trauma: what is it & how to recover

"To grow from your past, gotta face it."

What Is Trauma

Trauma is a long-lasting negative impact on our nervous system that comes from experiencing an unpleasant event or continuous unpleasant events.

Our strong emotional response to a particular event/events can cause harm to us physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

It can change our behaviour leading to affecting every aspect of our lives including health, and relationships with others and ourselves.

Trauma pretty much rewires our brain negatively.

Therapists usually use terms such as, “trauma with a capital T” or “trauma with a smaller t” to describe different types of traumas.

Traumatic events with a capital T include witnessing death, sexual abuse, wars, natural disasters, life-threatening situations etc.

Traumatic events with a smaller t could be repetitive humiliating events such as, getting bullied or being neglected, invalidated etc.

To conclude, life threatening events are common events that are used to describe as traumatic, but it could be any event that makes us feel overwhelmed, trapped or powerless.

So, trauma is actually personal to everyone.

Something that you don’t consider traumatic, could be traumatic to someone else.

Just to clarify, describing a traumatic event with a smaller t is not to belittle the impact compared to the effect of going through traumatic events with a capital T; using these terms just helps to distinguish the events.

How To Identify Trauma

Trauma affects people mentally, and sometimes physically too.

These are some of the symptoms:

Anxiety and fear
Withdrawing from others

Continuous feelings of hopelessness and disconnect
Insomnia or nightmares
Being started easily
Aches and pains

There are many other symptoms that show signs of trauma including flashbacks, or lack of memory.

Many of these symptoms also indicate mental health issues.

Please do your own research and speak to a professional if you are worried.

How To Recover & Heal From Trauma

Trauma that hasn’t been processed because of high stress levels can get trapped in our body (I know right great news).

These memories get stored in our tissues and can stay there until we act upon it.

These are some of the ways you can release trauma from your body and heal:

Change The Narrative: Our response to an event is what causes us trauma. Although it feels like we are not in control especially during the occurrence of something terrible happening, we can change the story and our perspective to help us let go.

You can use the EEE acronym to remember that first comes the event then the explanation we give the event and then the emotion that comes after it.

Change your thoughts and then the emotion. Maybe there’s more than one explanation? Maybe there isn’t an explanation, and it just is what it is. Can we leave at that?
Consistent Healthy Lifestyle: Eating healthy food, getting enough movement everyday through exercise, dance or a sport, laughing, sleeping, and socialising are truly life’s best healing components.

Developing a consistent healthy lifestyle will help your body and mind heal and repair itself.
Neuroplasticity: Because of trauma the neural connections in our brain can become weak.

Connections in our brain become stronger or weaker because of experiences. We can make connections strong again, we can heal ourselves, and we can make new connections!
Find A Mindfulness Practice: I can’t exaggerate enough about how having a mindfulness practice will help. We tend to live in our heads, thinking about what’s happened, what could happen and why someone acted a certain way towards us.

We have no control over these things. We can’t change people, we can’t change our past, but we have a lot of control for what can be.

Any mindfulness practice such as, meditating can help us stay present. Appreciate what’s here, right now.
Trauma Release Exercises: There are some specific trauma releasing exercises that you can check out by clicking here.
Face It: Only way to move forward from something is to face it first. Tell your story, own it, don’t avoid it. What happened? Why was it unfair? How did it make you feel? Let it out, cry, scream.
Rejoice Your Life: You are alive right now. You made it. Listen to music, dance, go outside. Rest, read, do what makes you happy.

You went through something horrible, and you made it. There is no better reason to celebrate your life.
Seek Professional Help: Coping with grief or fear doesn’t have to be a lonesome journey. Get in contact with someone that can give you real advice and cater to your needs.

Going through unimaginable incidents, witnessing inhumane acts, and dealing with trauma is a brutal struggle.

Honestly, writing this blog was hard for me. I haven’t written about my trauma, but it is overwhelming to touch on such a heavy subject.

Recovery and healing is not a straightforward journey.

There may be times where you think you’re over something but then you get a random flash of something that happened 5 years ago, and you find yourself bawling on the floor.

Or you get a random panic attack and aren’t sure of what triggered it.

I believe we can move forward if we have the courage to. We can control the trajectory of our life.

It's not easy but it’s possible.

Implement some methods (or all) to help yourself.

But remember to approach yourself with the same compassion that you would show to a friend that was struggling.

Most importantly, read books, and find resources that can give you more information about healing from trauma or anything else that you might be struggling with.

There are millions of ways to be better and do better. Find what works for you!

What has helped you heal? Have you implemented any of the methods?

Read, share, comment, and let me know what you think!