Wellspring Wednesdays|Week 26: Zeal & Zest

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Today is our last Wellspring Wednesday for Season One. While it has been an honor for the last six months to share internal resources, self-care advice, and education about your trauma care — this week, I had the idea to share one of my own internal strengths. Zest and Zeal. What do I mean by that?

What I mean is walking my own tumultuous trauma recovery road (and still journeying), I have found my passion in advocating for others through this podcast, coaching, and being a light for trauma survivors around the globe. Having come to a place in my own recovery where I have done the work and will not stop doing the work, I found my home as a trauma recovery coach. This summer, I’ll complete my Advanced certification with the IAOTRC. By September, I’ll have completed the IFS Institutes’ Online Training Circle when I’ll be able to officially call myself an “IFS-Informed, Trauma-Trained, Advanced Recovery Coach”. I literally couldn’t be more thrilled to have found this zeal of working with other trauma survivors in their healing. I love that I am able to talk to strangers that I meet daily via work and travel about their traumas and wounds and that I can support them in finding a good regimen of care for themselves. Gaining more knowledge as I continue self-study, I am working on developing a program for “trauma prevention” by educating people on fetal stress, infant attachment, and how important a healthy foundation of life is for raising healthy humans in later years. I’m also currently obsessed with Epigenetics and Fetal/Maternal Microchimerism. More on that topic to come soon enough!

My current work receiving IFS coaching and becoming an IFS informed Coach is at the heart of everything I do and love. Inner Child Healing is SO possible, and I have fallen in love with IFS with a special sort of zest. I’ve had been years of reading and studying IFS, but now experiencing healing myself and helping guide others in their inner realm is magical. Doing IFS sessions with my clients literally feeds my soul!

I don’t say all this to be boastful, but to help others in finding their zest for life and what they can be truly zealous about. For a couple decades, I had heard so many times, “Sara, you should become a life coach.” Something about it never stuck even though it seemed really cool and a pretty good fit for my personality. The day I heard the term “Trauma Recovery Coach” that fateful day on Guy MacPherson’s podcast, my heart exploded, and I knew I had to chase it. Sitting in the right place at the right time is really possible. Chasing your dreams, finding your zeal, and moving toward your best reality is all possible. True, deep, long lasting trauma recovery (while it’s an ongoing process) is truly possible. There is nothing else I could be more zestful for — to help others hear that, believe it, and actualize it for themselves.

If you are ready to add some support to your journey, reach out. Let’s see what resources I can connect you with or find out if coaching is a next great step in your healing journey. I am here ready, working on myself, and waiting for whoever wants to cross my path next. Until next season’s Wellspring Wednesdays return — stay healthy, dig into your own Wellspring, and have a ton of great moments!

***Don’t miss out on a special discount on the final episode of Season One of Trauma Survivorhood’s Full Circle Friday called “Zig Zag” which launches on July 1st! Have a great summer!

Wellspring Wednesdays|Week 22: Victimhood v. Survivorhood

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Disclaimer: This is an educational and opinion piece. This in no way reflects on a person who prefers to be considered a trauma/abuse Victim or a Survivor. This episode is food for thought to help you see both sides to each word, to think on your own preference, and to gain some insight into the lives of people living with trauma if you aren’t in the traumatized person category at all. As always, I am open for comments, questions, or concerns. As a trauma recovery coach — I want to offer you options to sort through so you can find what makes most sense for your journey.

In very recent history, the society has moved away from calling someone an assault victim, a domestic violence victim, a victim of abuse, or trauma victim to this more acceptable term of “survivor”. What does victimhood mean? What does survivorhood mean? Why do both terms have such different connotations?

Before I speak on my personal opinion — here’s some etymology.

The definition of Victimhood is “the state of a being a victim”. The term Victim comes from the Latin word ‘victima’ meaning to slaughter or kill. The dictionary says now that a victim is one who is killed, harmed, or injured, as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action. To be a victim means that one is hurt, killed, damaged, or destroyed by (fill in the blank). In simple terms: something or someone did damaging actions, or you were killed or hurt by a destructive event.

Survivorhood as a noun does not exist in the dictionary yet. It comes from the usage of the term “victimhood” but with the survivor/survived/survival concept tailored to the first part of the compound word. The word survivor itself means “a person that survives/lives” and a “person who continues to function and prosper in spite of opposition, hardship, or setbacks”. So to define a Trauma Survivor — this would be a person who lived through and is prospering post traumatic hardship.

Either way you slice my forthcoming opinions — if you want to be called survivor, it means you were at some point, for some length of time, a victim. Victimhood comes first. You must be someone who is hurt, damaged, or destroyed by something or someone which executed a criminal act, accident, or traumatic event or actions on you. By pure definition, if a victim survives the pain and lives through it — they can be still considered a victim by choice or may prefer to switch to the term Survivor.

I believe the societal shift from victim to survivor has a beautiful purpose. I believe it is used in order to bring power back to the victim by acknowledging their survival. I can also understand that for some victims — they don’t feel like survivors. I hear you. Some victims feel irrevocably damaged, and they don’t feel they are at the place of prospering or even able to move forward. Some victims barely feel they are even alive. Victims sometimes also like this term for their personal story because it reminds people that they were victimized. By terminology, you cannot be victimized if you did not have an offender. This term victim may help you hold accountable the evildoer who damaged you in this traumatic or abusive way. There are some that believe the word “survivor” is for cancer patients, childhood illnesses, car accidents, violent acts of nature, and other traumas that didn’t have a villain to blame. I honor a victim’s feelings and will use that term with someone who prefers it. It’s their story, so I can listen and be moved to use their suitable title.

I can also explain the survivor’s side of the story and why they believe that is the more accurate title for them. A survivor, we saw by definition, is one who survived through any hardship — in this case, trauma. They didn’t just survive but are able to continue on and find prosperity. There is first a stage of victimhood where they must admit they were the victim of a crime or injustice or physical harm by someone who did terrible things to them. This is part of the process. Walking through what happened to you is a huge part of this. From there, one can move through the stages toward “survivorhood” by processing their past trauma, moving into the truth of what happened and how they respond to the trauma, and doing the deep work. Then, on the other side, they can now find glimpses of regaining trust with themselves and others, reconnecting to their authentic self, and reframing their experience to use it for surviving and thriving.

As you can tell from the title of this podcast (“Trauma Survivorhood”) that I personally prefer and associate more with the term Trauma Survivor. Some have argued that victimhood is a phase of survivorhood is a place where victims get stuck and don’t want to or can’t yet move forward or prosper. I wouldn’t be quick to judge someone in that space because the same has been said for someone who is “merely surviving” instead of going all out thriving. They could argue ‘why don’t you call yourself a Trauma Thriver?’. That’s why I can say with confidence — these are just words, terms, monikers, designations. The term itself doesn’t define where you are in this very difficult trauma recovery journey. There is no room, in my opinion, for us to be judging other trauma victims/survivors/thrivers.

Let’s all just continue to plug along winding our way through the trauma recovery labyrinth and encourage each other as we go. If you are in the place in your journey where you’d like to learn more about the trauma recovery process, please reach out to connect with me. I’d love to hear from you to resource you and encourage you.

Wellspring Wednesday|Week 21: Unnecessary

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I speak a lot about coping skills on these episodes. It’s really important to acknowledge and honor your coping skills. Whatever regulation methods your body has been using, mechanisms of safety and comfort, and everything that brought you even a bit of peace while you endured what you endured — those are coping skills. The cool thing about the brain is that when something works, it can stop looking for ways to accomplish the end result. For instance, it wouldn’t need to spend energy keeping you calm in stressful situations if it found that food or medication temporarily did that for you throughout your teen years enduring an abusive foster home.

The saying that “neurons that fire together, wire together” is true. Now when the brain picks up the cue of overwhelm like it did during your teenage span, it can just temporarily pacify your nervous system with binge eating because that was working then. The brain thinks “problem solved” and can file that tool in the “use again next time that ‘overwhelm’ starts to spike”. This doesn’t matter to the brain if the overwhelm came from a perceived fear, stress of prepping for a college exam, a sighting of a look-alike to your abuser at the grocery store, or your boss asking you to work overtime. The feeling is the same, so the firing sets off to go wire that emotion to binge eating to dull the sense of the overwhelm. This is true for every coping skill. It started out as a high-functioning, adaptive mechanism for your traumatic situation. It was helpful, useable, and had a well-intended purpose.

Now, you are in the place in your healing where you are recognizing not only the aftereffects of the original trauma(s) but also the aftereffects of the coping skills. This is where the journey gets a little intense, and I’m speaking from experience. Taking a further step back looking at your trauma, you can now recognize that the coping skills you’ve adapted are no longer helpful. In fact, they have become unnecessary in reality, even if your brain still stamps them as “works just fine”. Some of these coping tools, you’ll begin to see, have become unhealthy along with being unnecessary. This is where you start examining the aftereffects of the coping tools themselves. Binge eating may have started to cause GI or other biological issues. A substance misuse tool to numb might have now led to dangerous drugs with dangerous consequences. Self-harm may have kept you grounded during your trauma, but now may just be an obsession anytime you feel triggered that is causing scarring or infection. Overworking kept you away from the house from your narcissistic spouse, but now is keeping you from finding a new relationship or enjoying time that you have with your children. Keeping you away from potential abuse using strong trust issues may now cause social isolation problems and lack of healthy intimacy. On and on and on the list can go.

See, your brain wasn’t caring about future effects of your coping skills back when it was just trying to keep you alive. Its concern wasn’t specific to the quality of your life, just making sure you could survive beyond the trauma. That was the goal then. Now, outside of the trauma, these are exactly the types of discoveries that are available for you to work on and through. Sussing out unnecessary coping skills, the mechanisms of survival that no longer serve you, is a great way to explore where they stem from, the origin of the tool, and why your brain still feels it needs to use this under duress.

It’s imperative that we don’t confuse the brain by using the word “unnecessary” in a hurtful way, though. I find it very important to the intrapersonal bridge and your self-trust building for your brain to know that you aren’t saying the skill itself was always unnecessary. Part of the internal healing is to find gratitude for your adaptive coping during the trauma and to really be thankful that you had that comfort, safety, protector, or numbing tool available. If you spend some time really thanking that once-useful tool and your brain for creating it, you will find that this part of you can relax when it’s time to tell it that you no longer need it. This is where you want to gently find ways of exploring the now-unnecessary mechanisms — really rooting around to let it help you with your deep healing, asking it what it wants you to know and why it’s there, and making peace with its once-important job in your life. From there, it’s much easier to call it unnecessary and to de-throne its role in your life now. Once you’ve built a relationship with this coping skill (“Protector” — if you are following IFS language), you can now let it know some of the consequences it is creating in your life, some of the negative after effects, and how and why it is no longer serving you — why it’s no longer needed.

Sometimes this looks like it truly not being needed because the part of you that it was trying to protect you from (severe pain, suffering, potential harm, shame, fear, being hurt by family, etc) is no longer a threat. Yet sometimes it means that that threat is still sometimes there but that you’d rather not use this particular tool anymore because it’s unhealthy to your overall wellbeing. This is where we supplant maladaptive tools for new, healthy ones — like exercise, emotional release, a coaching relationship, singing, breathwork, travel, boundaries, work/life balance, writing, etc.

Each person will be different as to how to handle these old coping skills. Many clients need to continue using their coping mechanisms during the first part of coaching while they are unpacking all the bitter turmoil of the past. If you still need it, then listen to your body and use it if you feel you must. However, there will come a time in your journey where it will be time to put down a burdening pack of stuff and leave it on the trail as you march forward. That’s where support from a coach or a therapist is really helpful — to know when, know how, and to follow through.

If you have questions about this episode, any of the IFS language used here, or want to learn more about unburdening and deep inner healing — feel free to reach out with a message. I’ll resource you and help advocate for you as you find your footing on the trauma recovery road.

Wellspring Wednesday|Week 20: Time

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“Time heals all wounds.” The end. Episode over. Go out and just wait for your healing to come magically to you.

…

I find this statement to be personally unnerving and a bit offensive. I don’t think the Greek poet 2,000 years ago who seems to be the author meant it to be hurtful. In fact, I think he probably meant it for good. A soothing salve to help others get through their difficulties, losses, and grievances. I get the heart, but I don’t like the statement.

Not that it doesn’t have some truth. As you remember from episodes Nearsightedness and Objectivity, there is a quality to time and distance that allows for your mind to expand outward to even be receptive to healing. That is true. I agree with that. However, it’s not just some magic wand that waiting 15 years after a sexual assault that you’ll be wound-free. Just as there is not prescription of “add 17 months after you leave your abusive mother’s home and you’ll be cured”. In fact, beyond the original abuse, we know that trauma survivors — especially of childhood trauma — are much more likely to have recurring traumatic relationships, have a more reactionary trigger to new traumas like the death of a friend or a car accident, and are more prone to addictions, crime, and other coping skills that shorten their lifespan. So should we really be waiting around for time to fix all our woes?

I know that sounds dramatic, but as years go on with unhealed trauma, survivors are still suffering the aftereffects, struggling to keep the hope, and can become more isolated away from treatments that can help as the days go on. For some survivors, there is a desperation.

In the practice of IFS (like I spoke on weeks ago), strong protectors are working hard to keep the vulnerable, exiled inner children inside of survivors protected from pain and more suffering. As time goes on, a protector that has a lot of trust issues — for example — will only be proven right again and again as people fail them and the world remains scary. Ultimately, they are doing a great job protecting the ‘exiles’ inside — but they are doing a disservice to the system as a whole. As time marches on, this protector may indeed become more and more resistant to help, and another protector who is “tired of the trust issues” can come to cover that original protector. So now you have an inner child who was taught that people are scary from their original abuse, a protector who works to keep that exile safe by not allowing it to trust anyone, and then another protector who layers on top who is sick and tired of not trusting and getting hurt. Then your Self is sick and tired, and yet days are marching on. It can seem to be getting worse.

Again, I know the author of the saying meant well. I just feel the need to add on here that no matter the trauma, time is just one of the players in the game. It’s what you DO with that time that most matters. Even if it wasn’t childhood trauma, this is true. Let’s say you are in a really terrible accident and lose the ability to walk. You wouldn’t just sit in your wheelchair waiting for time to heal your legs. You would work hard with PT, special treatments, and therapies. With time, multiplied by a lot of work and tons of pain, you can relearn how to walk. Let’s also say that there are no therapies that will help you regain the ability to walk. Now you are just sitting in your wheelchair — but it’s still about what you do with the days after that reality. It takes time to rebuild self-confidence, and that’s only after accepting the truth and dealing with the grief of the loss of your legs as well as all the freedom that goes with it. It takes time to allow others to take care of this new dependent you, and it takes time to work at the small ways you can learn some independence even with your new condition. That’s time multiplied by work and tons of pain again.

Same is true for all types of survivors. Truth is, here you are — a Survivor! Let’s stop and take a moment to applaud that. Next, what can you do with your time post-trauma to work at your healing? What’s the next right step for you? How are you manifesting your healing in the time you’ve been given? Do you need to allow yourself to be angry at your abuser? Do you need to forgive yourself and recognize you aren’t even to blame? Can you learn to be okay with your aftereffects that trauma gave you all the while working to supplant some of the maladaptive coping mechanisms with new, healthy ones? Are you ready to try some modalities of therapy? Are you at a place where having a coach is right for you? Have you allowed yourself to grieve someone you lost? Have you sought out help for your addiction? What do you need in order to be successful at a new relationship or a career move? Are you happy in your current living situation or do you need to make some changes? Have you designed a regimen of self-care and accountability to help you along the way?

Time multiplied by nothing is nothing. Time multiplied by hard, arduous work is healing. Time alone can’t heal all wounds. Time and doing “the stuffs” — that can heal all wounds. Trust me, I know that, eventually, with enough of the time, patience, work, and support — you can heal. If you need a hand, reach out and let me know. Keep on keeping on. Time is marching on, and so come the opportunities to heal and return to your authentic Self. You are amazing!

Wellspring Wednesdays|Week 17: Quantity v. Quality

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I love math. I am a human who just loves math. I get it; I can work with it. I like to solve equations. An algebra workbook would be what a coloring book is for others. I like figuring out problems; I love solving for X. There’s an actual true solution to every equation. There is an exact calculation once you understand the problem and know the formula. Oh, how I love formulas! To me, math just makes sense.

I digress because this show/blog isn’t about math. It’s about trauma recovery. The beauty of healing is that there is no finite solution. There is a lot of system creating, formula following, and problem solving — sure. Yet, with healing, you can’t know those things in advance. You are making them up as you go. Healing isn’t a math equation; it’s an art. It’s creative. It’s a dance. It’s a poem, a prose, an essay. It’s getting up every morning and trying to find joy while drudging through miles of pain. It’s exploratory, unpredictable. There are no X and Y to solve for or anything you can punch into a calculator to get an answer. Healing is the answer. The art of healing is the solution. The mitigation of the aftereffects of your trauma is the result. The calculation is whittled down to how much relief you find in your day-to-day life. The secret sauce is finding peace within yourself as you loop around in wild fanciful circles, small pivots, and untamed brush strokes. You are recreating your authentic self; you are putting together puzzle pieces and making something beautiful.

There are no rules, no way to quantify your experience. What works for you may indeed trigger another. What your best picture looks like today may feel like a 4-year-old’s drawing the next. You rip it up, and you start over — over and over again. You take hours learning the choreography of this healing dance, only to discover you hate dancing. Then you walk away for a year or more. You come back, and healing is waiting for you to pick back up wherever you left off. There is not a magic equal sign that means you’ve completed the work. There’s just a fresh canvas every morning waiting for you to design something from scratch. The hope comes from knowing the blank canvas is waiting and knowing that you are the only one who can create this thing.

We’ve talked about how the healing road is dizzying with curves and bumps and twists. You can’t find an end because the end is not the goal. Learning to love the journey is the goal. Would it be easier to have a specific gauge to check in on how much healing you’ve accomplished? Sure. Would it be lovely to have a meter to see how much farther you’ve got to go? Of course. (Although, depending on the person, both of those may be devastatingly pessimistic measurements, so let’s be thankful that they don’t exist.) So if you are like me and really like to find solutions and fix things, how can you value your healing if not by ranking it in size, shape, and distance? That assessment can only come from your soul. Once you’ve hit one plateau of healing, you can relish in that for a while, only to be assured that even deeper healing is around the corner. How is the journey going? How do you feel day to day? Can you give a quality to your current mood and mental state? Can you feel the internal changing happening? Can you be okay with the small wins and build momentum on those?

That qualitative condition in your heart, mind, spirit, lifestyle, emotional state, mental health, and overall well-being — that is measurable. You can do much more; you could do way less. None of that matters if something isn’t working. Also, nothing can compare to finding that thing that serves you really well — a creative outlet, a new friendship, a coach you connect with, the replacement of an old coping skill, or a good night’s sleep. You don’t judge that with ounces, weeks, or inches. You compute it with your feelings, your instinct, your true self.

If you need support along the journey — maybe you aren’t happy with your current quality assessment or you’ve hit a plateau and are hungry for more — feel free to send me a message or schedule your free consult today. A road trip is always better with a friend to support you; I’ll even chip in a little for gas. Either way, never give up on yourself. You never know when the next level of healing is around the corner. No calculators needed.

Wellspring Wednesdays|Week 15: Objectivity

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To start off today, I want to give a shout out to Feedspot. They ranked “Trauma Survivorhood” as #32 on their most comprehensive Top 60 Trauma Podcast’s list this month! I appreciate that and am honored to continue to bring solid content three times weekly to survivors around the globe. Ranking #1 on this list, as it should is Guy Macpherson’s “The Trauma Therapist” podcast. This is the podcast I was listening to that fateful day years ago when one of my Association’s coaches came on to explain the modality of Trauma Recovery Coaching. It’s all been forward motion for me since then. I’m honored to even be on a list with his amazing podcast, and he is now weekly helping me to develop a solid coaching business helping survivors find their full circle healing as a trauma recovery coach myself! That’s a full circle moment, for sure!

Now let’s dive into today’s topic: on being objective. I love this word and its many meanings. The dictionary defines objective as: a) expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations, b) of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers : having reality independent of the mind, c) something toward which effort is directed : an aim, goal, or end of action.

Similar to last week when I discussed nearsightedness, objectivity is a perception free from distortion. Although no longer talking about actual vision, this concept comes with time and energy and space and distance. Being able to have an undistorted perspective, one must have a bit of distance from the emotions and biases of the situation. This can be hard to do for yourself and by yourself. Not impossible — as I believe all things are indeed possible. Yet, a lot of what coaching is for my clients to be an outside shift in their perception. Not at all to say that I take away from the pain and reality of their trauma. We never downplay the emotions that come up during your trauma healing. We aren’t trying to get rid of your past — just looking for new ways to cope in the future. I just personally believe that having another’s view of the aftereffects from your trauma is really insightful when moving forward as a survivor. I do think that an individual needs to be able to see the affirmations that their trauma left with about themselves — all the lies that come out subtly of what we believe to be true about ourselves. This sometimes sounds like an affirmation of something a survivor says: “I can’t do X” or “I can’t figure out Z”, or something they limit themselves to like: “I will always be this way”. Those black and white statements that we say so subconsciously continues to wire into the brain the things your abusers made you think about yourself and the world around you. Having some internal space and distance from your trauma allows you to see things from a more objective view. Never, ever condoning the abuse or forgetting about the trauma, but in a way seeing things from a fresh view. This can be challenging and comes with a lot of practice.

Beyond that, objectivity also serves to allow for more concrete evidence to present. You can step back and recognize that you still speak illy of yourself when stressed or that you use your parent’s words to describe your lack of accomplishments. You can question those all or nothing statements, asking yourself if they are really true and why you believe them and when you started believing them. This is a powerful internal resource for yourself — similar to CBT training to challenge your thoughts. Can you begin to have some objectiveness when you think and talk about yourself? Is there room for reframing? Are you looking for other ways to feel differently about a situation so you can unstick from the misery?

What I most love is that a whole other definition of objective means a goal. It’s almost as if once you allow objectivity to work its way into your life, you can start setting recovery goals based around this new view and way of thinking. It’s just really beautiful to me that this change can occur with just a few questions — asked of yourself or your coach. Small challenges to your mindset can turn it from doom and gloom to a growth mindset over time. You can begin to see yourself the way your friends and loved ones do; you can hear and speak your trauma story in a new light with a new hope for the future. Then, you can set aside goals that you want to move toward and start growing right before your very eyes.

If you think you are ready to begin this kind of journey of healing and reframing, setting goals, and changing your life from the inside out — send me a message or schedule a free 20-minute consult today to see if coaching is the next best step for you. I’d love to support you as you start exploring your way from subjectivity to objectivity.

Wellspring Wednesdays|Week 8: Hypervigilance

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Ah, yes, my old friend, Hypervigilance. I don’t mean “old” as though it’s gone; I mean “old” as in how long it’s been with me! Let’s start with defining what hypervigilance is. “The state of being highly and abnormally alert to potential danger or threat” is a good start from the dictionary, but with psychology in mind as we learn about our inner world, let’s add the phrase “accompanied by behavior that aims to prevent danger”.*

To be clear, this has nothing to do with being paranoid. Paranoia is based on a misconception about a current threat, believing there is a very real, specific threat befalling you right now. Hypervigilance is an ongoing lifestyle of anticipation and staying ready for any threat that may happen. This is a constant, overwhelming alertness — staying in a state of arousal to be ready to turn the engines on for a 4F response (like we discussed a couple of weeks ago). It’s a watching, waiting, scanning, and hyperfocus or expanded view observance. Hypervigilance comes in a few different flavors of what one is waiting for and why. For some, it’s always at the ready to run and hide. Others may be looking for things, people, places to avoid altogether. Still others stay guarded and poised to fight or lash out. While still others, my particular flavor, are at the ready to rush toward any threat like a firefighter. For me, this is a combo of fight and fawn response, it’s also why I said weeks ago that I believe there are several more that the Four F trigger responses where I added things like “fix” and “function”. It’s because those were some of responses I have to danger or threats. In fact, my flavor isn’t talked about often — so much so that for a while I rejected the term Hypervigilant for myself for a long time because I thought it was mainly about running, hiding, or preventing danger. Sometimes it’s about stopping it, calming it, or saving people after it. To the body, the hypervigilant responsibility is similar no matter what the brain plans to do when the threat actually arises.

The brain’s choice of what it’s waiting for, why, and what it plans to do about it is how the symptoms present for each person. Any number of things can happen to a person with hypervigilance. Most have a hard time following conversations in a room of people because their brain is so occupied with scanning the room. Many will be jumpy at loud noises, vocal tones changing around them even from strangers in a restaurant. This also looks like overanalyzing other’s body languages or hyper focusing on one person and all their movements if your brain perceives a possible threatening attitude. For some, it means that, around others or in unfamiliar groups, the hypervigilant person is always sweating, has dilated pupils, rapid breathing, etc. Even if they appear normal, the uncomfortability felt in the body can be overwhelming. This is all very distressful, often exhausting, emotionally taxing, and can be a conflict with our social norms.

For me personally, while driving on the highway, my brain is constantly playing out scenarios of what I would do if I was in or witnessed a car accident. For me, it’s about being ready to safely and quick pull over to help, while calling 911, and simultaneously not worrying about whether I would get hurt or not. In a room of people, I am a scanner for sure. I have learned really well how to carry on a conversation — but my peripheral is always aware of its surroundings. I am hyper aware of people’s tones and will start moving closer to anyone who seems they are getting angry or distressed because my brain’s specific course of action will be to try to calm the person and protect anyone that they may be getting angry at. If I hear a loud crash, bang, or yelling voice — my entire system revs immediately into overdrive in order to save anyone who may be hurt WHILE my brain is using logic to try to decide what I even just heard and where it came from. By the time my brain realizes it was just a kid at the playground squealing with joy, my body still takes several minutes to calm down from the pumped-up adrenalin it produces thinking it had to save said child from a kidnapping. My hypervigilance, to be honest, has actually saved several people and potential real-life problems. I have barged into a neighbor’s home and grabbed their children during a domestic violence incident where I heard them yelling about a weapon. I have (against 911’s pleading with me) walked up to a window-covered car to stop what I thought was a woman being raped. I am still very fuzzy on what actually was happening in that car, but those siblings were definitely harming one another. I stopped the last 60 seconds of it before the police came. There are even a few other large case scenarios where my firefighter instinct was very helpful. However, on a daily basis, what this constant state of hyperarousal has done to my body is immeasurable.

For others, this would be a constant state of ready to run, ready to hide. So much so that most hypervigilant people will just avoid a lot of life’s social situations — for example, never entering any room with a lock where they are alone with someone else even a harmless co-worker. This also means that we aren’t generally relaxed enough to enjoy ourselves or kick back and let our guard down for anyone, ever, in some cases.

So — this doesn’t sound healthy, right? So, let’s just stop doing this, right? Well, I can say that after years of working at it, I have learned how to at least calm the arousal state as soon as I realize that the threat I perceived is not real. I use breathwork to come back to a relaxed state as quickly as I can. I am also learning to be slower with my reaction periods. This has taken years of diligent work, but now I can sit on the couch and hear someone yell in a neighboring apartment, and I won’t ratchet up until I hear it at least twice. That’s progress! It doesn’t seem like much, but I’m still working on it. I constantly (like a meditation practice) am now able to draw myself back to the present moment in the road and driving rather than getting too far swept up in the visions of car accidents all around me. Yes, years later, I still, every few miles, have to catch myself in the car accident POV, ask my brain to stop thinking about that, take a few breaths, and refocus on the present moment. Mindfulness practice is a regular for me in a car.

What’s important to realize is that for trauma survivors — hypervigilance is very common and normal. Also helpful to remember is that everyone’s brain is just trying to keep them safe. So for someone who’s been through something horrific or a lifetime of trauma responses in developmental trauma, your brain uses the same tools of vigilance as a normal brain. Because it knows things that a non-trauma person doesn’t know, it has to do everything extra to protect you. Common sense is what keeps you from not walking down a dark street alone at night, but if you MUST, you are going to be happy your brain knows how to be vigilant. Vigilance is useful when you are in a different country and don’t know the language, areas of danger, the laws, or exactly where to go if you do need help — so it’s best to just try to avoid danger altogether by being cautious of your surroundings and keeping your personal items close, etc. Vigilance is healthy when you have a new baby, and you have to remind people to wash their hands before they touch your infant. Vigilance is what a normal brain uses to avoid a car accident, and arousal will happen IF and WHEN a normal brain is in an accident or witnesses one and can decide what to do. Hypervigilance and hyperarousal is driving in that constant state of being activated and ready for an accident at any moment, like what I was describing. Do you see the difference? Vigilance, like most things, can be really purposeful. It’s the extreme of these things that it becomes an issue.

So your brain learned hypervigilance as a child to sustain your abuse or neglect or dysfunctional home, right? Great! Thank your brain. Maybe life was great for you until a horrible trauma happened at college, and now you are hypervigilance around anything that reminds you of that incident. Thank your brain. If your spouse is abusive, you have learned to constantly be watching tones and facial expressions of everyone around you because you are so used to doing it at home with your partner. Thank your brain.

However, your inner world can learn to realize that you are safe now and to retrain itself if you recognize hypervigilance as a problem. If it’s become a maladaptive coping skill that you no longer need and is now actually damaging you (by not being able to relax, the physiological effects happening, the inability to sleep well because of it, and problems within new healthy relationships), this is what we say as “no longer serving you”. It WAS adaptive in your trauma season. Now, it doesn’t serve you anymore, and instead, you may be serving it by continuing on the path of damage to your nervous system, poor social habits, and lack of physical and mental wellbeing because of it. There are great therapies for this. Like we discussed a month ago, Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is a key one. EMDR, hypnosis, exposure therapy, breathwork — these are also available.

Firstly, by recognizing that you may suffer with hypervigilance, understanding the effects it has on you and your body, and being ready to make a change, you can start to believe there is a better way. And that, to me, was the very foundation inside me to want to pursue calming my hypervigilance. The primary step to healing is always to take all the wisdom and knowledge into your inner world, show yourself the reality of what’s going on, and decide you want something new. That is the Full Circle Pivot I spoke on recently. There is a better lifestyle beyond the constant anxiety of hypervigilance.

If you need help in this area, it’s a space I feel very confident coaching in. Not only from all the knowledge and training I’ve received for myself, but my fresh perspective as a person healing-from-hypervigilance, I would be honored to help support you on this journey. Feel free to send me a message on the Connect tab of my website or schedule a Complimentary Discovery Call to meet with me to discuss coaching. We don’t want to aim to become absent-minded, but we can find a proper balance of mindfulness without hyperarousal attached. You got this!

Wellspring Wednesdays|Week 5: Easy v. Simple

*Author Note* If you prefer to listen or watch instead of or along with -
Check out the YouTube video and/or the Podcast audio.

I have been known to say that “nothing is easy, but everything can be simple”.  This isn’t always the case, of course, but this kind of blanket statement motto has been a constant reminder for myself in my own trauma recovery journey.  For me, because I believe in the almighty optimism of life, I just trust things the simpler they are.  It’s almost like when searching for an answer – I tend to have it fall into my lap.  However, then, when something comes too easy, I tend to be a skeptic!  Yet when something tangible and logical comes to me – like in a dream or something – it seems simple and feasible.  This could be an answer to a question, a confirmation I needed for something, the next right step that I’m searching for, the proper response, or just what I must do to move forward from a situation.  However – this comes after taking time to learn to self-trust and trust the universe.  If you aren’t there or you are bent toward pessimism – I’m not going to try to change your mind.  If you hear me out though, I will challenge you with a concept that may turn into a powerful inner resource on your healing path.  Either way is okay, but I’m going to share it because I believe it to be true - if only for my own life.

The way toward self-realization is realizing who you are; the way toward self-actualization is actually realizing who you are. 

The End…Just kidding.

Trauma survivors – all of us – would LOVE an easy solution, an easy cure.  We want the PTSD to stop, the emotional disconnection to end, the relational and intimacy issues to go away, the physical pain to be gone, etc. We know there really isn’t an easy one-step-cure-all to fix each of us.  What if it could be broken up into simpler steps though?  What if there was a perfect path for trauma recovery with YOUR name on it?  Different for each survivor; tailored to your specific trauma, responses, coping skills, and aftereffects.  Instead of asking how CAN you live your best life – what if we asked ourselves how SHOULD we live it?   What I mean by that is what if we had a felt sense of knowing in our gut that is our authentic self that is guiding us back to our truth.  

I don’t say this to sound woo-woo.  I’m not woo-woo; I’m just woo.  I believe that survivors have their own tools and keys buried inside them like a hidden treasure.  Trauma covered it up with earth, magma, rocks – like a volcano that covers everything it touches.  But – underneath is still preserved the tools that you were born with, the person you still are even before the trauma happened.  The purpose, the passion, the right path for your perfect life.  Now, those tools may be altered from the lava, ash, and soot.  They may work differently; they along with you have been changed forever.  That’s all true.  It’s also true that the coming back to yourself is the healing.  Then you realize, uncover, and rediscover (or maybe just discover) who you are.  This can’t be an easy task – but it can be simple if you trust that you are still in there.  If you are sure that you are, you are willing to do the work, set a plan, and show up for yourself over and over – the rest can be simpler.  Your self-actualization can then be freed to bubble over and do great things. 

Way back on Week One, I discussed some basics of this in episodes called: “Agency” and “Acne of the Soul” which I’ll link to in the show notes for reference.  Finding what works for you and what you actually need is part of a self-inquiry process. If you are struggling with sifting through this – I recommend asking your trauma recovery coach or therapist for help.  This is similar to Life Coaching – which I am passionate about in helping people find their life’s mission – but if you have a trauma history, this may be bringing up so many emotions that you may need extra support.  Feel free to send me a message and ask how I can help.   

Once you do this self-inquiry process, you’ll start having freedom to ask yourself questions about goals, careers, relationships.  You can search out answers to life’s big questions.  You’ll want to figure out how you want to live, where you want to live, who you love and why, how to be a good parent, how to break addictions and cycles, and so much more. 

And all that can be simpler because you’ll ask your inner knowing what SHOULD you do instead of what CAN you do.  For instance – if you asked yourself what you can do for a living … you could think of 10 things off the top of your head. You could pick off the option’s list by narrowing it down based on how long the commute is and how much the salary is.  You then decide on whatever one, and then go and get it.  Probably in a year or two with the right certification or degree or application process – in no time, you could be a (insert career here)! 

However, if you ask yourself deep down what SHOULD you do for a living … then, you have to simply be quiet, patient, still, and listen.  Aligning with your purpose deep in your inner being, you can actually find out what career bests suits your purpose.  Then – you won’t be given a random list to choose from, you’ll be given an answer.  

I do know from experience that this trauma recovery thing is really difficult at times, and it requires consistent, hard work.  Picking an easy road – like remaining where you are, not growing, allowing your family to keep manipulating you, not setting boundaries, losing yourself in everyone else, striving to be perfect, just staying where you’ve always been – this won’t take you to where you want to go.  Choosing the (albeit) harder recovery road– doing the work, being coached, figuring out who you are, getting help for your addiction, emotionally releasing all the junk, discovering your authentic self – will give you the long-term gains in the future to live your best life and walk in your healed, whole self. 

And that’s the end.  That’s the goal of this human life thing we do – finding ourselves and our purpose and then being our best self. On this week’s Full Circle Friday (week 5: Eat, Pray, Love), we’ll talk more about the idea of goals and goal setting (which is a big part of what I do as a trauma recovery coach).  If you are overwhelmed at the challenge of today, send me a message on the “Connect” tab on my website to let me know.  I promise to reach back with any help I can offer.   If you are feeling overwhelmed, there is a reason for that, and we can figure it out together. 

Wellspring Wednesdays|Week 4: Developmental Trauma

*Author Note* If you prefer to listen or watch instead of or along with -
Check out the YouTube video and/or the Podcast audio.

Our Wellspring Wednesday tries to offer a focus of the inner resources each human innately has as, I believe, they are in charge of their own healing and well-being.  Something special to note is that sometimes our conflict is actually within us, which is especially true for trauma survivors.  I find for myself and clients that we can’t necessarily heal from something that we don’t understand or identify with.  So if this word, developmental trauma, is new for you, consider this your introduction.  In learning more about this, I hope you are able to start finding ways to mend your inner wounds so that you can continue to flourish in your trauma recovery journey.  This is in no way a means to provide a diagnosis.  If you align with this type of trauma, please seek professional help from your trauma recovery coach, therapist, or even your regular doctor to seek the next steps in the process.

The first eight years of life is considered to be the formidable years.  Many believe these years are the shaping of your whole personality, roles, career objectives, likes and dislikes, social understanding, and moral judgments.  This is because our brains develop from the bottom up.  The lower parts of your brain are responsible for survival.  These are your “physiological needs” as Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs lists as: air, water, food, shelter, clothing.  The basic of all basic to survive outside the womb.   As you enter this world as a helpless infant, your brain is responsible to find you nourishment and shelter from the elements. 

As the brain grows, it is now looking for safety, connection, proper health (beyond just survival), friendship, intimacy.  This is right at the start of infancy when your brain is seeking out what and who is safe and forming the ability to trust.  In survivors of early trauma – this is often where problems begin to arise.  And because the brain is still developing toward its next stages to identity, self-esteem, eventually more and more independence, etc – thwarting the foundation of the lower brain’s functioning is devastating. 

What does this look like?  This could be an abused mother who is nursing her newborn while in a terrified state.  Her nervous energy is actually not just transferred into your baby’s milk supply via stress hormones, but also creating confusion in the infant as they sense the mother and watch her.  The brain is recording her fear and trying to decide if it should also be afraid.  Or perhaps this could look a mother nursing while angry at her own circumstances.  The baby again is feeding off of the mother who may be making the baby scared.  The baby may not drink as much so that the feeding can be over.  The baby may even not want to alert the mother to its hunger eventually when it is met with resistance and frustration most of times that it asks.  This the beginning of another topic called ‘Self-Abandonment’ for another day.

Another example would be a preschool age child who is sexually abused.  The brain is learning during this trauma.  The brain is always watching and holding everything it learns from the outside world.  The physical pain of this experience tells the brain to get away.  However, when you are small, you simply cannot get away.  So now your brain has to find another way to get through the torture.  It may learn to dissociate.  Maybe afterwards, the brain seeks something that used to be a comfort to the child like food to try to sooth the physical and emotional pain.  Also, at this early stage of learning, the child has not yet discovered any of its sexual or reproductive abilities.  The brain has now been introduced to something so foreign that it cannot comprehend what actually just happened. Yet somehow now has to learn to cope with this trauma and any further circumstances of it.   

While moving into the upper parts of the brain with something like Friendship, per se, in first grade, if a child is being assaulted at home, that is what the brain has learned that connection with others is – abusive.  The brain learns how to appease their classmates in order for the tribal skill of Connection to be earned.  This child is operating in fear and seems shy or weak – which then makes them a bigger target for bullies.  The child may be trying to make themselves very small and invisible so that they aren’t a target.  Unfortunately, this actually makes you more so.  *On a side note, childhood bullies are simply trauma victims themselves whose brain has learned to lash out for survival instead of lashing in.*    

I digress.  All of these parts are developing as we build on this rocky foundation to now - as executively functioning adults.  We are simply all moving around the globe using our brain’s knowledge from past experiences.  For you, if your infancy through childhood had physical abuse, neglect, anger or raging parents, often fear, alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual trauma, dysfunction, poverty, chronic stress, family lies and secrets, harsh or distressing environments, harm or perceived harm, racial inequality, food insecurity, witnessing violence, or any other atrocity – this is what we call Developmental Trauma.  This is often connected with our Attachment Style.  Attachment trauma is a wounding between the baby and their main caregivers.  This becomes a style of bridge that the survivor walks across to every relationship from there on forward.  Again, another topic, but highly interwoven.

“Ok Sara”, you may be saying, “This is so doom and gloom.  What’s the prognosis?”  I’m glad you asked because as you may guess, I believe healing from all of this is completely possible.  However, once you understand what developmental trauma is and determine whether you are a survivor of early-age abuse or neglect, this is where you start figuring out the steps to heal because now you know. 

This is just a very surface level introduction to Developmental Trauma, but if you are resonating with any other this, here’s some suggestions.  In the show notes, I’ve linked my website.  Click on the “Resource” tab and you’ll find some powerful written work on this topic.  There is a link to take an attachment style quiz, and more.  From there, I highly recommend finding some professional help.  If you are looking for a trauma recovery coach, this is one of my specialty topics, and I’d love to help you find your way healing your childhood wounds.  Remember that some of the wounds you experienced are not part of your conscious memories in the first years of life.  So this takes time to find, process, root out, and heal from.  If you feel like you align with some of the developmental trauma symptoms or discover an attachment trauma but can’t pinpoint what the issue was – I offer that it was in the first few “forgotten” years.  As you see, your brain still amazingly remembered all the things you “learned” from those years.  The healing comes now when you uncover what your brain learned and discover how to become well again from the inside out.  There are many resources available for your type of trauma.  Starting with your inner wellspring of resilience, it just takes you making that first step to find help.  Feel free to send me a message on the “Connect” tab on the website in the show notes below with any further questions about how to begin this journey.

I don’t just know you can do this; deep down, you know you can do this too.  That’s your survivorhood taking right there!  Be proud of yourself for coming this far!  

Wellspring Wednesdays|Week 3: Compassion

*Author Note* If you prefer to listen or watch instead of or along with -
Check out the YouTube video and/or the Podcast audio.

One of my most favorite self-practices now but that was the hardest to learn and utilize was compassion for myself and then for others.  The dictionary defines compassion as “sympathetic pity and concern for suffering and misfortune”.   As a trauma survivor, once you are able to fully recognize what sufferings and misfortune you have endured, you can start to realize how much compassion you deserve.  Once you can see your inner suffering, really truly see it, you will begin to understand how important this self-compassion thing is.  If you heard your own story of trauma and abuse but from a friend, you would immediately grasp how much compassion they are due.  You may even be able to look from the outside in at some of their life choices and coping mechanisms without judgment but more of “sympathetic pity”.  You may want to hug your friend, cry with them, feel angry at their abusers, and try to help your friend heal. 

You see, compassion is a motivating factor in how much care, grace, and love we give to others.  Self-compassion, when truly felt in our being, is a motivation to give ourselves allowance for failures and give ourselves kindness.  That is what is so powerful about this practice.  It also makes it the most difficult.  By sheer humanness, your abuse and trauma actually made you feel worse about yourself, especially from early childhood neglect.  Once a survivor has learned to turn on themselves as the “bad ones”, “deserving of abuse”, “worthless”, or “unlovable”, they are now locked in a cycle of self-hatred, feelings of unimportance, depression, self-harm, and suicidal ideation.  Even after the trauma and abuse has stopped, us survivors can be stuck wallowing in distaste for ourselves – which actually re-traumatizes our own self over and over.  One of the mental tolls of trauma is the ongoing self-degradation that we learn from our abusers.   

Having a felt sense of compassion (truly understanding what happened to you and allowing yourself to feel pity for yourself) can begin to repair all these fears, maladaptive coping skills, and mistrust of yourself.  Embodying self-compassion literally unclouds your judgment of yourself.  Imagine being in the grocery store, and you see a young woman rushing around paying more attention to her phone than the direction of her shopping cart.  She stops in the middle of the aisle to text, looks lost and disheveled, seemingly not seeing all the other people trying to go around her.  You’d be annoyed, most likely.  You’d want to tell her off as you pass her - “I’ve been watching you since produce – you are knocking things over and getting in everyone’s way!!”  However, if you REALLY watch her and actually take time to SEE her, maybe you’d realize the tears in her eyes.  Turns out that she is running around quickly to find some dinner for her children after leaving the hospital where her mother just passed away.  She’s stressed; she’s got family texting and calling her, yet she still has to get dinner for her small kids at home waiting.  Once you can know her pain and suffering, your whole perspective on her “annoying” behavior changes.  Now you find yourself feeling badly for even being frustrated with her, and now you want to help her or give her some encouragement or maybe a hug.  Maybe you want to pay for her groceries or tell her you know what’s she’s going through because you lost your mom too.   THAT’s why Compassion is transformative.  That shift in how you perceive someone who’s been through something – that’s where you remember your humanness and how you would feel if you were them.  Judgment ceases, and powerful concern, care, and love come rushing in. 

Now – apply that situation to YOURSELF - your traumatized, abused, neglected, hurting self.  Sit with that and feel it in your bones.  How can we learn to love ourselves?  Self-Compassion.  How can we be motivated to seek therapeutic help?  Self-Compassion.  How can we be gentler with ourselves as we heal?  Self-Compassion.  When will the cycle of self-hatred, self-blame, and unworthiness be broken?  When we learn self-compassion. 

Compassion will never give you a pass to play the victim or hurt someone else or act out of revenge.  Compassion will always lead with more love for yourself so you can love others even greater.  That’s why I say it’s my favorite personal practice and also was the hardest to fully embody.   It is SO easy to berate myself.  It is SO easy for that inner critic to flood to the surface and tell me I’m pointless, worthless, unnecessary, stupid, fat, and ugly (sometimes all that same time).  AND THEN … my learned self-compassion practice bubbles over ALL those voices, all that noise, and comes to my rescue to remind myself that I’m a work in progress, that I’m learning and growing, that I’m not JUST doing the best I can but that I’m doing a damn good job.  A compassionate wellspring inside you will flood out all the neglect, emotional abuse, and other learned mechanisms that are still trying to hold you down. 

It’s tough to learn fully, but it’s easy to start.  Try by filling your tank every morning with some compassion before you are annoyed with yourself or triggered or stressed out – like kind talk, affirmations, looking earnestly at yourself in the mirror, hugging yourself, doing one nice thing for yourself, closing your eyes envisioning warmth and love surround you.  You will then spend the day with a friend on your side helping you battle the forces of evil that are trying to be annoyed with you, hating you, making you feel like nothing.  If you can start with a morning routine of loving yourself in whatever way feels good to you, you can be on your way to fully embodied LOTS of chances to fill your self-compassion tank back up even throughout a difficult day.  It’s a practice that is for sure!  In fact, one of the first chances you’ll get to test this out is when you start noticing yourself being mean to yourself for failing at self-compassion! It’s then actually your trauma brain and your new learned compassion brain battling each other.  That’s a great sign because you are recognizing that you failed and yet the compassion is STILL coming to your rescue.   

Compassion will be a warrior to remind you how far you’ve come.  Compassion will forgive you when you fall back into an old coping skill or break your boundaries.  Compassion will ride in like a knight in shining armor with a fresh wind of understanding that (yes) while you have a ways more to go in your post-traumatic healing, (but yes) you have already come a very long way.   Compassion will quiet your inner critic and start replacing it with an inner cheerleader.  Compassion will allow you to re-father and re-mother yourself.  Compassion makes room for mistakes.  Compassion gets you to your trauma coach or therapy appointment so you can keep healing your inner child.   

Compassion takes hard work, but the reward is immeasurable.Self-loathing is also a lot of draining energy work but with no benefit at the end of that tunnel.Choose self-compassion.Learning to love yourself is one of your most powerful weapons on this healing journey.

Wellspring Wednesdays|Week 2: Basics

*Author Note* If you prefer to listen or watch instead of or along with -
Check out the YouTube video and/or the Podcast audio.

This may seem elementary to some, but it’s actually very common for trauma survivors to struggle with any type of self-care.  An especially important part of discovering, storing, and knowing how and when to use inner resources comes from having a good relationship to self-care.  So if you aren’t really sure what self-care looks like for you or you have no practice of self-care (yet), you aren’t alone.  When you don’t have a regular self-care practice, for trauma survivors, it may be because you don’t have a very strong relationship to your own mind, body, or spirit.  This is also very common, and nothing to berate yourself for. A big key for a lot of survivors when they are first stepping into their healing journey is to initially recognize that they don’t often check in with or feel like they have a communication with their thoughts, body, or inner spiritual world.  If that’s you today, maybe today is just your moment to realize that and acknowledge it.  If you are ready, you may want to explore some of the basics of getting into a healthy space with yourself before you go too big with self-care.  Remember, the self-care regimen and practice that you can eventually develop will look quite different from person to person.  It’s a very special, personal plan of things that feed your own being.  You can get great ideas and suggestions from others – but self-care is actually much more than a spa day or a bubble bath.  Although self-care CAN be those things, it’s not truly just about those things. 

However, a good place to start is always at the beginning. There are actually things that are needed for human survival before one can fully thrive.  If you are at that place today where you are noticing how little you hear from your heart and body, these basics will help you grow some of that inner intuition by being kind to yourself in a very “human needs” sort of way.  Some of these basics that I’m referring to would be cornerstones like sleeping, eating, grooming, hygiene, moving the body, and kindness to yourself while you learn. I’m not in any means saying it’s time to start a major diet or start working out 3 hours every day. I mean taking an inventory of your regular daily habits to see where you may have some deficits.  This is by no means either a way to judge yourself against some standard.  This inventory is to get really honest with yourself in your “activities of daily living”.  This term is used by many health professionals as a measure of fundamental things one needs for independent living. 

As a trauma survivor, for instance, your sleep might be problematic – from being unable to get to sleep or stay asleep, to full fledge insomnia, or major disruption like nightmares.  If you have used eating as a coping skill during abuse or stress, it may be helpful to just recognize this as an unhealthy mechanism that may be hindering your health in your mind, gut, body, and spirit.  This is just an inventory – and trust me when I say, it is extremely common for trauma survivors to have impediments in these basic fundamentals.  What you have been through has left you with maladaptive survival skills, overactive stressors, fear trapped in your body, and weights of epic proportions on your spirit.  Recognizing that something such as ‘personal hygiene being limited’ may unlock an eye opener to help you realize that your hygiene or basic grooming is representative of how you see yourself.  Then, maybe seeing that limited care for your outer body, this can clue you into how it mimics the way you haven’t cared for your inner being. 

Once you can begin to acknowledge some of these things in the ‘school of basics’, you can itemize out anything that you find to be lacking that you would really like to change.  It’s also okay if you understand your eating habits are a way that you control the stress in your life, for instance.  It may not be something you are fully ready to work through yet because without that coping skill you may not feel equipped to face the stress of your trauma.   With some of these functional skills, you honestly may want to work on your trauma healing much more before you are able to tackle something like your eating choices or body image.  For a lot of survivors, they need to address the mental health aspect of their trauma and find recovery before they can address sleep issues or physical exercise restrictions. This is all okay.  Today is just a challenge for you to examine what is working for you and what isn’t.  This type of investigation is helpful but may be triggering.  If you have a trauma recovery coach or a therapist or close friend, you may want to ask them to help you sort out a list of your daily habits and general self-care.  With my clients, we go through an Activities of Daily Living assignment once a month for three months to get a baseline of what a day in their life looks like. Then we check in with it periodically to see how things have been changing as they move forward down their trauma recovery path.  It may be daunting to write out “sleeps just 2 hours at a time” or “sleeps all day” – but trust me when I say there is NO judgment to this record.  It’s just the truth about your situation – with no story behind it.  It takes practice to recognize a need this great yet to have kindness and patience with yourself as you do it.  If your basic life health has taken drastic downturns due to your mental health or your trauma, please recognize that this activity of exploring these things is best done with a professional or close partner.  It’s helpful to have someone there to remind you that these truths about yourself are totally normal and totally okay.  Then, you’ll also have someone available to help you sort out what areas that you’d like to make changes and help you figure out how to go about starting to do that. 

The basics are an important stepping stone to finding genuine care for yourself.  Beyond the basics, it’s then safer to take a look at those more stereotypical self-care routines and practices that you read about in the magazines – which are truly more about what fills you with joy, what makes you feel alive, and stops the clock while you do it. In fact, in the care of a professional, I would even encourage you to start searching out those things that are “big S” Self-care for you even while you are still working on tackling the basics.  The more you grow in your healing, the quicker some of the basics will start to align to your preferred values. Always remember to give yourself a ton of grace with this type of topic.  You have been through things that others haven’t, and you owe a large appreciation to your body and coping skills for helping you survive here today.  Kindness is really the key here.  You can’t experience self-care without first learning to care for and about yourself.  Be patient.  You got this!

Wellspring Wednesdays|Week 1: Acne of the Soul

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Check out the YouTube video and/or the Podcast audio.

Fitting with the New Year, I want to talk about something that I think is an overarching topic when it comes to trauma recovery.  As a trauma recovery coach, the first thing (after establishing trust and safety) that I need to let my clients know is that I believe in their ability to direct their healing.  It’s important for Survivors to be given full permission to decide what works for them and what doesn’t.  That’s why in trauma recovery coaching I never give a diagnosis or any prescription of care to my clients.  It’s an exploration to find a regimen that works for them – a toolbox of coping skills, healthy techniques when triggered, and finding ways that makes them feel alive in their true self. 

Skin is the largest organ of the human body.  With all its cell and pores, it is truly our window to the outside world.  Yet, no one’s skin is alike. Everyone has a different type of skin, various allergies, special sensitivities, types of birthmarks and sunspots, many kinds of skin tones, varieties of medical conditions, each with our own skin problems and challenges.  What one person may completely swear by as a necessary lotion, potion, or ointment could quite literally kill someone else.  One human with one type of skin may need a face wash for their acne that destroys the pores of another human.  Some people swear by popping their zits; others admonish the practice vehemently.  Some skin seems to never scar while still others seem to scar on a regular basis for minor things.  The skin’s stretch and sag is all built into our DNA when we are born.  People from all over the world are nearly guaranteed to never find someone with the same skin complaints and tips or tricks as themselves.  The beauty product makers and media would like to have us think that their latest product is perfect for every skin type and that every person across the board NEEDS their product.  However, we know that’s simply not true.  For those of us a little older in life, we remember the fussing we’ve done over the span of teenage years through adulthood to find just the right way, right product, right amount, right frequency of lotions and potions to either clear up or cover up our acne.  There of course are those annoying people that never had acne, but everyone has SOMETHING about their skin that bothers them.  I think a lot of us can agree that in different seasons our skin needs different care based on the dryness of the air and the harshness of the weather.  Some shades of skin need tons of SPF all year round, while others never touch the stuff.  People with freckles have their own set of regimens, and yet others have actual medical conditions that prove to have their own specific medical needs. 

How foolish then for any of us, not living in anyone else’s skin, to tell someone else how to best care for their largest organ – the piece of their body that is the most forward facing to the world.  In that same thread, imagine having never walked in someone’s shoes or experienced their traumas or problems or relationships.  There would be no way for anyone else to decide what that person needs.  I know some people, like myself, who LOVE yoga.  And yet I haven’t yet been able to convert everyone because some people I know have tried it and hated it! Can you imagine? (Sarcasm) Some trauma survivors do extremely well to learn breathwork to calm themselves when triggered, while for others deep breathing actually makes things worse for them.  Many survivors have been further traumatized by non-trauma-informed therapists, and yet others (myself included) are blessed with a consistent healthy relationship to regular therapy.  The modalities of therapy anyways are so far and wide and deep; they are expanding with every passing year.  How can we even say that we have the best thing when maybe our personally best thing hasn’t even made it to market yet to be added to our therapeutic menu?

A trauma survivor knows themselves the best – even if the trauma has temporarily (even long term) created a chasm between their trauma identity and their true identity.  My job is to help them find their way back to their body and their authentic self so that they can trust their intuition again.  Then together we can come up with tools and coping mechanisms and trigger techniques and all the lotions and potions they want to put in their box to carry on as a trauma survivor in the real world.  I’m passionate about this because I want people to know that NO MATTER WHAT YOU’VE BEEN THROUGH that you are not broken.  Survivors don’t need MY fixing.  They just need inner healing back to themselves.  There are TONS of inner resources that they have had to use for surviving.  So if you’ve made it here to where you are reading or listening to this right now, you still have your inner wellspring f strength keeping you alive and trying to figure out how best to live in this world following the traumas you’ve been through.  I can help give you some ideas to try, recommendations of what has worked for me, and point you to some great places – but you, my friend, you know thyself.  Trust thyself.  I’d love to come along in the passenger seat and encourage you along your way to finding the perfect regimen for the acne of your soul – the right meds, the right therapeutic interventions, the right exercise and eating routine, the right relationships, and jobs, and all the lotions and potions for your soul to keep you as you walk diligently down your own recovery journey.