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

TRAUMA & LONELINESS

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This blog starts discussion on loneliness and surviving and transcending trauma. I hope it helps and please let me know your thoughts and feelings.

TRAUMA AND LONELINESS

I am sitting on my bed and feeling sorry for myself, playing spider solitaire and rarely going out and actually blaming God for just about everything. Mostly I am intensely lonely. Horribly lonely with my whole being wanting to crawl under the covers and never come out! But the push the write is strong I can’t ignore it. How I wish I could. To help others I have to feel and fully and come to understand it. So this chapter is on loneliness

Being a Transcender, I have come to know loneliness in ways I wish I never had to know. It has been a constant companion beyond anything I could ever have imagined. It has filled me with its dull, aching, gnawing, emptiness and throbbing for days at a time. It has taken my life energy more times than I can count.

As I look back, and am truthful, I remember always being lonely in childhood. No one really there. Any friend I had and bring home was ridiculed so I learned not to bring them home anymore. I learned to raise myself the best that I could with no one to help me. I would watch others and learn by observing them and listening to them. I wish there had been one person to share the pain and loneliness. Of course then I probably wouldn’t be writing this book.

While growing up, it seemed like I was always by myself. So as a child, I found comfort in making clay images and fantasizing about how someday I would be important. Someday I would matter. I even remember pretending that I helped other people and rescued them. In the fantasies, I was not alone and was a heroine like in the westerns. I saw me as important to other people and they wanted to be around me. People talked to me and I wasn’t be hurt or ridiculed. I was okay and accepted. And I wasn’t lonely.

Then finally went to college and got out. Then work, marriage, kids and more work and then more school, I was extremely busy. That kept me out of the pain as well as the loneliness. Sadly, I divorced and when I look back I was extremely lonely in the marriage.  It all kept me out of the loneliness.

A dear soul sister, Betsy, stood by me through helping me raise the children and the divorce. We went on to create an amazing nonprofit farm program to help people heal and grow using animal and plant therapies. It was a success! For twenty years, we had a good team of staff and animals. People healed and grew. I loved very part of it.

Sadly, Betsy, my precious soul sister passed away three months after moving in to our beloved farm. Loneliness started to surface along with the devastating grief but the program demanded much I was constantly running. So I was able to keep busy for years and keep the loneliness as bay most of the time. I spent time with people and the precious animals when I needed comfort.

Abuse, Abuse & Neglect, Brain and Trauma, Coping Behaviors, Healing, Human Trafficking, Neglect, Overcoming, Pain, Relationships, Transcender, Trauma, Uncategorized, Victims, wholeness

BITTERNESS – HOW DO I COPE?

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When we are bitter, it affects our all our lives – thinking, feeling, speaking, behavior, and all our relationships. This is because of the pain and hurt inside of us. Sometimes we will even feel it in our physical bodies and the physical pain lodged from trauma can be intense. Please know, we have to go to doctors and have be examined and make sure something is not wrong.

When we have been so hurt for so long we may not even remember how feeling good feels like. We may just know the bitterness, anger/rage, hurt, fear, jealousy, sorrow and loss.  We may have many ways to cope with it, some healthy and some not so healthy trying to settle and stop the turbulence and battle down inside of us.

Here are some NOT healthy techniques;

  1. Ignoring my feelings – feeling literally grow stronger inside of us if we do not feel our feeling appropriately. (See below).
  2. Bitterness grieves even our spirit – ignoring God and our religion hurts us even more
  3. Substance abuse (any kind) – a drug is a drug is a drug that include alcohol. It doesn’t not matter how we get the drug in our system they all damage us physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
  4. Food – either over or under eating can help comfort us but may hurt our bodies.
  5. Any kind of addictions – food, exercise, shopping, stealing, work, etc.

Note: an addition is a repeated behavior we use to help us deal with pain that creates a chemical change in our bodies. We often get an Adrenalin rush from most addictions.

  1. Hurting yourself – cutting, hitting, burning, sexting, etc. This often gives us a high and reduces the emotional pain inside of us. Surprising isn’t it?
  2. Emotionally putting yourself down – we can be our own worst critic and even punish ourselves for any misbehaving as we perceive it.
  3. Staying in abusive relationships
  4. Yelling or hitting others – includes our children
  5. And the list goes on….

Here are some healthy ways to deal with feelings.

  1. Feel the feelings fully and appropriately. This is so important! Appropriately means to follow these three rules: (1) Can’t hurt myself, (2) Can’t hurt something alive – plants, animals or people; (3) Can’t damage property I don’t want to damage. Children get – you can’t damage property.

These HAVE to be followed. Following them we can do many things to release the feeling from inside of us.  We can cry, write, journal, draw, sculpture, etc.

Let’s talk about anger. Anger often gets us into a lot of trouble and we need a safe way to release its physical energy as well as the Adrenalin that comes with it.  Following the three rules, we can beat a pillow, mattress, punching bag (stuffed duffel bags are great); yell/scream (if you don’t want anyone to hear your, fill your sink with water and then scream in the water …or swim and do it; twist a towel real hard or have someone hold an end of a sheet and twist; yell/scream; slam doors (not refrigerator or glass doors – good strong ones); etc.  Again following the three rules we can release any feeling safely without hurting ourselves or someone else.

Note: If you were abused and have a fear of hurting someone when you are angry, always do your anger work by yourself when no one is around. Know also you may be afraid of anger because of what you experienced.

  1. Get into counseling or psychotherapy and stay there until you find more of you, have less intense painful feelings, gained insight and wisdom and life has gotten better.
  2. Talk with trusted friends about how you feel
  3. Pray and spend time with God.
  4. Attend religious services
  5. Find your passion and purpose. That often involves using what has happened to us in a way that makes a difference in the world.
  6. Start thanking God for everything in your life – the good, bad and ugly. This helps the brain physically shift old patterns of thinking to more positive ones.
  7. Develop the skill of forgiveness, forgive often.
  8. Forgive and pray for those who hurt you. This is a process and takes time. I usually does not happen overnight. The more we heal, the more we can forgive. The more I heal, the more I forgive, the freer I become.
  9. Exercise, but not to the extent it becomes excessive and abusive to you

These are only some of the way to cope, I am sure you can think of many more. We usually have to try different ways to find the ways that work best for us. People seem to have favorite ways to release them appropriately.

Feel free to contact me.

Blessings

 

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

BITTERNESS – OUR LIVES & OTHERS LIVES

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We have talked a lot about bitterness because it can take over our lives so much if we do not decide to approach our pain and hurt in a healthier way.  Pain and hurt are usually the feelings under anger. Anger is often a cover feeling. We flip the pain to anger because anger is easier to feel, it has energy to it. Then if we are angry long enough or work to not to show our anger directly at people, we can create bitterness.

Bitterness is not a subject that makes people happy and inspired to go do great things. It stops us in creating enriching relationships with ourselves and others. So we don’t like talking about it. We can, however, make a decision to heal and create a healthier, less violent world. Wow! If we think about that, really think about it, we have the power to help make this world more loving and less violent!

If we choose to be less bitter or angry that in turn changes my interactions with just about everyone I come in contact with. Did you ever think about the cashier at the grocery store for instance? They check us out, pack our items and tell us to have a good day. Do we look at them? Smile? Ask how they are doing? Maybe they are having a discouraging day and a smile, kind word or even a thank you would mean so much to them. So often we can give them a hard time and complain or ignore them as if they were robots.  Again, it is a decision about what we are going to do with our feelings. Care, support and encourage or hurt, put down and damage?

To change, we have to make the decision to heal and grow from our wounds. We can continue to brood and “lick our wounds.” Brooding is what a hen does with her eggs when she is working to hatch them. She spreads her wings over the eggs, settles deeply down in the nest and stays there keeping them warm for many weeks. She rarely moves from the brooding until the eggs hatch. We don’t hatch eggs but we sure can brood well as humans hovering over our pain.

Our other choice is to heal, grow and gain wisdom from the trauma experiences we have endured and been damaged by. I don’t know about you, but I do know  what I do not want, I don’t  want the trauma and those people who hurt me to win! I want to show them that no matter what, I have chosen to be a different and caring kind person and I refuse to let their actions win.

Letting them win means I become like them –giving into the pain, acting out so I add to the world’s problems and hurt people like they did. I have personally chosen to be different than what happened to me. I choose to be different than what they did to me. I choose to be stronger, kinder, more courageous and smarter than the people who hurt me and not let what happened to me continue to rule my life. That does not me I am perfect and don’t hurt people sometimes, I am human and make mistakes

We make this change by healing and overcoming. It is hard work and we have to feel the feelings appropriately of what has happened to us to heal. We have to grieve everything that we got –hurt, neglect, pain and everything we didn’t get –love, caring, developing of our talents….. Yes it is hard and so worth it. We gain so much from the healing journey.

When we heal we learn we can forgive and become truly free! Remember forgiveness is not saying what they did was OK, it was not and never will be. But we can heal and rise above, that is transcend what has happened to us. We may have things we have to forgive ourselves for, and we learn we can!

Note: Please don’t give up, freedom from the pain is possible. Overcoming and becoming a Transcender is totally waiting for us. It becomes our gift to us, those around us and the world.

 

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

BITTERNESS – THE CRITICALNESS

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What is looks and sounds like:

“I don’t want to be like this, I want to be me, I am not mean I am really a nice person. But I hate everyone and everything. I want to be different, be the real me. I need to change, I want to change. It’s time to heal. But how?

“I am critical of everyone and everything. I judge, condemn and want to argue and fight with everyone. I fight for my time with God, beg people to pray for me so it think I am ok…. but I am still not aware of have become bitter……BUT I HAVE!  Lord help me I am bitter, angry and want to destroy and hurt. I think I think it will help with the pain…..nothing helps with the pain….nothing.

“I fight each morning to get my brain under control, to get the darkness out of it, but the pain seeps back in and I want revenge again. I know I won’t do it but love planning it…it feels good.  Thinking that, I hate me again. Life is lousy, lousy, no one likes me or wants me around…I don’t want me around!

“I begin to see life and people as mean and they are out to hurt me. It seems they are working to shun me. They have mean looks on their faces…no that is not true, I know I have a mean look on MY face and they are responding to it. I am desperately lonely, but I am so critical and afraid others will hurt me more.

“I view others out to get me, hurt me…I long to go home and hide. It is too hard in this world, too hard. I cry a lot, scream in the water, and try to keep going, giving and all I want to do is sleep and make all this pain go away. But I have to keep going pretending I am not bitter and hide it from everyone. Pretend to be nice when I don’t feel nice.

“I see and believe no one likes me. I am awful, horrible, mean, terrible person and no one wants me around. I know it is because of what I have gone through. I have a RIGHT to be bitter, look what happened to me! So I have a choice –bitter or better. Bitterness is like acid, inside of me. It’s like having ground up glass surging through me, hurting me over and over again. It cuts me and I am bleeding  profusely all the time…. then I lash out to hurt others. Sometimes I can control it for a while and pretend I am okay, but then I have to run and hide so it doesn’t show. Trying to make the pain go away. It’s grinding me up, eating me away like acid. It is destroying my real self, the nice me, the one that loves people and wants to help them. I never heal. I’m never okay. It comes out in zaps, hurts, explosions, misunderstandings, jealousy, enviousness, looks…..”  And the list goes on.

Bitterness crushes the soul. It is like a wound that never heals, never because the hurts and wounds form the world continue and the person does not know how to make it stop. So it devastates the spirit. The result is the hurt is so intense it feels like it is slicing through us—we keep bringing up the hurts over and over again, because they are inside of us physically until we heal—over and over again. The brain is brings it up because we are actually trying to get rid of it. But we can’t until we heal.

Until we feel, deal with and heal from the embedded deep wounds, we will be crushed and we can’t let go or go on. Our struggle to cope becomes habitual then it shapes and changes our internal frame of reference, how we see ourselves in the world, it becomes skewed. We then can begin and continue to see the world as hurtful, people as cons and out to get us, use us, liars, and manipulators. Or we can see us as being nice so we can get something back, even a little something.  Thankfully, we can heal.

Becoming bitter takes time and comes from having been traumatized, wounded. It does not happen overnight. Wounds include disappointed, put down, abuse, violence, not valued, not respected, bullied….wounded in many ways. Sadly, when we lash out from our pain, we then feel bad having been so critical. We can then hate us for what we did; we devalue and judge us.

Healing also takes time, not as long as it did to be abused usually. It is hard, painful, wonderful and awesome. At the time of the trauma we don’t know how to get rid of it. It’s all one mess of glass and blood. It churns inside of us affecting every part of us –inside, outside…our entire life and all our relationships. But we can heal, we can forgive and when we do we gain wisdom and joy from the strength we earned and learned.

What to do about it:

In our world today there are many people who have become bitter and angry.  Healing is possible, always possible. We have to feel the feeling fully and appropriately to heal. We have to forgive. (See my blog on forgiveness.) I will talk about this area more as we continue our journey together.

 

Abuse, Abuse & Neglect, Brain and Trauma, Coping Behaviors, Healing, Human Trafficking, Neglect, Overcoming, Pain, Relationships, Trauma, Uncategorized, Victims, wholeness

BITTERNESS – THE HURT

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Bitterness comes from pain, agony, hurt, sorrow, shame, etc. that we turn it into anger that comes from being traumatized. I am going to share my journey of dealing with bitterness from my journals during a very traumatic time my life when people I trusted betrayed, persecuted and mentally/emotionally attacked me over a long period of time. Maybe some of you can relate. I would value any thoughts and feelings you have about what it has been like for you.

The Hurt of Bitterness:

“I have and am struggling with bitterness…I didn’t recognize it as bitterness but saw it as anger, hurt, depression and criticalness. I feel they (those people out there) deserved my bitterness, yet they don’t.”

“I have been hurt by so many people in my life so many times, not just now ….. so many that it has created deep wounds in me. Deep, deep wounds. They are like the fjords of Norway in my soul (Norwegian ‘grand canyons’) and are still ripping into me deeper and deeper.

“The hurt with all its agony and anguish is almost not describable. The book called ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’ are the only words that come close. I am dripping in blood – black, deep red blood. I’m dripping in it, standing in it and it doesn’t stop. It keeps bleeding and bleeding and bleeding. The pain never stops. It has shredded my soul and only God can knit me back together.”

“I keep trying to stand up, but I bleed more and hurt beyond what words can express. My enemies hit hard then harder. I reel. I stand again and their tail hits hard and I am down again.  I want so much to stand and to keep going, keep working. I do, but limitedly. Sometimes it allows me to stand and take a few steps, but only for a short time. Because the tail hits again and again and I go down again.

“I finally get so I can stand, but there is no energy and little hope. How do I keep going? How? I have little hope and nothing left. They took everything, everything – my home, animals, work, and safety. I am in touch with my anger and the deep grief that has built up over and from decades of being hurt other times, but nothing like this. When I sleep there are nightmares. I watch endless TV trying to get tired enough and zoned out enough to just pass out on my bed and maybe not have nightmares. Better yet, to pass out on my couch downstairs, I don’t have nightmares there.

“I am so tired, a shower is exhausting, and putting a spoonful of food to my mouth is more that I can do, I have no energy. When I do eat, it is something I just grab that takes no effort. Soup is too much work.

“I don’t want to feel this vile stuff. I want it gone, but it doesn’t leave. It is my constant companion. I use the techniques I know – cognitive, behavioral, prayer and it helps for a while. I have to keep at it or it builds and builds and wants to become anger which wants to obliterate everything like a burst dam. My confidence is zero, but I can’t let people know. I have to pretend. Gratefully, my work with my clients stays free of the pain and I can still make a difference in their lives. This is God’s gift through all this.

“I watch for good things, loving things and caring friends. As a friend said to me, ‘We are loving you through this.’ I try to keep focused on them, but the hatred and anger that keeps coming at me from them overwhelms me and I have to find a way to keep going, have to. My trust with people is so low, so I struggle even with friends. I have to find a way to cope with all the pain and take the next step and keep going somehow….so I am turning bitter because I have no other way to deal with all the pain and, anger. It seems to have won for right now. I don’t know how else to deal with all this black, vile grief.

 

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

FORGIVENESS – SO IMPORTANT

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Forgiveness, we have to do it, no getting around it if we want to heal. Just what is forgiveness? There is a lot of misinformation about it so here is what I have learned from my many years working with people and helping them heal and grow.

Lately, I have had a traumatic situation come up that keeps coming up and coming up. I have been struggling to feel it and forgive it. I know it is the only way to get through this without turning bitter. It is my decision to not be bitter, they, with all their acting out towards me, can’t make me bitter. They don’t have that power.

The forgiveness I am talking about today is for forgiving trauma, when we have been abused, neglected or traumatized in some way. i am not talkign about our special relationships when something happens, we forgive and the relationship grows and keeps developing. What I am talking about is forgiveness for trauma.

In trauma, it is very important that we forgive them and ourselves or we can’t heal and grow. We will remain stuck and will stay in pain.

FORGIVENES IS A DEEP SPIRITUAL LETTING GO OF THE PAIN AND HURT THAT WAS CAUSED BY SOMEONE ELSE OR OURSELVES. Yes, we have to forgive ourselves too, sometime that is the hardest things to do.

So here is what forgiveness is:

  1. Forgiveness is NOT saying what they did was okay; it will always be wrong and hurtful.
  2. It is not saying I no longer hurt and it does not still cause me pain.
  3. Forgiveness is not saying “I forgive you and now everything is okay between us. Let’s stay together and be friends.”
  4. When there is trauma and the other person has not changed, we have to take care of ourselves and protect ourselves. This may mean separating ourselves from them.
  5. Forgiveness is not revenge. Vengeance is God’s to do, not ours. Vengeance is triggered from the anger we feel about what happened to us. The feeling under the anger is hurt, pain and sorrow. The anger helps us cope with the hurt so we don’t have to feel it. Sometimes we have the belief that getting vengeance will take away our pain and we will feel better, it doesn’t happen that way.
  6. Going after vengeance will keep us from healing
  7. To forgive, we have to feel our feeling fully. There is no other way, unless God does a miracle healing, I don’t usually see that in my business. When it does happen, I celebrate. Usually we have things to learn and wisdom to earn and that takes time.
  8. Forgiveness takes time. As we are on our healing journey, we forgive some in the beginning then as we continue, we forgive more. As we heal in a deeper way, forgiveness happens in a deeper way.
  9. Forgiveness is for US! It is wonderful when it can happen with the other person, but I find that is not as often as I’d like to see. That is sad. Forgiveness is for us to help heal the pain the trauma has caused. It is also to teach us how to bring peace in our world.
  10. Please remember, when we don’t heal and forgive, the pain from trauma we feel is stored in our bodies physically and it stays there hurting us emotionally and physically until we feel it, deal with it and forgive the other person. If it stays inside, it will hurt our bodies.
  11. Forgiveness says, “I forgive you for what you did, and forgive me for how I have hurt other people from my pain. I release you into God’s hands to have the consequences of your actions.” As long as I am not forgiving I am stopping me from healing and keeping the other person from getting their consequences to what they did.
  12. Sometimes the hurt is so great, I struggle to forgive. I want to heal and know to heal I have to forgive. When I can’t forgive, I ask God to please forgive them and/or me, through me because it am so wanting the freedom and healing that comes from it. Sometimes I am so locked in the pain I can’t release or can’t even say the words, “I forgive you.”

One last note for today. I believe in God and His amazing love. He forgives all of us from everything when we ask. When I have struggled to forgive me for what I may have said or done or not said or done, I remember that He the creator has forgiven me, who am I not to forgive me?

Blessings to each one of you who is on the journey of healing.

 

Abuse, Abuse & Neglect, Brain and Trauma, Coping Behaviors, Healing, Human Trafficking, Overcoming, Pain, Trauma, Uncategorized, Victims, War
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Trauma isn’t something that happens and is over. It stays in our bodies until we deal with its pain and consequences. First lets look at trauma. So what is trauma? Here is some information we now know about trauma and its effects on our entire body – mind, body, spirit, emotions, etc.

TRAUMA {APA}  IS “…THE EMOTIONAL RESPONSE TO AN EXTREMELY NEGATIVE EVENT WHICH INTERFERES WITH THE ABILITY TO LIVE A NORMAL LIFE+ AND MAY CAUSE PHYSICAL CHANGES WHICH EFFECTS OUR ENTIRE FUNCTIONING.

Here are some of the causes of trauma:

ABUSE/NEGLECT                         SURGERY                            JAIL or PRISON

WAR                                                   DEATHS

HUMAN TRAFFICKING                SEVERE ILLNESS/INJURIES

ACCIDENTS                                    NATURAL DISASTERS

VIOLENCE                                        BULLYING

RAPE                                                  WITNESS ACT OF VIOLENCE

POWERLESS                                   HOPELESS

DIVORCE                                          ADOPTION 

 Trauma may be a one time, multiple, or long-lasting repetitive event(s). These events affect everyone differently. Some people may appear to be more resilient than others and not seem to be affected, however trauma always affects us always. “Impact can be subtle, insidious, or outright destructive…factors that affect it are the person, the event, developmental process, resources of the person, family, ability to cope, community at large, meaning of trauma and sociocultural factors. How we cope may not be psychopathological (emotional problems/behaviors) but look like it. It is  just coping. {Trauma informed care (TIC)}

Initial reactions can include exhaustion, confusion, sadness, anxiety, agitation, numbness, anger, withdrawal, dissociation, physical arousal, self-limited, eating and sleeping problems, etc. We then have to keep adapting and other coping behaviors will be created. Trauma affects all parts of us. Example, childhood trauma is biggest predictor of heart problems.

Our brain works hard to help us cope and keep going. “The human brain is continually sensing, processing, storing, perceiving and acting in response to information from the external and internal environments….especially sensitive to input that may indicate threat.” (Bruce Perry) Our entire being is always working to get to homeostasis/equilibrium or resting calmer place inside of us. Often we will use anything to get there including relationships, eating, substance abuse, and the list goes on.

Physiological Responses of the Brain

When there is trauma, brain is stressed and works to adapt – in anyway it can – functional and dysfunctional. The brain’s job is to sense, process, store, perceive and act on information from external and internal world to keep us alive.” It must work to regulated everything and bring it back to normal or homeostasis. Stress disrupts it.  “Stress is any challenge or condition which forces our regulating physiological and neurophysiologic systems to move outside of their normal dynamic activity. Traumatic events are extreme forms of stress.” B. Perry.

Stress/Trauma can vary on a continuum line from:

UNPREDICTABILITY    TO   PREDICTABILITY

MODERATE/SERVE     TO   MILD/MODERATE

VULNERABILITY          TO   RESILIENT

Homework:

Please, if you or someone you know have experienced trauma look at yourself and your behaviors, what helps you cope? Keep going? Sometimes asking a asking a friend (you trust) for their input helps us understand us better. Make a list and talk about with someone you trust if you can.

Abuse, Abuse & Neglect, Healing, Human Trafficking, Neglect, Overcoming, Pain, Relationships, Trauma, Uncategorized, Victims, War, wholeness

TRAUMA HEALING PROCESS

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The healing from trauma process is intense and takes time. It takes a determined, strong commitment to ourselves that says we will get whatever help we need and do whatever it takes to heal. Usually we make that decision when we cannot and do not want to live with the pain and the way we are living any more. The pain includes intense emotions such as anger, fear/anxiety, sadness, etc. which cause anxiety/panic attacks, flashbacks, nightmares, and the list of feelings goes on.

Because of all these feelings that are inside of us, we create coping defenses or behaviors that help us cope with and help keep these feelings under control. Some of these behavior include using alcohol and other drugs, anger at everyone, becoming bitter, over eating, under eating, depression and anxiety (as our primary feelings), poor relationships, isolation, harming oneself, withdrawal, confusion, problems concentrating (may look like ADD/ADHD), mood swings (may look bipolar), guilt, shame, hopelessness, helplessness, not living up to our potential and the list goes on.

We may be seen as the “black sheep” or “scapegoat” in the family and so family members avoids us, won’t talk to us and blame us for everything. This usually includes what is wrong in their lives, even if we don’t’ even see them. Sometimes, gratefully, family and friends surround the victim of trauma and help them heal. Sadly, I don’t often see this in my office, I wish I did.

Here is a description from a trauma survivor working through some of the healing the process he was experiencing:
“I am desperately working to hang on to me, to God and to friends. It is harder and harder now as I deal with more of the painful feelings. I sometimes don’t know what day it is and what I am supposed to do. Thank goodness I have my schedule. I do what it says to do. I keep going because I am sick and tired of hurting myself and being in so much pain. Sometimes I just want to give up. But I am determined to find me…me whoever that is. I know there is a real me, a good me, a me not in pain all the time.”

Abuse & Neglect, Healing, Human Trafficking, Overcoming, Relationships, Uncategorized, Victims, War, wholeness

Trauma: Journey to Wholeness

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Welcome! In this first of many blogs that talks about the difficult yet amazing journey to wholeness after being torn apart by trauma. I care about each one of you and am sorry for what you have gone through. I have gone through trauma too. It is lousy, awful and full of pain. We need to help each other on the journey to wholeness.

I am a Dr. of psychology and have been in this business for over thirty years. I have researched and learned a lot about surviving, overcoming and healing from trauma. I have learned a lot from my experiences, recently from a devastating trauma caused by the people of a nonprofit I helped create. I have also been blessed to learn about trauma from people who have allowed me to come alongside them in their healing journey.

Everyone can heal, it is a choice! We all have the ability to heal! The healing process brings a journey of pain and revisiting the past in a way that brings healing, freedom, joy and life back to us or maybe for the first time. The healing journey is also full of relief, hope, understanding and WISDOM! The only way we get wisdom is through painful journeys.

The journey to wholeness may not be what we want, but it is so what we need. There is life beyond trauma. There is hope and love. So glad you are part of this journey with me as we explore how trauma effects our lives and how we heal from it.