Healing from traumatic events comes in many forms. First you acknowledge that you need to heal, then you begin the process. The good news is that it's not all sorrow and pain and grief. While that is a huge part, what comes after is the joy of beginning again, experiencing life with new meaning, learning who you really are, what you love and what lights you up. This is what this video is all about.
2019 and 2020 were two of the hardest yet most transformative of my life. It helped me create the life I have today, a life I truly I love. 💛💜
#traumarecovery #mysereneearth #freedom #traumahealing #traumainformed #peacebeginswithme #justbreatheletitgo
How to be happy
Whose job is it to keep you happy?
Being happy is such a loaded question, because happiness comes and goes and that’s totally ok. It’s ok to not be happy all the time. In fact, it’s healthy for you. We need to experience a broad range of emotions or else you will be emotionally stunted. Believe me, I know. Growing up in the Children of God cult I wasn’t allowed to display any emotions except that of happiness, joy, and obedience. I had no idea how to be sad, or how to be angry. It took me years of deprogramming to actually figure out what that meant for me, and how to express it.
But being happy, that’s different. We sometimes put happiness on this pedestal of the ultimate emotion to feel all the time. And yes, it is important. But it’s also a slippery slope, because as humans we seek comfort, we seek happiness, and we often seek these things outside of ourselves around within others or outside circumstances in order for us to feel it This is where it gets dangers.
It’s no one’s job to keep you safe, happy, healthy, successful, loved, calm, nourished, or satisfied. Yes, as a child this was the job of your parents. But if you are still looking for this in others, you have a long ways to go. Mostly like you are dealing with a wounded inner child that has not yet healed from your past traumas and is still looking outward for approval, protection, and love.
In order to provide happiness for yourself and stop seeking it from others, you need to address your wounded inner child, address the trauma and the feelings that keep bringing you back to your inner child seeking outside happiness and approval.
Once you address that, then you must reclaim the lost parts of yourself from your childhood that you discarded along the way. It’s important to bring those pieces back to you, so that you stop projecting onto others, stop seeing everyone else as the problem and expecting others to be responsible for your happiness, and start looking within yourself for your happiness, protection, love and satisfaction.
Only then, will you truly be happy. Only then will you be able to give yourself the things that you were desperately seeking from everyone else. And only then can you move on with your life, unbothered and untethered to other people, other circumstances, and events that had power over you and influenced whether you were happy or not.
When you let that go, you’ll truly be free and you’ll truly be happy. I know because I did it. And you can too.
How to know when you've broken the trauma cycle
When “boring” means stable and “exciting” is actually abusive and toxic
I had an interesting experience recently that made me think a lot about how far I’ve come. I realized that there are some very clear signs on how to know when you’re healing from extreme trauma, and one of those is that you simply stop perceiving stability and peace with boring and normal.
Listen, I get it. Trauma is an incredibly difficult thing to overcome. It shapes the way we think, feel, and act, and causes us to feel stuck in a cycle of negative patterns that we can't seem to escape from. Also ,when you’re so deep in it, you have NO IDEA that you’re even in that cycle until you finally get to a point where enough is enough and you are ready to face some hard truths about yourself.
When you finally do accept you need help and healing, breaking free from trauma will start to bring a profound sense of freedom and clarity. It allows us to see the world in a new light and discover the safety and stability that we may have been missing. It also allows us to see that safety and stability as something natural and peaceful, something to be sought after…not something boring.
Breaking free from my trauma was a long and challenging journey…it still is, in a way. I honestly can’t even say I’m done with the journey or completely healed, but I do have a massive toolbox of modalities to help me when I am triggered, not to mention a completely different mindset to go with it. And that is what counts.
It took years of therapy, self-reflection, thousands of dollars and hard work to finally realize that the chaos and instability I was so accustomed to was actually…not natural at all. I grew so used to chaos in my life (that was a constant in my childhood), I didn't even realize it was STILL causing me harm in my adult life. Only when I started to break out of the trauma cycle I realized how much damage it caused me, and how avoidable all the chaos in my life was.
Most importantly, I realized that the chaos in my life was NOT normal. I was not doomed to deal with one dramatic situation after another, I was just so accustomed to this happening that I continued to welcome in chaotic people and situations, and actually REJECT calm, stable, non-dramatic individuals and environments.
Because what I perceived as boring was actually safety and stability and my default state of chaos was fear and drama, everything else felt dull and unexciting. When I began to unpack some seriously f’ed up patterns in my life that were repeating from my childhood, I knew I had to break the cycle.
So I accepted I needed help, and sought out anything I could to begin to heal and regulate my nervous system. This included therapy, plant medicine, energy work, movement, breathwork, journaling, being in nature, even new diets. It also included parting with people in my life who were also living in chaotic patters and severely draining my energy. Only after that did I start to see glimpses of the beauty in the calm and the serenity of safety.
Deconditioning decades worth of negative patterns is a gradual process. But I continued to work through my trauma, and incorporate simple habits to help regulate my emotions and find joy in little things. Things like appreciating the stability and predictability of my day-to-day life. Finding comfort in a simple routine, being at ease alone with myself, allowing myself to sit with my thoughts, to feel sad, feel discomfort, feel confusion. To feel all the emotions that are often suppressed when you are in a constant state of chaos, because your body remains in fight or flight.
Most of all, I worked on forming healthy relationships, both with myself and others. I sought out and connected with individuals who either healed from their past trauma, or individuals I knew who lived a calm, steady, peaceful life. A life I wanted to emulate. From there, I started to create a sense of safety in my own life that I hadn’t experienced before.
At times this change was not easy. Often I found myself back in the beginning of trauma cycle and could feel myself returning to the chaos that felt so familiar. But for me, there was no going back. I was not repeating those cycles. So I gave myself grace, and bowed out of the cycle before it took over.
Breaking trauma cycles is not easy. But it is possible. For everyone. You’ll know you broke it when what you thought was once boring is actually the key to the safety and stability we all need to thrive.
If you’re struggling with trauma cycles, don’t give up. Keep going. Continue your healing, use whatever modalities work for you. If you fall back into a cycle, don’t give up or judge yourself. Just acknowledge where you are, and move on. One day, you will see someone else’s life of chaos and think “wow, I used to be there. And I am never going back.” That’s when you’ll know you built a foundation for a fulfilling and happy life.
Most of all, you’ll realize you just found a sense of peace and happiness you once thought was impossible.
Why is it so hard to be happy?
Do you know why it’s hard to be happy? The answer may surprise you
"Do you know why it's so hard to be happy? Because we refuse to let go of the things that make us sad." -- Lupitha Herman
If you're seeing repeating negative patterns in your life, it's because you're hanging onto them. These patterns reinforce the negative beliefs and stories you have about yourself, making it easier to blame your issues on external circumstances, rather than taking responsibility & making changes in your life.
In the book Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton, he says those who've suffered from trauma tend to hang onto fears and stressful memories as a protection mechanism. While not all stress is bad, when our bodies become chronically stimulated by a stress response like sadness, depression, or daily stress, it compromises our health and changes our brain chemistry, resulting in a constant state of fight or flight.
My body was hardwired for stress. I've suffered from chronic stress for years from my childhood growing up in the Children of God cult, constantly in fear from punishment & abuse. This led to severe health issues and chronic anxiety in my adult life.
These days I have to constantly check in with my body as to whether I'm back under my chronic stress pattern. and if so, slowly let go of whatever put me back in that state.
Becoming aware of stress forces me to become aware of what I allow to affect me in life. Usually the things that affect me are things I'm not willing to let go of, in order to continue making excuses for myself, for whatever reason and whatever capacity.
I've had to let go of a lot of stories in my life to find internal peace and happiness. Every time I do, I progress to first understanding what happiness is (hint: it’s not what I initially thought or felt), start feeling that happiness, which leads me to feeling freer, at peace, and most of all without the need to judge, criticize, or put others down to make me feel better.
The key is letting go of your old stories. The things you are hanging on to, that you are addicted to. The excuses, the buts, everything. You have them because they served you once, but not anymore. They may have protected you in the past, but now they're only holding you back.
Those repeating patterns, the chronic state of unhappiness, stress, and annoyance, that's all there because you're allowing it to be there. Once you let go of the things that are making you sad, you'll realize that the only person keeping you trapped in the same vicious cycle, was yourself.
Going through a tough time? Read this
The fastest way out is always through
Full disclosure: I've had a pretty shitty week. A couple things happened in my personal life that left me way more affected than I initially thought. 😒😒
Thankfully, I know enough about trauma and the importance of grief to know it's not only ok but essential that I allow myself to be sad, go through all the emotions and process this loss.
At first I tried to shrug the situation off and pretend like it didn't affect me, but it did. For a moment I stepped into old familiar patterns of thinking "what did I do wrong, how did I not see this coming, etc," until I realized I didn't do anything wrong and nothing was my fault. I could not have changed a single thing. This is life, and life has its ups and downs.
So, I've been hanging at the house, eating all the chocolate and watching all the shows, because I know that the sooner I go through this grief, the sooner I'll be out of it.
It sucks that we always think we need to keep a brave face, stay strong and walk with our head held high. We don't. We need to give ourselves permission to be sad, be angry, cry, hold our head down and do all the things people tell us not to do. This is the only way for us to heal.
Suppressing emotions and not allowing ourselves to feel sad & vulnerable only sets us up for failure, depression and more permanent health and mental issues down the road.
We've got to change the perception of grief in society. Grief is not just about death, but for any loss or unwelcome change in our life. We have to honor it all, and that's what I'm doing.
Remember that the fastest way out is always through.
Survivor's Guilt and PTSD...is it real?
Understanding the link between survivor’s guilt, PTSD, and when others reinforce the beliefs in you
I read a great blog post from Amen University where I got my Brain Health Coaching certification from. In it, it talks about survivor’s guilt and what people go through after coming out of a tragic experience better than others.
According to Amen University, survivor’s guilt is often considered a serious symptom of PTSD. They say:
“While not everyone who endures a traumatic event will develop PTSD, some research estimates that as many as 90% of people who lived through events where others died experience feelings of guilt. They may question their own survival and feel a sense of responsibility for what happened:
Why did my buddy get killed, but not me?
Why did I run away from it?
Why didn’t I do more to save others?
What could I have done to prevent this tragedy?”
This one hits home to me all the time and really for anyone who has survived a tragic event when others didn't, or your experiences were different than others who survived the same tragedy.
For my personal experience growing up in the cult, I'm constantly attacked and demonized for talking about my experiences, sometimes from people very close to me. The accusations are always the same:
"You didn't have it as bad as me!" (indicating my trauma and experiences don't count because theirs were "worse" in their mind)
"You're a liar!" (indicating because my experiences were different, then I certainly must be lying)
"You're embellishing!" (exaggerating my trauma to make is seem worse, but it can't be worse, cause theirs is worse)
"You're a narcissist!" (indicating that because I'm talking about myself, I must not care about anyone else. Hint for this one: only narcissists call other people narcissists)
These words are not only deeply harmful to survivors but dangers and divisive. Rather than supporting those who are coming out to speak about their experiences, we're quick to blame, point the finger, and shut them down.
I was attacked so much from this that I actually began to believe it. This led to so much guilt that I had nothing to complain about because "so and so had it worse than me". This led me down a dark path of shame, silence, depression, and repressed anger.
Now that I'm speaking up about my life, these attacks are old news and SO 2019. But survivors guilt is real, ya'll. From war, to abuse, to car wrecks, to natural disasters, we CANNOT control what happens in our life or how we survive (or don't survive) it.
This article from Amen Clinics explains the link to survivor's guilt and PTSD, the common symptoms and how to heal from it. This was key in my path to recovery, and I know it can help others.
https://www.amenclinics.com/blog/understanding-the-relationship-between-survivors-guilt-and-ptsd/