What's Your Truth?
Some experiences that can cause trauma within ourselves can include:
- Physical or emotional abuse (childhood or adulthood)
- Neglect or abandonment
- Being bullied as a child and/or adult
- Poverty
- Sexual abuse or harassment
- Internalizing painful emotions and/or experiences (lacking safe person to share with)
- Raised around addiction/substance abuse
- Feeling alone and/or afraid
- Domestic violence
- Loss from death or devastation
- Mental illness within family structure
- Life threatening accidents and/or injuries
- Mass disasters and/or natural disasters
- Isolation 'not fitting in'
- Combat and/or war exposure
- Frightening or painful medical procedures/experiences
- School and/or community violence
So many trials in life, the list goes on...
As you begin to look at your truth, can you also see any unhealthy ways of coping that are adversely effecting your life? These 'survival adaptations' are nothing to be ashamed of, they have been the only way your emotional and physical being has known to make it to today.
Physical / emotional symptoms and behavior adaptions can manifest as:
Obsessive Compulsive Behaviors
- Addiction / Substance Abuse
- Eating Disorders
- Excessive Gambling / Shopping
- Excessive Plastic Surgery
- Over-Exercising
- Diet Roller Coaster
Emotional Challenges
- Anxiety Depression
- Low self-esteem
- Worthiness “not good enough”
- Grief / Despair
- Loneliness
- Assertiveness
- Negative Body Image
- Perfectionism
- Relational difficulties
Physical Challenges
- Chronic Pain
- Mental Illness
- Insomnia
- Heart Disease
- Any disease diagnosis
- Unhealthy Weight
These are only some of the challenges trauma survivors can face. The list is long and very personal. Yet we all share one innate truth: our internal pain is tangible and our self-defeating coping mechanisms generate even more pain, for ourselves and others.
You are NOT alone!
The difficulties that ensue due to trauma are very real and can be overwhelming but they do not define us. As we become more self aware, ready to embrace our brokenness as the path to healing, we can make a choice ...
a choice to turn inward,
to honor our pain by allowing ourselves to feel it to move through it.
We can choose to stop running from our darkness and instead learn to love ourselves there ... and that is FREEDOM!