Category Archives: Victims

Abuse & Neglect, Anxiety, Brain and Trauma, Coping Behaviors, Depression, Overcoming, Protection, PTSD, Uncategorized, Victims

PROTECTION SYSTEM EXAMPLES

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Trauma forces us to develop a protection system to help us survive. We use any resources around us to help us to keep safe and not be hurt – people, animals, nature, things, places, and internal walls. We use one or many depending on the situation and become experts using one or many simultaneously.

One of my primary coping skills was to be shy, which I changed when loneliness overwhelmed me. What did you use? Here are some other examples.

  1. Thick, dark internal walls we hide behind.
  2. Addictions – food, drugs/alcohol, material things, relationships, etc. We, humans, can become addicted to anything!
  3. Pride, arrogance –culture, abilities, intelligence, skills, money, looks, etc.
  4. Isolation –social anxiety (shyness), i.e., fear of people.
  5. Strong feelings – jealousy, anger, depression, anxiety (fear).
  6. Pain/Illness –all kinds, even surgeries.
  7. Compensate –being insecure, we know we are not okay, wanted, or good at anything, so we do something to counteract it.
  8. Competencies—good at sports, academics, the life of the party, music, dance, art, etc.
  9. Earth –nature, animals, plants/gardening, astrology, rocks, etc.
  10. Hoarding –anything, and usually connected to grief and fears.
  11. Getting out and staying away, going to other families.
  12. Roles –acting out, gangs, clown, violence, peacemaker, scapegoat, etc., giving us a sense of importance and belonging.
  1. What resources did you have around you?
  2. Make a list of the ways you protected yourself.
  3. How did they work? When did you use them?

Please share these to help others heal. Also, I am a speaker, invite me!

Abuse & Neglect, Anxiety, Brain and Trauma, Coping Behaviors, Depression, God, Healing, Neglect, Overcoming, Pain, Protection, PTSD, Rejection, Relationships, Trauma, Uncategorized, Victims

OUR PROTECTION SYSTEM

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What is a protection system? We create behaviors, thoughts, and feelings to protect ourselves from the pain of trauma and, if possible, from more trauma. When trauma first happened to us, we were defenseless and blindsided. We learn that to survive, we have to protect ourselves.

It is a straightforward equation: more trauma = more protection needed. Other victims understand how much trauma affects every part of us and how desperately we need our protection system to survive.

Sadly, we often have limited resources as children and as adults. We look around and find resources we can use. We become creative and use things, places, animals, people, etc., to nurture and protect us. This is our protection system. Without it, we would be worse off physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. The trauma would devastate us. Sometimes people choose suicide.

The younger and more severe the trauma, the more our brains and personalities cannot develop healthily. We scramble and do the best we can do using anything available. Some will be good and some not so good.

One protection is to develop emotional and behavioral patterns. We can have any or many diagnoses. We can look mentally ill and not be. These can include but are not limited to bipolar, schizophrenia, borderline, etc. Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID, multiple personalities) is one of the ways to cope. It puts memories and feelings in our brains and sometimes even names. These diagnoses, if not inherited, change as we heal or even disappear.

Our protection system contains many techniques which are connected. We use different ones depending on the trauma, available resources, and people or lack of people.

As we heal, they go into storage. We never lose our techniques. Lord forbid, but if we need them, they surface instantly. Examples will be in the next post.

  1. Can you identify any part of your protection system? What?
  2. Do you remember developing them? How do you use them now?
  3. Do you need them anymore? If you do, get help, and get safe.

Please share these to help others heal. I am a speaker, invite me!

 [DL1]

Abuse & Neglect, Anxiety, Coping Behaviors, Depression, God, Healing, love, Overcoming, Pain, PTSD, Rejection, Relationships, Trauma, Uncategorized, Victims

LOVE, WHAT IS IT?

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This question has haunted philosophers through the ages. Kierkegaard said love should focus on the person being loved first and foremost. Martin Buber said love was something more significant than affect – not a static feeling, but a dynamic state of being lived in the present. He also said we look for our soul mate to complete what we lack and silence the deep loneliness and feeling of separateness. Some have defined it as feelings of deep romantic or sexual attachment to someone. With all of these, sadly and strangely, we can end up with throw-away love relationships missing more mature and developing love. Psychology has defined it as a complex emotion involving strong feelings of affection and tenderness for the love object.

I have a different understanding of love. I see love as an ACTION based on decisions we make about ourselves, others, and God. It is a choice of what kind of person we want to be. Nice? Mean? Loving? Bitter? Kind? Caring? Want to make a difference in this life? Or getting and taking everything we can in life? The bottom line is, are we going to love or not? One brings love and hope, the other pain, selfishness, and sorrow.

Love is a choice of wanting the highest level of good for ourselves, others, and the world – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Choosing to love with agape love makes actions happen for the higher good of all life. Healing is one of those choices. In its highest form, agape love is God’s love which always wants our highest good.

When we love, we gain the following gifts:

  1. It helps release pain and bitterness.
  2. Help others and the world heal and be less violent.
  3. Make a difference and help others to do so too.
  1. What is love to you?
  2. What kind of person have you decided to be?
  3. When did you feel the love that helped you to heal and grow?

Please share these to help others heal. Also, I am a speaker, invite me!

Abuse & Neglect, Coping Behaviors, Healing, Overcoming, Pain, PTSD, Rejection, Relationships, Transcender, Trauma, Uncategorized, Victims

ACCEPT WHAT WE CAN’T CHANGE

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The Serenity Prayer reminds us to know the difference between what we can and cannot. The healing journey forces us to examine our choices for change in our lives. Here are areas to remember.

  1. We can only change ourselves. We can heal, grow, and change our feelings, looks, clothes, and careers/jobs. We can leave relationships and change our cars, homes, cities, states, etc. It is all about what we can control and healthy boundaries.
  2. We cannot change other people! This is a fact. Too many people, especially women, go into relationships believing because they love someone, they can change them. This happens too rarely.
  3. We can use fear and violence to make someone compliant. Our victims look like they are changing. Actually, they are working hard to have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
  4. We can help people change with kindness only if THEY choose to change. WE, including me, have no power to change anyone. I am not talking about raising children who need respect and guidance as they grow and learn.
  5. We are limited in changing organizations unless we own them and/or are in charge.
  6. We can work to change our world and make a difference. We can help our corner of the world heal through our actions of healing, kindness, and restoration.

Life is hard and, at times, beyond what we can handle. We struggle to know what to do and change. We must take time to sort out and come to understand what we can and cannot change. In doing so, we find peace.

  1. What part of you or your life can you not change?
  2. What parts of you or your life can you change?
  3. What has it been like when you tried to change something you couldn’t change?

Please share these to help others heal. Also, I am a speaker, invite me!

Abuse & Neglect, Coping Behaviors, God, Healing, Neglect, Overcoming, Pain, Rejection, Relationships, Transcender, Trauma, Uncategorized, Victims

HEALING, IS IT WORTH IT?

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We have talked about healing, feelings, and choosing to heal. The healing journey is not easy. Let’s look at what healing can mean to us:

  1. Freed from pain.
  2. Freed from the pain of being tethered in our bodies. Physical healing happens for some people when we heal emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
  3. Freed to gain joy and have fun in our lives.
  4. Freedom to be who God created us to be.
  5. Ability to accomplish our unique, God-given purpose.
  6. Ability to help others and make a difference in our hurting world.
  7. Gaining wisdom that helps guide us to understand our lives and the world for the rest of our lives.
  8. Freed to love at a higher level in a way we never believed or knew we could love.
  9. We will like ourselves.

When traumatized, we often learn we are not okay and do not like ourselves. We were hurt and created ways to survive, some good, some not caused by the damage done to us. When we heal, we are giving gifts and learn we like ourselves!

Healing is available to everyone, but this does not mean we will be healed of everything. It means we can heal and free ourselves to be the authentic, wonderful, and terrific person God created!

Never give up on yourself regardless of your age, situation, feelings, or what your internal voices tell you. They are from the trauma too. Help you heal; as you do, you will help others because you will have been there!!

Celebrate who you are and everything you have overcome and transcended. You are amazing!

  1. What do you like about yourself?
  2. What don’t you like about yourself?
  3. If you work to heal, do you believe you can change?

Please share these to help others heal. Also, I am a speaker, invite me!

Abuse & Neglect, Coping Behaviors, Healing, Overcoming, Pain, Rejection, Trauma, Trauma Healing, Uncategorized, Victims

Feeling Your Feelings Appropriately

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We learn from our feelings and take their wisdom to help us make good decisions. We never act on our feelings unless we are in danger. Three are rules to feeling your feeling safely and appropriately:

  1. Can’t hurt yourself.

No cutting, hurting, or self-harm in any way.

  • Can’t hurt something alive – plants, animals, and or people.

No hitting, yelling at, or put-downs of people, animals, or plants. You can pull weeds, LOL.

  • Can’t destroy property you don’t want to destroy. Children get you can’t destroy property, or as authority people permit them.

We will have some fear if we haven’t felt your feelings and/or numbed them. With trauma, we often believe our feelings are something to be feared. This lie usually comes from what was done to us or others feeling their feelings. For example, their anger was out of control, and we suffered from it.

Start slowly. Ask yourself, “What am I feeling?” The question can  be simple, like – ‘What am I feeling when eating something you like?’ Allow yourself to feel those feelings. It is okay not to know the name of the feeling, just feel it. Anger is often a rough feeling because of the trauma connected to it. It is easy to release. It contains physical energy and adrenalin, which must be appropriately physically released to get it out of our bodies. Follow the three rules. I will talk more about it next posting.

  1. Ask yourself, “What was it like to feel it?” did you feel fear with it? If so, feel the fear too.
  2. What were feelings like in the family?
  3. When you were traumatized, what did you do with your feelings? Avoid? Act out? Social anxiety?
Abuse & Neglect, Coping Behaviors, Healing, Overcoming, Pain, Rejection, Relationships, Transcender, Trauma Healing, Uncategorized, Victims

WE CAN HEAL

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We can HEAL!! First, we must make the powerful decision to heal. We make the decision that we are tired of and no longer want the pain, anxiety, and loneliness and choose not to let anything or any person, including us, stop us. If life circumstances interfere, which can happen, we stop and handle the situation and then return to our healing journey.

We must choose to develop every aspect of our authentic self – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual because we have a mind, body, and spirit, which are all affected by trauma.

Here is the secret:

WHEN WE FEEL, WE HEAL. The process is simple. It is not easy. To heal, we must fully feel all our feelings until we no longer feel them inside us – pain, sorrow, grief, anger, hurt, and fear.

Our feelings accumulate physically in our cells in the neuropeptides because we could not feel them during trauma and had to keep working to survive and keep going. As we feel all the stored feelings, love, joy, and light does come.

All our feelings are wonderful. They give us 30-50% of the information from our world we need to make a good decision. But we NEVER make a decision based on how we feel unless we are in danger.

Our bodies have an excellent healing system given to us by God. When we start to feel, it clicks on and helps us feel even if we do not know how! To heal, all we have to do is to feel the feeling fully and appropriately. God knew we would need this part of our spirituality in this challenging world.

  1. How did you handle your feelings when you were traumatized?
  2. What have you been taught about your feelings?
  3. Are you afraid to feel your feelings?

In the next post, I will share how to feel your feelings keeping everyone safe appropriately.

Abuse & Neglect, Coping Behaviors, Human Trafficking, Overcoming, Pain, Rejection, Relationships, Transcender, Trauma, Trauma Healing, Uncategorized, Victims, War

IN THE BEGINNING

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When do we need to seek the help of a psychotherapist/counselor? When our lives have been hard, painful, and lonely, we can’t work, want to give up, run away from everything, can’t function, sleep all the time, have poor relationships with ourselves and others, and if we become suicidal. (If you are, call for help immediately and call 988.) 

At the beginning of the healing journey, we are scared, sometimes almost to being terrified. Will I find myself? Will I like myself? Am I damaged beyond any hope? But the pain and loneliness drive us forward with fantastic courage with that bit of hope that healing can happen. And it can!

We, not anyone else, must choose the decision to heal. No one else can make the decision, only us. That hope gives us a glimmer that we may have the life we have always dreamed of having. Perhaps we can have friends who do not hurt and betray us. Maybe, just maybe, I can find the real me and like me.

The fear sometimes stops us one, two, or more times. Then we break through and get into psychotherapy and start healing. Please remember this about healing:

  1.  Healing will take the time it needs. Be patient with yourself. Love yourself to health.
  2. Healing follows steps but will be individualized according to your needs and life. You will learn in the journey you can trust yourself more and more. Sometimes we have learned from the trauma we can’t trust ourselves.
  3. We do not need to know how to heal. That is the work and knowledge the therapist has and will guide and teach you.
  4. It is okay to change therapists if the one you have does not help you the way you need. This does not mean they are not good. It means they are the right fit for you. Please don’t therapist hop, going from therapist to therapist. Sometimes this us, us avoiding us, doing the hard work of healing.
  1. Are you tired of the pain and loneliness and ready to heal? Make the phone call to a therapist.
  2. If you are ready but have not called, what is stopping you? Fix it.
  3. Are you doing the healing work of feeling your feelings? Great!
Abuse & Neglect, Coping Behaviors, God, Healing, Overcoming, Pain, Rejection, Relationships, Transcender, Trauma, Trauma Healing, Uncategorized, Victims, War

WHAT DO WE NEED TO HEAL?

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We are mind, body, and spirit and must work to heal all areas of trauma damaged. Trauma can come from a spiritual place such as a church, temple, religious people, cults, etc. Maybe we were physically, mentally, verbally, and/or sexually abused and neglected by parents, relatives, teachers, coaches, neighbors, and “friends,” etc. Sadly, today, people have become victims regardless of age or circumstance.

The trauma we experience may also be generational – trauma runs in our families for many generations. Trauma may be circumstantial, that is, in our particular family, neighborhood, etc. To heal, we must heal in all areas. The following are the areas and how it affects us. We can heal! It is our decision.

Body:

Medical research has documented that trauma affects our physical body function adversely, causing – autoimmune diseases, depression, anxiety, heart disease, long-term chronic diseases, poor concentration, stroke, brain effects, diabetes, etc.

Mind:

Mental and emotional trauma can cause depression, anxiety, flashbacks, hypervigilance, confusion, poor relationships, dissociation, blunted affect, numbness to feelings, exhaustion, agitation, bitterness, long-term grief, etc. This damage then affects all areas

Spiritual:

Our spirituality is the core of our existence. We are spiritual being having a human experience in a hard school called life. So spiritual trauma can cause a lack of faith, destroy hope, create distance /fear/anger at God, feel abandoned and/or punished by God, loss of purpose and meaning in our lives, lose any purpose for living, destroy any power or authority for our lives, develop a poor basis for values and/or goals, loss of direction, cause existential depression, cause damage to relationships, create shame and worthlessness, and leave us with insecurity and low self-confidence.

  1. How were you traumatized?
  2. What effects do you still suffer from the trauma?
  3. What choices can you make for yourself now?
Abuse & Neglect, Brain and Trauma, Coping Behaviors, God, Healing, Overcoming, Pain, Relationships, Transcender, Trauma, Trauma Healing, Uncategorized, Victims

The Trauma Healing Journey

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I invite you to join me on the amazing and freeing journey of healing from trauma. When we heal, we discover ourselves, learn to like ourselves, and find out God has indeed created us wonderfully with many talents and abilities.

Life, before we heal, is often full of pain, anxiety, loneliness, sorrow, etc. We struggle to push through life the best we can. We often end up doing things we don’t want to do and not liking ourselves. Before we heal, we usually have no clue who we are and may not like ourselves. We may have poor relationships, abuse, neglect, addictions, and hurt ourselves and others. We may feel depressed, suicidal, anxious/fearful, bitter, addicted, and life is awful.

The first step to healing is to DECIDE we do not want to live this way anymore and want a better life. We decide to heal from past trauma we have experienced. This may be the first time we have ever focused on ourselves, which can create anxiety even thinking about it. And because of what trauma taught us, we never saw ourselves as worthy or valuable.

The second step is to commit to doing whatever it takes to heal. The journey must have integrity, honesty, and love. We may not know how and for most people, this means finding a trauma psychotherapist who knows how to help people heal. Not all therapists are trained in trauma. Interview them before you hire them.

The third step is to give our healing process all the time, effort, energy, and needed resources – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual areas. This includes God. God is the ultimate healer giving us the love and strength we need for the journey.

How do if know I need to heal? If you answer yes to most of these, choosing to heal is important for you.

  1. Do you like yourself and your life?
  2. Are you depressed? Anxious? Bitter? Angry?
  3. Were you traumatized?