Laura Sinko, September 6, 2020
Trauma can feel like a cloud looming over your head, fragmenting your inner core and leaving you bleary-eyed and lost. But there is one beautiful part of rebuilding after these experiences. The ray of sunshine peeking through the deep dark hole of despair. And that light is the possibility of healing.
Healing is described as a non-linear process influenced by both healing and darker moments in our day-to-day lives. Healing is something that requires active engagement despite challenges that may arise. Our wellbeing may sometimes feel unpredictable, but patience is needed when setbacks occur. We are only human.
Everyone experiences and internalizes trauma differently. In fact, the way trauma is integrated into our identities may change throughout our healing journey. This variability is the way we rationalize and cope with our experiences. Below are some healing stages you may have experienced throughout your journey. It is important to recognize that none of these stages is a final destination, and you may experience many of these feelings throughout your healing process.
Denial
One way you may respond to your trauma is to suppress it or deny it altogether. You may not even realize you experienced abuse until months or years later. This awareness can be brought to your awareness through working with a therapist, talking with a friend, or anything else that can trigger a memory.
Disconnection
A similar way your body can cope is to disconnect from your trauma. Some people refer to this as “putting your trauma in a box” because it is just too painful to address at the moment or because you do not want it to be a part of your identity. Especially in the beginning, this is your body’s way of protecting itself.
Minimization
Another way you can respond to your trauma is to minimize it. This minimization can also be protective at first but continuing to minimize your trauma may cause you to blame yourself for your feelings and may not allow you to get the help you need. Minimization can occur by comparing our experiences to others and feeling that ours are not “bad enough.” You may also feel that you are “not allowed” to be as upset as you actually are or that you are being “dramatic.” Remember, everyone’s trauma experiences are valid, no matter what events are experienced.
Overwhelm
Once the numbness or minimization subsides, depending on the nature of your trauma, you may experience feelings of hopelessness or overwhelm. In this phase, you can feel overpowered by your feelings or triggered by many things around you. This feeling is the most challenging time to engage in healing work, but also can be the most critical. To get through this time, try acknowledging and naming your feelings without ruminating on them. You can also try looking at your trauma objectively or work through some trauma self-education to build recognition that you are not to blame, regardless of your experience. To help with this, you can try talking to another survivor; a trusted loved one; a therapist; or a crisis counselor. Remember, healing is not linear, and you do not need to go through this alone.
Consumption
Through engaging in trauma work, you can also feel consumed and that perhaps being a survivor is your only identity (or maybe even just your primary identity). Survivors who feel consumed can appear more functional than survivors who are overwhelmed but may be unable to focus on things outside of their survivorship. This identity is not always necessarily a bad thing. It can fuel a lot of positive things like advocacy efforts, social justice movements, and community building. It may not be sustainable, however, if you do not have things outside of survivorship that are important to you. In this phase, try to be honest with yourself and reconnect with things outside of the survivor space that makes you feel whole. If you cannot find anything, look inward with curiosity, and begin some self-exploration. You never know what you may stumble upon that may make you feel like “you” again.
Integration
Finally, the most sustainable way to manage your trauma is to integrate it as an essential part of who you are, but not all of who you are. We are the product of many positive and negative experiences in our lives. Recognizing and amplifying the parts about ourselves that we love while accepting the parts of ourselves we cannot change is an important part of the process. You are not broken, but you may be different than you were before. That is okay.
Remember…Violence feels normal, but it is not normal
Often, we can feel like violence, and unwanted sexual advances are everywhere. This feeling can cause us to wonder if our experiences are “bad enough” or if our reactions to our experiences are “too extreme.” By feeling this way, we can struggle to make meaning, label, and seek help for our experiences.
“[Part of it is] being able to define that you were hurt. Because like I said, I was initially like ‘Oh, it wasn’t a big deal,’ but then I think when I owned it, like ‘Oh no, that was a messed-up thing’…that was the beginning of the healing process I think.”
It’s normal to feel stuck
Often, when we are truly allowing ourselves to process our emotions initially, we can feel “stuck” and consumed by our distress. This feeling can manifest in emotions of shame, self-blame, fear, frustration, and anger. These emotions can activate each other, causing us to feel overwhelmed and powerless at times. It is important to note that our feelings and emotions are a normal human response to abnormal events…you are not crazy.
“I would say that feelings aren’t a sign of weakness, and composure isn’t necessarily a sign of strength.”
The Problem is the Problem…You Are Not the Problem.
By forgiving ourselves and realizing that despite what our inner critic is telling us, we are not the cause of our trauma and are not to blame, we can begin to allow ourselves to accept our experiences and integrate them into our identities. This traumatized part of ourselves is an important piece of who we are, but it does not define us. There are many other beautiful parts of ourselves. We can learn that we simply need to work on building and fostering growth in those areas.
“Forgive yourself for all the things that are gonna go wrong. Because a lot of times, healing isn’t effective unless a lot has gone wrong. It’s totally normal to let things fall apart before you can pull them together and start healing.”
Healing is possible
Despite the dark moments, remember healing is possible. Look to other survivors in your network, people you trust, or professionals you are connected to pull you through the dark times. You do not need to go through this alone. Allow yourself to feel both negative and positive emotions without residual guilt. Push against fears of vulnerability and challenge yourself to envision how a healed you would look. You will feel whole again!
“Healing is not as a linear process and understanding that the low points…it is not really progress in a sense if you are not having those types of experiences, I suppose. You are still probably shoving things to the side, so don’t see it as a setback. Not that these things will never really heal, but (you will) kind of carry them differently.”
A metaphor for healing: Weaving life’s tapestry with knotted silk
We visualize survivorship as one who is working with a spool of silk thread, in the process of weaving the tapestry that is their life. When trauma occurs, it can have an impact on the integrity of their thread, unraveling it and creating kinks and knots along the once smooth strands. At first, the survivor may think they can continue using this thread to build the tapestry they envisioned. The survivor has in their mind what they have woven before and what they want their tapestry to look like and become eventually. They may therefore try to continue weaving despite the knots, but eventually, smaller knots may become bigger knots, and it begins to feel impossible to continue without addressing them. While the survivor may recognize this, false starts can occur, and frustration may push them to put their tapestry away for a while because starting over is just too hard. Then, a shift happens, where the survivor recognizes that untangling the knots is unavoidable and necessary to move forward. For some, this turning point happens sooner than others and causes the survivor to refocus on starting anew.
Whether it is alone or with the help of a loved one or professional, the survivor begins to address each knot, and as they do, the knots grow smaller. Some even disappear entirely. This process requires active engagement and patience. Sometimes as the survivor attempts to untangle, they may uncover even bigger knots. These knots may be too big to untangle on their own, and they may need the help of trusted others or professionals to get through that section of thread. They may also need others to work side by side with them as they untangle or may need encouragement as they continue to do it on their own. Other times they may just need a distraction from the untangling so that they have the strength to rest to go back to it. Through this process, the survivor is eventually able to look inward, recognizing they have all the tools necessary to rebuild, but just have lost sight of the path and where they left off. Ultimately, regaining their vision for what their tapestry will look like and actualizing that vision allows them to create something beautiful and new, inspiring others they encounter to continue their weaving.
Our tapestries tell our story. It depicts all that we are: strengths, triumphs, and traumas.
You are not alone.