From Pain to Peace: Learn the Essential Steps of Emotional Healing from a Trauma Therapist In Atlanta
At times, it might seem as though your therapy sessions are unfolding without any rhyme or reason to what is happening. Now and then, it can feel like one session is the same as the ones before. My hope is this blog will offer a roadmap from the shadows of pain into the light of peace.
Acknowledging There’s a Problem
You can’t heal emotional pain without first acknowledging that you are struggling. It isn’t uncommon for a person to turn to things that will numb the pain that we feel inside that we are trying to avoid having to deal with. It will catch up with you eventually and when this happens it is often more painful than it would have been if we had just addressed it in the first place.
Give yourself permission to feel all the emotions associated with it. Trauma therapy can help with this.
Numbing or dismissing your emotions will not help you heal them. Often numbing emotions cause them to come out in other ways that are unhealthy and destructive such as with an addiction or eating disorder, depression, or anxiety.
Sometimes we get the idea in our head that it’s not okay to be angry over this. All emotions, even anger are okay. What matters is what you do with the anger when you are feeling it. You don’t get to hurt yourself, or someone else or take it out on someone else. But there are healthy ways to express anger through assertive communication with those who are safe and emotionally healthy enough to hear how you feel.
Begin to correct the problem by implementing strategies for healing learned through trauma therapy.
Think of this step as a recipe. Depending on what you are making will depend on what goes into it. The list below is some of the common “ingredients” I see in the healing process. What brought you to therapy will be what determines how much of each of these steps you will need and in what order. It is not an exhaustive list so there may be things in your process that are not included here.
Embrace realistic expectations alongside self-compassion.
There is nothing like unrealistic expectations that create a nice incubator for depression, anxiety, and mental health challenges. Picture this, you are a wife and mom with 3 kids and a full-time job. Your day is filled with one task after another of taking care of your family and meeting the requirements for your job. By the end of the day, you collapse into bed from exhaustion from everything you had to do. You lay there in the dark remembering the dirty dishes are still in the sink and you tell yourself you’re a terrible mom and wife because you can’t keep the house clean.
It is unrealistic to expect anyone one person to be able to carry an endless list of tasks and responsibilities. Allowing room for self-compassion permits us to focus on what we were able to do, instead of what we didn’t do. It might mean changing what you expect of yourself to feel better.
Set aside time for yourself.
I know what you are thinking. “Do you have any idea what my schedule looks like? How would I find time for myself?” But this piece is important to your healing.
We cannot endlessly give to others while never allowing ourselves time to replenish what we need to sustain us, without suffering consequences. We cannot go all day without feeding our bodies and taking time to drink water and still expect our bodies to be healthy. Your emotional self is the same way. We need time to take care of ourselves emotionally. Start with an hour a week to see a therapist, take a break, or do something you enjoy doing.
What did my trauma teach me about myself, others, and the world? Are those lessons accurate?
From the time we are born into the world, we have experiences that teach us things about ourselves, others, and how the world works. When our needs are responded to during infancy and toddler years, we learn the world is safe, others are trustworthy and we have value. When our needs don’t get responded to, we learn the opposite is true, which can leave us feeling unsafe, struggling to trust others, or viewing ourselves as not having value. The truth is some people are not trustworthy and learning to differentiate who is and who isn’t will certainly be part of your healing. But every person born into the world has value and deserves to be loved simply because they are a human being.
Many survivors of abuse believe the trauma was their fault. But in reality, the other person made those choices all on their own. You didn’t have any control over their choices. Learning to challenge faulty thinking is vital to shifting the way we feel about things.
What unresolved questions or confusion do I have about the trauma I endured?
Trauma can often leave us feeling confused and filled with questions. A child who grows up in an abusive home might wonder, “What was wrong with me that my parents didn’t love?” “Why do other kids get to have kind and loving parents, and I didn’t? Did I do something wrong?”
Feeling unloved by those who raised you can be quite traumatic. Trauma can bring lots of confusion and pain but the reality of this one is that there was nothing wrong with you. We cannot give to others what we don’t have ourselves. So, a parent who struggles to love themself will also struggle to love the children they bring into the world. But that does not make you unloveable. Resolving your questions and confusion can help you feel calmer.
Consider the need for boundaries to prevent further trauma.
Boundaries are a necessary part of a healthy relationship and protect us from further emotional harm. This might look like someone who limits the amount of time or contact they have with a person who is critical of them. For someone who has never been allowed to have healthy boundaries, it might feel mean to set boundaries and that is a pretty good indication the relationship needs boundaries. A relationship without boundaries is not a toxic one.
Release Negative and Painful Feelings through an Emotionally Corrective Experience.
It is true, that you may never get the apology you feel you need from the person you need it from. But with the help of body therapies, there are ways to give you an emotionally corrective experience which can give you the emotional experience of getting the apology even if you never actually get it, which can shift the emotional pain.
Give yourself permission to let go of the pain.
When you get here, it’s okay to let go of it; to release it and decide you are not going to carry it around anymore.
This is not an exhaustive list. You may not need all of these steps, and there may be other pieces you might need to be part of your journey toward finding greater peace in your life. But these are some of the most common ones I see.
If you feel you could use some help in moving through your healing process, then reach out. I would be happy to hear about what is happening and share with you how I can help. You can request a free 15-minute phone consultation by calling (678) 744-5369 or by clicking here. I specialize in helping trauma survivors feel calm, overwhelmed, and depressed women to calm the chaos, anxious people feel safe and worry less, toxic relationship survivors feel more confident, and parents raising a traumatized child feel less traumatized themselves.
