Wellspring Wednesdays|Week 12: Labyrinth

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 often refer to this thing we do as a “trauma recovery journey”, a path, a road. If I’m really honest though — it’s basically a labyrinth. It’s complicated, dizzying at times, twisty, and topsy-turvy. There’s not just steps forward and steps back, like with any lifestyle goal or achievement worth doing. Because trauma is messy, the recovery will be so as well. There’s really no easy way around this, and for that I am truly story. For myself and for anyone reading, I’m really sorry. It’s heartbreaking to think about how much more pain we must go through in the name of healing. In the sake of rebuilding the puzzle, we must dump the puzzle box over. In order to find the regimen that works for you and the right meds or therapeutic interventions, one must fail again and again. Failing forward is really important though because when you fail, you must learn and then not give up and keep going. However, while in the throws of trauma recovery, you often want to (or do for a time) give up. There isn’t a timeline on this like other medically intricate healing types. There isn’t a trauma recovery surgeon who’s going to set a pre-op, a surgery date, and then a post-op follow-up care routine that lasts 10–12 weeks.

This so far sounds really bleak, so let me pause for a moment and remind you that THIS IS WORTH IT. Also, you should know that there are so many GOOD twists and turns on this labyrinth. This is where it gets good because even though you may still be in a muddy patch of your trauma road, you may have an eye-opening revelation about yourself, you may make a lifestyle change that makes a huge difference, or you may learn something important about your attachment style that helps you even more in your healing. These twists of the maze seem to take you down a great path momentarily, and you get a fresh strength with even a small insight. Maybe you finally (through mindfulness and lots of practice) have a healthy trigger reaction that blows your own mind, and now you are so excited to run down the corridor of this thing, recognizing that you are starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Just keep in mind that around another labyrinthine corner, a big life event or a family get together may not be such an enjoyable stretch. You also sometimes will return to old habits or addictions. There will be times when you wake up and your trauma brain is so loud for no apparent reason that you get stuck in bed for days feeling sorry for all your “failed hard work” (and other lies your trauma brain will tell you). A friend’s comment about their parents may derail a moment of your painful adventure of having no-contact with your parents. Let us not forget that while we are working on this trauma recovery mess, we are also humans living a regular life just trying to work, go to school, have a social life, and live our dreams. In the mix of all these other wild, winding ways is actual real life — where friends let us down, jobs get lost, pets die, kids get sick, cars break down, and other normal human stressors. Sometimes it’s appropriate to put your healing work on hold while you handle a regular life crisis.

Okay, see I’ve gone back to bleakness. Let me ‘re-calculate this route’. Recalibrating back onto a positive track, another day in our healing may look like: a therapy session that leaves you with a smile, a good cry maybe makes you feel so whole, or a friend’s encouragement to you after noticing some healthy changes in you. These days we are enthusiastic about walking the maze another step or two or ten.

There is no right or wrong way to do this. There is only forward — even if it’s a dead end. Yes, sometimes you have to backtrack — even if it’s not pretty. Even if you have to consult a map, and then still get lost. It is worth it, even if you somedays you are in the intricate, confusing journey by yourself. And also, there are checkpoints along the way — I promise. Moments of no return, like a Mario Kart video game; it’s like life’s redemption to give you a leg up after you’ve worked so hard. You can “save your progress”, so, if the whole system crashes, it’s all there whenever you are ready to go back at it. Along the way, like a marathon, there are people throwing water on you, giving you gel packs of nutrients, cheering you on, and waiting at the finish line to snap your success photo.

Truth be told, though, I don’t know if the trauma recovery maze has a complete finish line, but I do know that not all the days are bad and hard. Eventually, with the right psychological support, finding your stride and self-care regimen, and sticking with it long enough — things do seem to have more ease. When you get knocked off the path, it does get easier for your brain to recognize the importance of getting back up and trying again. Kicking old habits, for instance, is hard, but the more you conquer them each time, the more readily your brain will respond to minor slip ups going forward.

This is not the most comfortable post I’ve made. I’d rather be here telling you that within 10–12 weeks, your trauma will be reversed — that after 3 months of treatment, your pain will be in remission. I wish it was that easy, for myself as well. We are in this together. As a trauma recovery coach, my pledge is to see you through this maze — not promising to know a trick to get out of it but a promise to support and guide you as you figure it yourself. If this episode was painful for you to hear or if it all seems too daunting, feel free to message me on the “connect” tab of my website. I’d love to encourage you and resource you, so you don’t feel so trapped in the labyrinth alone.

Wellspring Wednesdays|Week 10: Journaling

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

For trauma survivors, we can often be caught “in our head”. We analyze, quietly observe, and examine people and places and things due to hypervigilance. We tend to criticize ourselves to ourselves a lot. Survivors suffer from seeing things “black and white”, and we have a bent toward overthinking what others are thinking about us. Our mind can be on overdrive reading facial expressions, checking other people’s emotional temperature, and losing ourselves in old scripts and patterns that we learned from our trauma.

Being creative is often stunted for childhood trauma survivors — like we talked about weeks ago. Writing is not just creative, but often cathartic. Journaling, in its vast number of forms, is a high recommendation from much therapeutic counsel. The idea of getting thoughts out on paper, writing a letter to your abuser and then burning it, allowing your mind to have an outlet for all its over analytic tendencies, and having a space to write down your growth and struggle points — without anything but your own inner resource of your mind (and a writing tool and paper) — this is a beautiful way to find an outlet for your grief and put your trauma into a new perspective. Essays, short stories, and books are all wonderful things that trauma survivors write to share psychological education, normalize their story, or allow others to find strength and hope via their survival. These are all so special.

But what if the world wasn’t going to read it? Is there healing in just the writing itself? That is a hard yes! The power of journaling has even been documented scientifically as a means of bringing out things that are trapped inside, words that you can’t necessarily say out loud, and a way to find a flow as well as a structure to your ideas and story.

I personally love journaling about my day, my emotions, quotes that I hear, revelations that I get throughout the day, small wins of what I call Jubilation Moments, and hardships that I endured. I do this throughout the day on a small app called “Grid Diary”. This app allows you to set out your own daily writing prompts, and then I just put a few sentences in each box every day. I also have a longer “diary style” journal that I write all kinds of things in. This is a place to get out frustrations, work out my social anxieties, talk to myself, talk to a future generation that probably will never read it, talk about my insecurities, write out my ideas and hopes and dreams, and so much more. I highly believe in gratitude lists as well. This is where you write out things you are thankful for — with no end point or count happening, just writing and writing blessing after blessing. I also have an anonymous blog out there lost in the interweb where I write out all my angry thoughts to the people who have hurt me the most — without anyone knowing they are my words. I often am writing any number of entries in any of these journals through tears. The pain flows out my hands, into the world, and I let go. I use the iPhone notepad when I have a really big revelation, and then sometimes read it to my therapist if I need further help working something out. I have a long memoir style word doc where I write my story on a continuous basis that’s just been going on for years — even though probably no one will see it until after I’m gone. It’s really just for me and my healing in the present. All these outlets of just writing with abandon, just writing to write, sitting down, and pouring my mind on paper without judgment — these are all so cathartic.

This year during this self-exploration phase that I’m finding myself in, I recently was challenged to have a pen and pad of paper by my bed and to write out my dreams the second I wake up. I’ve been told that our dreams are always trying to share something with us, even if we have no idea what it is. The more we can remember and write out before it’s a faded thought, the better. This is a new practice for me, so I can’t comment on its healing properties yet — but I’m excited to see where it takes me.

This practice of journaling has been listed as a therapeutic intervention for many years. There are writing therapists who even help you write down your abuse story. Some people are even finding they are able to uncover repressed memories in this way, and the vast majority of us are able to uncover repressed emotions by journaling. There are creative writing courses for the trauma survivor, and so many great resources.

My challenge for you today is to dig deeper by getting your insides outside of your mind and body and down onto paper. If you don’t have any practice yet at all, just start small by setting a five-minute timer and writing whatever comes out. If you already do a smaller journaling practice, maybe expand on that with a notepad just for gratitude or try with me the dream journal in the first moments of the morning.

Whatever bit you are able to do, you will start to see small benefits. When taking a course at school, science has shown us that writing (with a real writing utensil) is the best way to lock in the concepts you are being taught. The brain hears the info, has to regurgitate it to your hand from the professor, which then reinforces the idea that you are trying to study and memorize by writing it out on paper. So, in the inverted way, to release info back to the universe from your mind, unstick your thoughts, and release your emotions, writing a free-form journal without judgment is a beautiful practice indeed.

I encourage you to give it a try. If you are struggling, feel free to reach out on the “Connect” tab of my website and I’ll link you up with my best recommendations or resources. I’d love to hear from you if you take the journaling challenge. Let me know how it’s working, what avenue works best for you, and what releases you are finding through writing.