Self-Love Tip #1: Stop Hiding Yourself from the World
People who have experienced trauma often find themselves avoiding. Avoiding people, avoiding attention, avoiding intimacy, avoiding feelings, or avoiding anything that could remind them at all about the trauma.
The normal healing and recovery process involves the body coming down out of heightened arousal. The internal alarms can turn off, the high levels of energy subside, and the body can re-set itself to a normal state of balance and equilibrium. Typically, this should occur within approximately one month of the event.
EMDR therapy changes the way a traumatic memory is stored in your brain using eye movements or rhythmic tapping. This allows you to process the trauma so that you can remember the event without reliving it. EMDR is considered a medical procedure because of the way it changes the structure of the brain.
Many may often ask themselves, “Will I feel this way forever?” The answer to this is both simple and complex. The effects of trauma that evolve into ost-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will never entirely go away. However, they can be managed with proper treatment to make them less severe to live a normal life.
Traumas like physical and emotional trauma often lead to PTSD which on average, affects roughly 8% of Americans. PTSD can typically be a lifelong problem for most people, resulting in severe brain damage.
Breaking a trauma bond starts with identifying the 7 stages of trauma bonding, which encompasses gaslighting, love bombing, emotional addiction, criticism, loss of self, trust and dependency, and resigning to control.
But post-injury emotional changes don't usually lead to a true personality disorder. Instead, they're from symptoms that will go away if you get the right treatment. Undergoing these emotional changes or watching your loved one suffer through them is really hard.
Trauma is not physically held in the muscles or bones — instead, the need to protect oneself from perceived threats is stored in the memory and emotional centers of the brain, such as the hippocampus and amygdala.
Some unpleasant experiences produce permanent changes in the brain and corresponding shifts in intelligence, emotional reactivity, happiness, sociability, and other traits that used to be thought of as set for life.
“Trauma changes the insula, the self-awareness systems. Traumatized people often become insensible to themselves. They find it difficult to sense pleasure and to feel engaged. These understandings force us to use methods to awaken the sensory modalities in the person.”
Therapy is one way, but not the only way to heal from trauma as there are a variety of ways to heal such as: relationships and connection, re-connecting to our culture and ancestral customs, having a practice such as yoga and/or meditation, expression such as art, dance, and writing, and more.
If you often feel as though your life has become unmanageable, this could be a sign that you have some unresolved emotional trauma. Emotional overreactions are a common symptom of trauma. A victim of trauma might redirect their overwhelming emotions towards others, such as family and friends.
These 4 Cs are: Calm, Contain, Care, and Cope 2 Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care Page 10 34 (Table 2.3). These 4Cs emphasize key concepts in trauma-informed care and can serve as touchstones to guide immediate and sustained behavior change.
The trauma-informed approach is guided four assumptions, known as the “Four R's”: Realization about trauma and how it can affect people and groups, recognizing the signs of trauma, having a system which can respond to trauma, and resisting re-traumatization.
Awareness is the first step to addressing trauma blocking—examining the ways trauma blocking negatively impacts your life. Keeping a log to help notice what is happening before engaging in blocking activities is a helpful way to begin the path towards awareness and changed behavior.
Mindful breathing, meditation and exercise are all methods you can try now to mitigate the effects of an overactive nervous system. If you choose to work with a therapist for assistance, they might use their knowledge of polyvagal theory to bring your body back to its natural state of healthy homeostasis.