Something that holds many survivors back in trauma recovery is, we can’t imagine a recovery that is consistent with the life we’re living now.
I know, we’re working a trauma recovery to create a new life, that doesn’t particularly resemble the life we’re living now.
But in the short term, if we can only envision trauma recovery as something that entails a drastic departure from our current reality, it’s likely going to affect our levels of motivation and belief.
We’ve been around long enough to know that dramatic leaps rarely happen. They do happen, sometimes— but they tend to be the exception, not the norm.
We’ve been around long enough to know that tomorrow is probably going to look a lot like today. Much like today looked a lot like yesterday.
In trauma recovery, we are always swimming upstream against hopelessness and our vulnerability to becoming overwhelmed. Trying to envision our recovery as a whole new life, entirely incompatible with or removed from what we’re living now, makes us especially vulnerable to both.
This is is why I sound like a broken record when it comes to taking baby steps.
This is why I sound like a broken record when it comes to focusing on .01% shifts.
This is why I sound like a broken record when it comes to setting recovery goals so small they feel stupid— goals so small it’d almost be harder NOT to achieve them.
The truth is, I very much want a dramatically different life for you. That’s the only reason I do this work— because I love watching people completely remake themselves and their lives.
But I want that transformation to be realistic. I want it to actually happen. I don’t want it to remain a fantasy that sounds awesome and is temporarily motivating— but which evaporates when it’s exposed to the pressures and obligations of our current life.
Something we know very well in the behavioral sciences is that change that takes us dramatically out of our comfort zone is usually unsustainable without a massive level of support.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t know many trauma survivors working our recovery who have a “massive level of support” handy.
So: when I say start small, I’m not just talking about making changes you already have the strength and skill to make, although that’s obviously part of the equation.
I say start small to avoid freaking out your nervous system.
(If you’re a survivor working your recovery, chances are your nervous system exists at a baseline level of “freaked out”— we don’t particularly need to add to that with unrealistic expectations of recovery, you know?)
What I want for you in your recovery is to make consistent, manageable changes over time. I want, in six months, you to be able to look back on changes that you’ve made in how you think, feel, and behave, and realize, huh, it’s been six months— I didn’t think I could keep any of that up for six DAYS.
What we think, feel, and do has a lot to do with neural pathways that have been shaped and conditioned over time. If we try to rip out every neural network we have all at once, our nervous system is going to respond to that feeling of chaos and unfamiliarity by reverting back to and doubling down on its old programming.
That is to say, trying to make too many changes, too fast, not only won’t serve our trauma recovery— it’ll likely set us back.
Again, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to be set back in my trauma recovery.
So: if you want to make radical changes in how you think, feel, and behave in the long term, I’m gonna ask you to make teeny, tiny, barely noticeable— but very consistent and very purposeful— changes in how you talk to yourself, direct your mental focus, breathe, and use your body day by day.
This is how we realistically rebuild ourselves and our lives.
This is how we sustainably recover.
This is how we actually make it happen.
Use Your Damn Skills 