The power of recovery supporting rituals.

The quality of our trauma recovery is the quality of our recovery supporting rituals (RSR’s). 

Rituals are things we do every day, usually in some structured way. 

Our trauma recovery is not going to succeed or fail based on what we do every now and then. 

Truth is, we can have some pretty rough days in trauma recovery, and still be on an upward trajectory. 

But it’s also the case that interspersing the occasional recovery supporting behavior into a regular behavioral “diet” of recovery interfering behaviors won’t amount to much. 

If we’re serious and realistic about trauma recovery, we need recovery rituals. 

Your specific trauma recovery rituals are going to be unique to you. The things I do every day may or may not support you in your recovery. 

A big task of trauma recovery is getting curious and specific about about what habits of thought, focus, and behavior actually support our recovery, and turning these into rituals. 

Remember: in trauma recovery, the name of the game is rewiring our nervous system. 

We’ve been conditioned to think, feel, believe, and do certain things that, right now, are inconsistent with our recovery. 

If we we want to think, feel, believe, and do things that will support our recovery, we’re going to be up against the power of conditioning. The power of programming. 

Our nervous system isn’t going to like that we’re trying to change those particular neural pathways. Our nervous system never likes when we try to rewire conditioned neural pathways. 

Our nervous system would prefer we leave it the hell alone, to function the way it’s been conditioned to function, thank you very much. 

Interrupting old neural pathways that make make us vulnerable to trauma responses, and rerouting those neural pathways to very different places entails making making changes in the physical architecture, the physical structure, of our nervous system. 

We don’t do that by doing a different thing once or twice. 

We do that by doing a different thing over, and over, and over again. 

The whole process is similar to what happens when we strength train in the gym. At first, the whole process hurts. 

Our body would very much prefer we let it continue on not lifting those heavy weights, thank you very much. 

Strength training is painful because we are literally changing the physical structure of our body, and bodies resist being changed like that. 

The only way it’s going to work is to make going to the gym and lifting those weights a habit. A ritual. 

No one who ever built significant strength in their body did so by strength training every once in awhile, or when they felt like it. 

Similarly, no one who ever realistically, sustainably recovered from trauma did so by work their recovery every once in awhile, or when they felt like it. 

I know. I hate all this, too. 

I would much rather just go with the flow, and let my mood dictate my behavior. 

Many of us who grew up coerced or controlled get resentful when we’re told we “have to” do anything. 

Here’s the thing: none of us has to do, well, anything. 

We are completely free to keep living the way we’ve been living. 

But we are also free to decide that the cost of not working our recovery has gotten way too high. 

We’re free to choose the pain and hassle of recovery— of mental and spiritual “strength training”— over the pain and hassle of trauma responses and symptoms. 

If you care about it, ritualize it. 

If it works, ritualize it. 

If it’s essential to your trauma recovery, ritualize it. 

Rituals are how realistic trauma recovery is constructed.