets stuck or looped in survival mode. This often means that things are sped up, and your nervous system and brain respond in very quick and impulsive ways as a means of surviving and coping. Slowing down signals to your brain that you are safe and you do not have to operate out of survival mode. It also signals to your brain that there is no threat to your life right now and/or the trauma is not currently present. When you slow down enough, you allow your normal bodily functions and feelings to resume. This creates room for healing to occur as you will have the space to process the trauma instead of shutting it down or coping in unhealthy ways.
Slowing down allows you to make better, more rational decisions. When you are moving fast, constantly busy, or going non-stop, you are often operating from your more primitive brain. This means that the lower part of your brain takes over (including the part responsible for our emotions), causing you to become disconnected from the rational part of your frontal brain. This then results in irrational, emotionally heightened, distressed ways of responding to your environment rather than approaching life from a calm and regulated state. Going even further, living life in a sped-up way creates more chaos, trauma, and dysregulation. For example, moving fast, you may say yes to more things than you are capable of handling. You may make poor decisions that are out of alignment with who you are or what you need. You may also put yourself in dangerous situations that can cause more disconnection, dissociation, and abandonment of self.
I often have to work with clients on regulating first as it is very difficult to process earlier traumas when their nervous system is still operating from a survival state. It is helpful to practice this skill on your own so that you have greater access to your calm and safe state. What does slowing down look like? It will look different for everyone. I encourage you to start small and work your way up. For example, begin by having a slow morning. Enjoy a cup of tea to yourself, moving intentionally and mindfully. Create space to journal or read a sacred text. Leave early enough for your next task/meeting/job, so that you are not rushing to get somewhere. Take time to unwind between tasks and do not schedule things back to back. Do not overbook yourself and create intentional space to do absolutely nothing. Say no to more things (and if the people around you truly love you and have your best interests in mind, they will understand). Listen to slower-paced music. Don't rush or push yourself. Listen to your body's needs and cues for rest.
Of course, this is easier said than done. It can also feel really challenging for chronic trauma survivors because slowing down may not feel familiar; it can feel intense or activating at first. I've had many clients tell me they simply do not know how slowing down feels or what "to do" with themselves when they are not running around doing the next task. This is ok and is expected. The more you practice slowing down, the easier it gets, and the more you will gain an understanding of how this feels in your nervous system. Start small and work your way up to longer stretches of time. You can use various environmental cues to signal to your brain that you are safe, such as candles, healing music, scents/aromas, signs in your house to slow down, etc. You can also practice engaging in intentional mindfulness activities daily, such as cooking, brushing your teeth, meditation, walking, yoga, etc. Practice slowing down your mind and not filling it with the next task to do, not worrying about yesterday or tomorrow, and focusing on the now.
The Third Ingredient of Healing Trauma: Feel Your Feelings
So now you have found your faith and are practicing slowing down. What's next? Inevitably, feelings will start to surface, the ones you never gave yourself the space to feel before. Trauma is essentially stored feelings/sensations that need to be felt, expressed, and released. You cannot do this if you are not in a safe and regulated state. The more you slow down and create safety for yourself, the more you will feel safer with yourself and in your body; this is usually when past things that you have suppressed will come forward and you will start remembering parts of your trauma. What do you do then? You FEEL! You express, rage, cry, and do whatever you need to release your trauma (in a safe way).
It is important to remember that feelings are not permanent, and they always pass. Although it is scary to allow yourself to feel your feelings, it won't always be so intense. It is usually most intense in the beginning because it is new and unfamiliar to you. The more you allow yourself to feel, the more you heal. I wanted to clarify chronic emotional dysregulation, where people feel very easily affected by relationships and day-to-day happenings, sometimes experiencing crying spells. When I say feel your feelings, I am referring to a more intentional place of feeling (and a curiosity around the feelings coming up and what's behind them) rather than a response to/coping with a chronic state of trauma and survival.
For example, when you have slowed down and are more regulated, you may encounter a trigger in your environment. Let's say this trigger was an interaction with your partner or someone at work that left you feeling unheard and unseen. Take a moment to feel your feelings, become curious about your inner experience, and understand what was triggered inside you. By taking this step, you can shed light on a previous trigger that you never got a chance to feel (for example, did your partner trigger a previous wound? do you have a need around something that you weren't aware of before?) and fully feel and integrate the experience. This can help prevent a future trigger from escalating and overwhelming your whole being.
A significant chunk of my work as a trauma therapist involves helping clients unpack, understand, and process their feelings. I often do this by locating the feelings in the body and working backward. Our bodies are storage points for unresolved emotional distress/stressors, and they never lie. The more we become in tune with our bodies and feelings, the more we can respond in a healthy and appropriate way to the world around us.
What Happens Next?
If you've successfully practiced all of the above, you now have more access to your inner experience. This creates just enough breathing room to do things differently. For example, you notice a certain interaction leaves you feeling hurt and upset. Can you speak to it? Can you learn effective tools to manage such interactions in a better way in the future or create healthy boundaries? Your rational thinking brain comes online, and you will learn to balance your primitive, more emotional brain with your frontal executive functioning brain. Triggers will no longer feel debilitating and overwhelming, and you will find a renewed sense of well-being infused with hope. I will say that sometimes starting on this journey feels like a very difficult cycle to break, and yet partaking in any small step leads to more openings to take more healthy action towards greater healing. The more that you feel you have power over your experience and healing, the more you have the capacity to do things differently. The more you do things differently, the more your life will change. And yet, taking that first step can be the hardest one of all.
When to Seek Professional Help
Sometimes, coming out of a trauma state is very challenging to do alone. Healing trauma requires specific knowledge and a certain skill set. If you find yourself chronically stuck, feeling like movement in any direction is like moving through quicksand, seek professional help. That being said, I often recommend therapy even if things aren't fully going "wrong." It is important to gain the skills, resources, and awareness necessary to move effectively through daily life events and so that if something significant does happen in the future, you already have the ability to handle and navigate such challenges with effective tools under your belt. Having regular and preventative therapy is like going to your routine doctors for check-ups; you don't want to wait until things get so bad to seek services. When it comes to trauma, you can prevent severe PTSD symptoms if you seek help early on. If you are unsure if therapy is right for you, I encourage you to schedule a free consultation and ask questions.
