None of this trauma recovery thing is easy. Don’t let anyone try to tell you it is, or “should” be.
Realistic trauma recovery involves unwiring deeply conditioned patterns in our nervous and endocrine systems, and rewiring them from scratch.
What the f*ck is supposed to be “easy” about that?
Some people will say trauma recovery is as simple as “letting the past go.”
How, exactly, do you think we “let the past go?”
That’s right: by unwiring old patterns in our nervous and endocrine systems, and rewiring them from scratch.
There is no one time, magic way to “let it go.”
“Letting it go” means literally, physically changing how our mind and body work.
It’s not easy.
We know how to recondition ourselves— but that doesn’t make it “easy.”
The essentials of reconditioning ourselves is not a mystery: self-talk, mental focus, and physiology.
Some people give me sh*t for boiling it down to those basics, but they really are the building blocks of how we rewire, recondition, reprogram ourselves.
What we say to ourselves on repeat, conditions us.
What we habitually focus on, conditions us.
How we breathe and use our body, conditions us.
The fact that the building blocks of realistic trauma recovery are relatively straightforward does not mean they are “easy.”
Ask any CPTSD survivor whether it’s “easy” to talk to ourselves in realistic, supportive ways, when all we’ve heard for years is how much we suck, how “evil” we are, how “weak” we are.
Ask any CPTSD survivor whether it’s “easy” to focus on our strengths and goals and values and successes, when for years our focus has been forced to dwell on our weaknesses and vulnerabilities and regrets and supposed “failures.”
Ask any CPTSD survivor whether it’s “easy” to breathe and move in ways that support parasympathetic nervous system dominance— “rest and digest”— when for years we’ve been stoking sympathetic nervous system activation with our breathing and movement.
It’s not easy.
And no magic therapeutic modality or therapeutic tool will make it easy.
But are you reprogrammable? Yes.
Are your brain and nervous system still plastic, still changeable? Yes, yes they are.
And are you worth the effort it will require to rewire and rebuild your nervous system and identity.
Yes, yes you are.
I know this isn’t easy. And I know many trauma survivors feel a lot of pressure from a lot of places to recover faster, to “move on,” to “let it go.”
Remember that this truly is a marathon, not a sprint. And nobody who actually understands trauma or recovery expects it to be a sprint.
Marathons require intelligent pacing and one-mile-at-a-time focus. Ask me how I know.
(Because I am a marathoner— and a trauma survivor working my recovery, one day at a time.)
Breathe. Blink. Focus.
