We're cruising along through life and
stuff happens and sometimes we get hurt. How to recover from emotional trauma?
Let's take that on today. In my book I titled one of the chapters surprise
because I think this is a principle of life. You go along expecting that
something's going to happen and then something totally different happens
instead and you're surprised by life circumstance. Things happen all the time,
stuff happens on a daily basis and in all of that stuff sometimes we get hurt,
that causes emotional trauma. So what do you do to heal from emotional trauma?
I've come up with a four-step process that I think is going to help us to get
through this. The first thing is to realize that you are a human being and
human beings have very typical reactions to certain kinds of events so let's call
the first one talk. Alright step 1, talk. Share your story, find some way to talk
about what it is that has happened to you so whatever it is, maybe it's a
breakup, maybe it's the death of a loved one,
maybe it's someone abused you or beat you up somehow, maybe, it could be
anything but it causes emotional trauma, a divorce, a bankruptcy, these surprises
that happen in life and leave you with some emotional trauma. You have to tell
the story. Some people do this with friends and family and that's a really
great place to start. You may also want to consider hiring a coach, visiting with
a therapist, getting a counselor, someone in a professional setting that you could
talk to to share your story and to get it out, just say it. There's other ways to
do this too through journaling and video records, blogging and vlogging, all of
those kinds of things are legitimate ways to tell your story as well, there's
just an innate human need to do it. You know, going back to some of my clinic
background when I was learning how to be a psychologist, I got some specific
training on post-traumatic stress and how to deal with that. You know what the
number one treatment? The number one intervention for a post-traumatic stress
problem, it's debriefing. That's just a fancy
psychological word that means talk about it, tell the story. You need to be able to
tell that story. Okay, now number two, feel. Number one, let's talk. Number two,
feel. Allow yourself to feel whatever you're going to feel. This is a little scary
to some people because it's not very pleasant sometimes when you start to
feel the feelings that are associated with an emotionally traumatic event in
your life. In fact, everything inside of you is probably telling you to avoid
feeling it. Go ahead and feel it. Just this past week, I attended two funerals
of people in my neighborhood that I've known for quite some time, some people
don't even want to go to the funeral, you know, whatever the funeral is for your
particular trauma, if someone dies, the funeral represents an event that some
people want to avoid because they don't want to feel what they're going to feel
when they go there. I'm here to tell you, you got to let yourself feel it. This
will make it easier.. You're having a normal reaction to an abnormal event.
Other people have experienced these things all the time
frequently, this happened but not to you, right? That's the abnormal part, this
doesn't normally happen to you. Whatever you're feeling though is a normal
reaction to that abnormal event that has occurred in your life so give yourself
permission to just feel it, whatever you're feeling, go ahead and feel it and
it's not going to kill you, it'll seem in the moment that this is going to go on and
on and on. I have a colleague who made his entire career off of two words,
feelings change, and they do, this is going to pass so rather than resisting
the feeling or doing things to a avoid putting yourself in a position
where you're going to feel it, like attending the funeral, simply allow
yourself to feel it, plan for it, take some tissues if you need to, just feel
whatever you're going to feel, it's an important part of your healing. That
brings us to number three. Remember, I told you I was going to give you four. Now
we've already got talk, feel, now number three, self care. I know I shouldn't even
have to say this but you got to take care of yourself. A lot of times when we
experience an emotionally traumatizing event, we kind of forget to eat, to sleep,
to exercise, to take care of ourself in the way that's going to allow us to do
some proper healing. The physical body that you live in include your brain and
your emotional experience is very strongly affected by how you're doing in
this physical body. Take care of yourself so make sure you're getting enough sleep,
make sure you're doing regular exercise even if you don't feel like it, this is
emotional mood management that we're talking about. Get enough sleep, regular
exercise, diet, pay attention to what you're eating. If you're putting a whole
bunch of garbage through your system, if you don't have the right kind of fuel on
board, then you're not going to be functioning at the optimal level and you
need that in order to do some of the emotional healing that's going to come
after the trauma so take care of yourself, find times to just be quiet and
on your own. We call us in the industry, we call it mindfulness and it's
supported by things like meditation or yoga or exercise, a time when you can
shut everything else out for just a few minutes and center on who you are and
why you are. One quick way to do this is to simply pay attention to your
breathing, focus on your breathing for a few
minutes, allow yourself to just be common, focus on nothing else except the in and
the out of your breathing. This is all about self care and that's step number
three, take care of yourself. Okay now step four is a little different, I'm
going to label this one file. File I .don't mean go get a rasp and start hacking
away at it, I mean put it away in a place that makes sense. When you file something
and you put it away in a place where you can either do something with it later
or you can find it if you need to, here's why I think filing is important as a
part of our emotional healing, you'll hear this sometimes, if you've been
through an emotionally traumatizing event, let's say that it's the
death of a loved one and someone comes up to you and says, I can't imagine
anybody actually saying this but I think some people do, oh you should be over
this by now. Come on, just pull yourself together, you should be over this
by now. I don't think so. Some things we don't even get over in the traditional
way of how, you know, we think about that phrase, get over it. I don't think we do.
You lose a loved one, someone dies, how are you supposed to get over that? This
is a person that meant so much to you and filled up a part of your life that
is not replaceable, right? I don't think you're going to get over it so what I want
to encourage you to do is to file it, put it somewhere, find the right place for it,
it's really that instead of getting over something, we're accommodating it into
our life, into our new normal, we're going to find a place to put it and do something
with it that's going to be healthy. You don't want to forget about that person,
you don't want to totally get over it, you want to put it in the right place
and it might be that you find ways to record your memories for example or
things that were meaningful for you about whatever the traumatic
experience was, what you learned from it, what you're grateful for that came as a
result of it and these things can be done in the context of personal
development coaching or therapy, you can also do some journaling and find ways to
pull these ideas down in a way that it helps you to file it in a place
that's going to be helpful in the future. So we've got our four steps, talk, that's
number one. You got to be able to tell a story. Number two,
feel. Allow yourself to feel whatever you're going to feel, you're never wrong
about that, you're having a normal reaction to an abnormal event. Number
three, self-care. Take care of yourself, nobody else has that primary
responsibility so you make sure you're doing it, make sure you get in your sleep
and your diet and your exercise in your mindful time, that's huge. And number four,
file. File it away where you can do the right things with it, you don't have to
get over this, let's just find a way to accommodate it. There you have it, four
simple steps to help us recover from emotional trauma. Will you share that
with someone who could use it today?
