Understanding trauma: A gentle guide to healing

Are you tired of still carrying the weight of your past in your today? Or maybe you can’t see the scar that needs special care. Trauma is something that people never wish to have it in their life but still due to some accidents it follows us like shadow and haunts us until they are given proper attention. Trauma affects how you feel, think and interact with the world.

Understanding trauma: trauma in itself is not just an event but it is the way that produces response from our mind and the body as a reaction that you reflect in your social or personal surrounding. The events like life threatening accidents, natural disaster, personal loss, loss of a loved one are some of the most responsible incidents for developing trauma in a person.

Symptoms include:

Irrational fears, extreme sadness and anger as the emotional responses
Racing heart, often fatigued, frequent headaches s the physical reactions
Not socializing, avoiding everything, inability in concentrating

First step towards the process of healing is that you must accept that your feelings and reactions are valid until it does not hurt or harm others. There are also such events that could be only traumatic for you or the experiencing person but may not be equally disturbing to others.

The healing journey

Healing from trauma is a complex task and a necessity of life as it will help you live your life happily with better meaning of life. Every person is unique and distinct in their own way so do their experiences and traumas are due to which there is not just one way for every person to heal. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. There are few key practices for your help:

Know your pain- healing gets difficult when you supress your feelings and emotions by denying which often impacts your mental health. In that case you first need to admit that you are struggling and need help.
Seek professional help- therapist uses techniques like CBT (Cognitive behavioural therapy) and EMDR(Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) to help you process your trauma under their guidance and safe environment
Practice self-acceptance- your mind and body needs kindness from you. The best help is to allow yourself by replacing criticism from your life for your own betterment
Practice yoga and meditation to connect with your body because trauma affects your body too as a feeling of being stuck.

Meaning of healing

Healing doesn’t mean forgetting the traumatic event or what happened, it means reducing the amount of pain you went through in your life after that event. By the end of the process you’ll notice that now you can handle your feelings without getting overwhelmed, have better connections and relationships, new meaning and purpose of your life.