A Gentle Trauma-Healing Path Part 1: Acknowledge and Accept

“You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge”--Phil McGraw

Hi, Readers, Meditators, and Hypnotherapy Enthusiasts. I’m so glad you’re here today.

Let’s take the next few articles and walk a gentle, beginning path through trauma-healing.

*Remember that trauma-healing often requires a mosaic of recovery modalities. Meditation and hypnotherapy can be useful and effective resources as part of a healing path. Please be sure to tell your medical and mental health care team about any new healing resources you’d like to try as part of your trauma recovery journey. Hypnotherapy and meditation are not intended to replace your current medical or mental health care protocols.

How Trauma Shows up in Our Lives

When we notice and repeat destructive or toxic behaviors in our lives, those behaviors can often be seen as coping behaviors for an adverse event or events that happen during your life.

As the event occurred, your brain did what it is supposed to do during adversity: drop into fight-flight-freeze-appease mode to survive whatever happened.  This is a biologically appropriate response, meaning you did nothing wrong.

If you don't get the time, attention, or nurturing to process those events healthfully, you can stay in those coping methods for much longer than you really need to–which can be physically, mentally, emotionally, and relationally harmful to you several years or even decades after the event.  And it can feel exhausting. 

Your body acutely remembers the past harmful event so that it can seem like any small trigger (a sound, a smell, an image, a circumstance) can send you straight back into the adrenaline-cortisol rush of a tight chest, a dry throat, a racing mind, a need to sprint away from the scene, or even to shut down and get numb or “leave” your body.

Unhealed trauma is like a file folder left out of the filing cabinet in your mind. When a “trigger” happens, you trip over that file on the floor so the contents spill out all over again. Trauma healing helps you to file away, or process, those traumatic memories so they do not keep tripping you up.

If you’ve struggled with limiting beliefs, harmful behaviors, or patterns that block you from living the life you want, it may be time to take a first step in uncovering and healing those past hurts–so they don’t continue to hurt you NOW.

Where to start?

Our first step in healing is to tell the truth (if only to ourselves, at first) about what happened to us.  This might look like allowing yourself to feel the feelings coming up, rather than avoiding, numbing, or pushing them down with any familiar coping strategy.  I talk about building the skill of awareness to support change in this video and this is a helpful place to start when it feels like you are ready to shift but don't know where to start.

It’s crucial that we hold that truth without comparing it, judging it, or fighting it. What happened is just that–what happened. The event is part of your history–a fact. Nothing more. It doesn’t make you bad, weak, or terrible. Even if YOU were perhaps the person who placed harm on someone else (take a moment and let that one sink in.)

Today, you do not have to attach any meaning or interpretation to the event or events. They just…were. The forgiveness process will come later and I'll walk you through the whole thing gently.

As you sit with whatever truth may need to come out, it’s helpful to have the support of a compassionate someone or something to help you navigate any feelings that may come up (which is inevitable, but also something you can survive and even thrive through.)

If you’d like an additional support, it would be my honor to hold a safe space for you to process the trauma so you can move forward with less suffering and more ease. Consider the personalized support of a private hypnotherapy session. 

I’m with you, Readers, and we can heal TOGETHER.

Stay tuned for our next Gentle Trauma Health Path piece on how to stay in your body and in the present even when you’re exceptionally anxious or tempted to flee or freeze due to a trigger or harmful event.

With care and support,

Sara and Les

The Mindful Movement

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