Trauma can leave us with a very thin skin where we are easily upset by the smallest of things. It can make us feel pain more intensely, and can make us feel more anxious and hypervigilant. The pain of our experiences can be buried deep down in the subconscious mind and when those feelings resurface you may see that things aren’t the way you thought they were. We can try to cover our wounds and keep those feelings buried as much as we like but a wound that is not healed will inevitably open back up again.
If you are suffering from trauma, the thing you need most is compassion. Having compassion for yourself and self-care is where this needs to start. Over the years as a massage therapist, I came across people who had experienced trauma and the pain they suffered in their body due to being in that constant hypervigilant state, like they were braced for something, was felt strongly in the physical body. It was almost like they needed to have their armour ready for the next trauma. Anxiety inevitably ran alongside and the ongoing wear and tear was almost always worse in the cold winter months.
Healing your trauma can be very painful. Facing the truth about your trauma can be the last thing you want to do. You may find ways of supressing, avoiding, excusing and justifying your unhealthy coping mechanisms. These can involve drinking too much alcohol, stuffing down your emotions with food, taking drugs, gambling, overworking, the list goes on. Grieving hurts, a lot, so it can seem that these ways are much better than dealing with what is really going on underneath it all. When you don’t confront it, you end up supressing it, but it will affect your life until it is dealt with.
It takes a great level of courage and inner strength to go through the healing process. You can feel much worse before you feel better as you confront the trauma. To face the truth and self-reflect with honesty is huge. But it is the only way of getting rid of the shame and guilt you may feel.
Trauma has a big impact on how you feel about yourself. You may feel that everyone is tolerating you, that friends and family don’t really care or want to spend time with you as the fear of being rejected and abandoned is huge. You may even go through periods of testing friendships or relationships to prove yourself right. Isn’t it safer to keep that wall up? To allow yourself to be vulnerable enough to open up and get help can be so frightening. You may engage in relationships where you know you will be hurt, even when a better option is available, because you feel you do not deserve to have happiness.
Forgiving yourself can be the first step in the self-care process. Allowing yourself to feel the emotions, the anger, the sadness, even the joy can be difficult, can we dare to feel joy? The point is you deserve to feel joy, and moving from surviving to thriving is possible.
When you are experiencing the world through the lens of trauma, you miss opportunities for positive feelings and experiences.
This inner healing is not something that you can work on when you have the time, it is an ongoing process and working with the tools given to you during the therapy can help you to start welcoming peace and happiness, even joy, into your everyday life.
If you have suffered a trauma and want to talk then feel free to contact me directly. I work with trauma through hypnotherapy and counselling and often a combination of the two can be the most beneficial. Working with counselling first to help you process the pain and reframe your beliefs, and hypnotherapy after counselling to give you all the coping mechanisms you need to lead a healthy fulfilling life, full of joy.