Tag: trauma

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Embodied Self-Awareness Through EMDR Therapy

I spent a lifetime stuck in my head – thinking about, analyzing, and feeling distressed over my past and future. Trauma does this to our minds and bodies, leaving us unable to fully live in each moment. EMDR Therapy has given me my life back. With deep internal healing and embodied self-awareness, I can now welcome every emotion, feeling, and physical sensation. I never imagined this was possible – or knew what I was missing. Continue reading “Embodied Self-Awareness Through EMDR Therapy”

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Why Do I Smile While I Voice What Feels Painful?

fake smile

Each time I gathered enough courage to put a few raw pieces of my trauma into words, hoping to find support in a friend, my face would freeze into a ridiculous fake smile. How did that happen when I was crying and falling apart just moments earlier? Once I was face to face with another person, something inside me took over and shut down all expression of emotion. Continue reading “Why Do I Smile While I Voice What Feels Painful?”

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Why Therapy Takes So Long (Part 2): We Minimize the Impact of Trauma

drowning but ok

I didn’t start therapy to process my trauma. I just wanted a peaceful marriage and not to feel like I was drowning in motherhood and, well…life! I didn’t even know my history could be labeled trauma. It sounded so dramatic! Clearly, my experiences were not worthy of such a heavy description. Continue reading “Why Therapy Takes So Long (Part 2): We Minimize the Impact of Trauma”

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The Physical Experience of Working Through Shame and Trauma in Therapy

woman's body

Our brains store the memories of our experiences, but so do our bodies. Processing the many layers of trauma that remained stuck in my mind and body has been a uniquely physical experience, different from anyone else’s. While there is no right or wrong way to experience emotions or process shame and trauma, if you desire deeper healing, it is important to experience the physical qualities of your emotions. They are unique to you. Continue reading “The Physical Experience of Working Through Shame and Trauma in Therapy”

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Reconnecting With My Body After Abuse

connecting to my body

Feeling disconnected from my own body and who I am as a person is one of the many frustrating realities rooted in the sexual abuse, assault, and emotional abuse I experienced. It interferes with my ability to connect with other people, to feel experiences physically, to know what I want or need, and of course, it interferes with my sexuality and intimacy. Reconnecting with my body has happened through experiencing trusting relationships and processing my trauma in therapy. To FEEL my own body, know myself, let my soul shine through…this has been the most incredible healing and spiritual experience. Continue reading “Reconnecting With My Body After Abuse”

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My Deeper Layers Under the Violence of Trauma

If you have experienced childhood abuse or an abusive intimate relationship, it is hard to imagine that there can be any more painful layers under those invasive and often violent experiences. It took decades for me to gather the courage to face my sexual abuse and assault memories in therapy. I never expected to later uncover far deeper layers of pain, but this reality is present for many survivors of interpersonal trauma. These are such feelings as neglect, betrayal, and abandonment. It is the pain of knowing, even as a young child, that nobody cared to help you process your trauma…or to even prevent it in the first place. For me, this betrayal was the deepest layer under the violence of trauma. Continue reading “My Deeper Layers Under the Violence of Trauma”

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Finding Compassion for Social Anxiety

I find myself frequently angry at my body for all the ways it’s still “broken” and even seems to functions separately from my brain. My struggle with social anxiety is a perfect example of this disconnect. Therapy has given me awareness of my internal chaos, and helped me calm this chaos, yet when I want to connect in groups I’m attacked out of nowhere with a racing heart, feeling lightheaded, and I can’t catch my breath. Panic and anxiety continue to disrupt my life in these situations. Continue reading “Finding Compassion for Social Anxiety”

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An Irony of Trauma: Hypervigilance with No Cues for Danger

red flag

One of the most common features of trauma survivors is that they lose the ability to sense danger. How ironic is it that trauma can leave you functioning in a state of constant hypervigilance, yet with no cues for when you are actually in danger? Most of us can think of someone that has fallen into horrible situations again and again. Despite having bodies that are constantly on edge, on high alert, and waiting to be hurt…when we are in the face of danger, we have no actual urge to leave or even an awareness of the risk. Understanding that a traumatized nervous system works this way feels alarming and unfair! Continue reading “An Irony of Trauma: Hypervigilance with No Cues for Danger”

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One of the Rigid Strategies My Mind Created (Anxious Attachment Style)

SENDING A TEXT

It’s Sunday afternoon and I was beginning to think about my schedule for Monday. I remembered my friend always goes to the gym Monday mornings and thought I’d love to join her. Picking up my phone I texted: Would you like a ride to the gym tomorrow cuz I’m planning to go. I hit send. Bam! It was done. 5 seconds. My eyes got big and I was suddenly hit with the significant contrast of those 5 seconds to the previous 3+ decades of my life. I thought about how different that 5-second process was even a year ago. When did it change and how I did I not notice? Continue reading “One of the Rigid Strategies My Mind Created (Anxious Attachment Style)”

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Truths and Untruths: Irrational Beliefs Stored in the Body

When you’re recovering from trauma, with years and years of secrecy, you have no idea the extent of untruths or false negative beliefs, you hold within yourself. I’m calling them that instead of lies because lies denote a choice. I never chose to believe so many negative things about myself. I didn’t choose to live my life according to these negative beliefs. But that is what happened. When your body does not feel there is enough support, enough safety, to experience and know the truth of your trauma, then your mind creates a gift to keep you surviving. It gives you a whole set of twisted and false negative beliefs to live by. Continue reading “Truths and Untruths: Irrational Beliefs Stored in the Body”

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The Clingy and Desperate Ways Trauma Shows Up in Relationships: A Cry for Help

lifeline

I desperately search for connection – not just friendship, but rather lifelines to pull me out of the trauma my body still lives within. I get consumed with the turmoil inside and it comes out in clingy, needy, desperate thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It is a cry for help – a yearning to be rescued by another person – rescued from the desperation, fear, and hopelessness of trauma, even many years later. Continue reading “The Clingy and Desperate Ways Trauma Shows Up in Relationships: A Cry for Help”

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We Must Struggle

struggle is necessary

Oh the regrets I have! They are endless. But the biggest one of all is letting my ex know I was pregnant. If I had been brave enough, strong enough, smart enough to realize I could handle life on my own…Oh! How much better our lives would have been! It’s like a vortex my mind gets sucked into all too frequently. I play out the beautiful, peaceful life my baby girl and I would have created. And then I wrestle with God, questioning why we must struggle and endure such pain in this life. Continue reading “We Must Struggle”

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Hope in the Journey

hope in the journey

Therapy is hard! My husband is often frustrated with me. Although I have been in therapy for several months, he says I am more of an emotional mess now than ever before. That I am not taking full advantage of therapy and I should be nearly “better” by now…if I would just stop holding back. I do hold back. It is not my intention and I get angry at myself – especially when I think about the small financial fortune I’m sinking into therapy! It is just so damn hard to be honest when I have held onto secrets for decades! It’s painful. Like a fist fight with a dragon painful. More than finding my finish line, the challenge now is slowing down enough to find hope in the journey. Continue reading “Hope in the Journey”

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Exhaustion is a Tool of Brainwashing

Exhaustion is a tool of brainwashing

After nine years with my ex-husband I secretly sought therapy…thinking it would help me be a better wife and mother but knowing he would never allow me to share our private world. My life was unraveling around me and I seemed to be failing at everything. Although my intention was to fix my marriage, within a couple of months my therapist began insisting my husband was severely brainwashing me. She frequently compared me to someone caught in a cult or a war prisoner. The whole concept seemed shocking and ridiculously far-fetched but with a lot more therapy I began to see it too. Continue reading “Exhaustion is a Tool of Brainwashing”

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Where Do Trauma Memories Go?

How can I have so much raw pain around brief memories, some of which have almost no details or even an ending? The loss of control over my memory both frightens and frustrates me. Where do trauma memories go? And how can the brief images I have be enough to hijack my body, making me dizzy and taking my breath away? It’s like that with so many of my memories – as if I have had dementia since my 20s. Continue reading “Where Do Trauma Memories Go?”

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Can a Painful Dental Visit be a Trauma Trigger?

Nobody can look at me and know my struggle with complex PTSD. Because I choose to stay silent, people don’t associate me with sexual assault, or physical, emotional, or psychological abuse. I choose to keep far from that association even with family and close friends. So how could my dentist know that painful treatment would trigger me and pull me deep into my past? How could a dentist know to treat me any differently? Is there truly even a link? Can a painful dentist appointment be a trauma trigger? Continue reading “Can a Painful Dental Visit be a Trauma Trigger?”

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Yoga for Trauma Healing

I am finally beginning to understand my body better – all the weird things I tried to hide from people because they did not make any sense before beginning trauma therapy. For example, I had no idea that it is not normal for my body to not physically feel things….for my brain to not know what my body is doing. I didn’t know that’s a trauma thing. A PTSD thing. Apparently that is part of my high pain tolerance too. My body is simply numb much of the time. In addition to therapy, yoga is helping me change this. Continue reading “Yoga for Trauma Healing”

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