What it Feels Like When You Heal and Change Your Self-Defeating Behaviors

the horrible irony of surviving abuse and neglect in childhood is that the more you were hurt back then the more likely you are to adopt these self-defeating behaviors that make the effects of the original trauma even worse these are things like the people you allow into your life the way you take care of yourself the choices you make about partners and jobs and money and where you live the people you admire the things you say and of course the way you act now we all know how a rough childhood can increase the chances of really bad outcomes in life and i'm sure you know people who were hit even harder than you were people who are sick addicted isolated involved in violence and so on when the healing never gets to begin there's always a danger of that negative progression it's easy to spot this tendency in other people but sometimes really hard to see in ourselves we go into denial and we defend what we're doing believing that it's necessary to feel okay but it doesn't actually make things better changing things makes things better and you can turn around self-defeating behaviors into a positive progression and make the trauma stop now maybe you're at that point or maybe you're not there yet there's not time in this video to cover everything i teach in my courses in coaching but i want to give you some encouragement and hope here by just describing the signs of what it looks like when you're not re-traumatizing yourself okay i teach this because for me this was the hardest part of healing and i mean yes the stuff that happened to me when i was a child was not great but in the end it was the stuff i did to myself the bad relationships the chain smoking the lashing out at people if you've taken any of my courses you know my story but i wasn't getting better for a long time and because of all the hurtful situations i was putting myself in and dragging other people into i was getting worse but then i changed and it's not like i'm all perfect now i'm a work in progress just like everyone but if you're stuck in a pattern like i used to be i get it i understand and i'm here to show you a better way okay so you want to hear some of the signs when you're healed from your cptsd symptoms okay you're not going to have all these signs but you can see if you relate to some of them all right one is you no longer tend to see things in black and white terms people yourself situations you no longer hold them up as all good or put them down as all bad you begin to appreciate the complexity of things the way people can have faults but be decent people anyway you'll have less outrage and more curiosity we could really use more people in the world like that right now you'll have less impatience and more persistence you'll lose the attraction to extreme views or authority figures and gain the ability to interact with a variety of people relationships where one person dominates will become more equal or they'll fade away and it will become less necessary to cut people out of your life number two is you'll have a natural desire to care for your body part of it is because you're going to have less drama and more energy to do things like take a walk or floss your teeth or shop for clothes that actually look good on you and you'll feel a little better and so now when you're feeling too slumpy to leave the house or you're tired from watching tv really late it'll feel not worth it anymore it'll become more possible to face your addictions and take action to overcome them one little step after the other will lead to more clarity and more enthusiasm for life and you'll want to do more good things for yourself isn't that cool number three is and this is another one where an old behavior will start to feel awful and that's around the way you eat being at the effect of past trauma can lead to everything from obesity and eating disorders to a tendency to deal with stress by binging on carbs and sugar and these foods can be calming at first but they can become dysregulating in the long run and as you heal you won't want that feeling and in fact if sugar and carbs are your weak spot i've got a quiz called the food sensitivity quiz from susan pierce thompson i'll put that in the description section below number four is you'll lose that compulsive desire to binge on tv and video games and just plain looking at your phone all the time if you're someone who's been into that stuff enough to interfere with your sleep or your eating or your job or your ability to be present with the people in your life then the release from screen addiction will be life-changing for you and i know i have to look in a screen to say this to you and you have to watch a screen to hear it that's true but everything in moderation right all right the fifth sign that you're healing your cptsd is that you won't be tempted anymore to fudge the truth things like exaggerating or hiding important information about yourself or even lying about things and part of the reason is there's going to be nothing that you need to hide or to feel ashamed about you won't have so many problems so you'll be comfortable being more honest about what's going on in your life but it's also because just being real being honestly yourself feels better and you'll start to have real discomfort when you're not being real you'll actually want the truth to filter through your life and if there's anyone still in your life who can't handle who you really are and how you really feel then you know that's okay maybe they're not meant to be there so maybe when they're gone even though saying goodbye is going to be sad there's going to be a big nice space where someone who loves you and accepts you can be the sixth sign that your cptsd is healing is that your work life will start to go better okay you won't stay stuck in unfulfilling work you'll change your relationship to that job or you'll get a new one and if a lack of work has been your problem all the good changes happening will make it easier to get work and earn money that supports you and the people who count on you as you heal you're going to learn how to steer clear of exploitative or abusive employers and you'll lose your appetite for conflicts on the job you'll get the ability to show up to do good work to be an encourager of your coworkers and to be an advocate for yourself and your ideas when you need to it's going to feel good you can hold your head up and feel proud of your work the seventh sign that your cptsd is healing is that you're gonna lose your interest in assigning blame to yourself or other people for problems and you're gonna focus instead on finding good solutions you'll feel less angry about the situation you'll feel less irritable and when something is your fault it's going to be easier to just own it and apologize and when someone else says you an apology but they don't give it to you you're not going to dwell on it most people don't ever apologize and when you have peace inside you're not going to worry about that too much another thing you're probably going to want to steer clear of it'll become uncomfortable is blamey news and social media posts and the people in your life may not know why but they're going to feel better about themselves when they're around you and you don't engage in that sort of blame thinking the eighth sign that you're healing is that any attraction you once had to unavailable partners and troubled friends is going to let go of you i talk a lot about this in all my videos about healing relationships but so much life damage is done by this one self-defeating behavior which is connecting and bonding with and staying with people who are trouble or you end up avoiding any kind of intimacy with people at all even though it's what you long for or you abuse intimacy by acting out all right playing the field so much that you cause yourself to have no intimacy this is one part of cptsd that can be hard to heal just by deciding to change and it cuts to the heart of the trauma wound is how we relate in romantic relationships romantic and sexual relationships but when you've made real progress in other areas it's going to be easier to stop re-traumatizing yourself in these ways the spell is broken uh you're not going to believe that like you know some other person is the panacea who's going to solve all your problems there's more peace when you're single and the possibility of harmony and real love starts to appear on the horizon when you do meet someone because you have that peace all right the ninth sign that you're healing is that you start to prefer reality to fantasy and the tendency to check out by spending too much time in a fantasy romance or fantastical dreams of business success it's really common for people in the middle of trauma but in the end it's just another way to avoid real problems and the actions that you need to take when you're healing it feels less necessary and when you catch yourself daydreaming you can come back where you can actually connect with people and put your goals into action which is right here right now and finally number 10 the sign that you're healing is that your material well-being starts to come together in a positive way now most people in the world including most happy people live good lives without being rich or famous and some people live on very little money at all financial hardship can actually fall on anyone but when you're free of trauma it's more possible to earn a steady income let go of get rich quick schemes that are just fantasy and live within your means and release the fear of the past when maybe you were a few hundred dollars away from homelessness too many days out of the year right i know when i was a kid we had a lot of fear about that it took me years to lose that it all gets better at the same time a little here a little there you can sleep at night you can handle hard days you can hold your head up even though you make mistakes because you're not sabotaging yourself in ways that make you feel ashamed and this is what healing feels like when you're not re-traumatized all the time you're not in cptsd so don't get discouraged there are things you can do to start your healing right now all right and in fact i'm going to point you to a video right here that will give you some step-by-step directions on how you can start feeling better today you

Channel: Crappy Childhood Fairy

Views: 188,353

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Id: LUp2Aj8NKJI

Length: 10min 52sec (652 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 13 2021