The Journey to Resilience: Overcoming Trauma

Building Resilience After Trauma

Trauma leaves deep scars, affecting minds, hearts and lives.

Yet, resilience, the capacity to absorb and recover, offers hope for healing. Resilience is not ignoring the pain rather facing it head on. And emerging stronger. If you are reading this you have already taken the first steps towards resilience.

Understanding Trauma and Resilience

Put simply, trauma is an emotional wound that causes lasting distress. Resilience is the ability to bounce back, adapt, and grow.

Self Awareness Strategies

One way is to identify your triggers. reflect on people, places, smells, anything that sparks your anxiety or fear

Another is to recognize your emotions and to try/and label your feelings, whether anger, guilt, shame, sadness. Labeling them helps to process and release them.

Practice mindfulness by focusing on the present moment and the sensations and thoughts in your mind and body.

Coping Mechanisms

Grounding techniques like deep breathing (see footnotes) and progressive muscle relaxation (see footnotes) can be tremendously beneficial . My favorite is Journaling Therapy. Writing down your thoughts and emotions is a safe and informative way of processing the trauma. You will often surprise yourself at what comes up and even admire your ability to creatively express your feelings. If you don’t click with writing, try other creative expressions. Art, dance, and music are all incredibly helpful in channeling your emotions positively rather than negatively.

Support System

Building strong relationships can be a challenge as trust is a core issue when recovering from trauma. Focus on nurturing trusted binds with friends and family. When you feel stronger you can branch out to support groups in your area. Share your experiences with like-minded support groups. You will receive empathy and validation for what you have been through.

Seeking professional help can be expensive. It is possible to recover, but you can do a lot for yourself. This is especially true if a therapist or counseling is beyond your budget.

Resilience is a journey not a destination, start small practicing self awareness, coping mechanisms and lean on your support systems. Do not be afraid to to reach out for help.

You are stronger than your trauma. It was a small chapter in your life and you have many more chapters to write and enjoy.

Keep moving forward…

Please comment below I’m happy to be a listening ear and I would love to know how you are doing.

footnotes:

Breathe in steadily for a count of 4. Hold your breath for 4 counts. Then release the breath slowly for a count of 4. Repeat this process. Do this until you feel your nervous system return to normal.

Relaxation of the muscles one by one. Get into a comfortable position. Close your eyes. Start with the head and focus on relaxing the tension in your body, one part at a time. From your neck and shoulders down to your toes.