When You’re Too Close to Trauma You Can’t Heal
We can’t heal a wound that’s still infected. For us to find peace, we have to get to the other side of our trauma first.
by: E.B. Johnson
You may have read all the articles about healing your trauma, but that means nothing if you’re still knee-deep in the pain. Just as our wounds struggle to heal in dirty and inhospitable conditions, our trauma fails to resolve when we’re still living in the midst of chaos and hardship. In order to find peace within, we have to get ourselves to a peaceful place on the outside. That’s a journey on its own, though, and one which takes extra time and consideration.
Healing isn’t always the first step.
As we reach deeper into the reaches of our childhood trauma, we’re told to heal, heal, heal. But how can that healing happen when we’re still being battered and wounded by the environment we live in? Healing isn’t always the first step in clearing the trauma that eats away at us. Sometimes, the first step is realizing you’re not in a place where you’re ready to heal. It’s an awareness that requires intentional cultivation and hard truths.
When you remain in contact with your trauma, it hinders your healing.
Look around you. Where are you at? Are you in a space where you can safely step away and explore your emotions in your own time? Or, are you still surrounded by people and experiences that hold you back and hold you down with distress, pressure, and chaos? We will not heal or find peace until we put ourselves in a mental and physical space in which that can happen. Just as our physical body needs sleep and medication to recover, our minds and our hearts need space, quiet, and the intervention of a support system to overcome.
Signs you’re still too close to your trauma.
Are you still living on the point of the knife that keeps injuring you? You won’t find a happier life until you put yourself in a happier place — whatever that looks like for you. Be honest with yourself. Are you too close to your trauma to start healing? These are the warning signs to be aware of.
Your traumatizer is still in the picture
Has most of the trauma in your life been caused by one person? Is that person still near and dear in your life? It’s going to be impossible for you to move on and find peace until you get away from this person and find literal, physical peace. You can’t get ahead, staying close to the traumatizer in your life, because they will continue to inflict new hurts on you while the old ones bleed. They will keep you in the past whether you want to be there or not.
You lack personal awareness
Moving past our trauma requires a certain awareness of self and an awareness of the complex effects (Herman, 2015). Do you struggle to step outside of yourself? Do you struggle to notice your own patterns and behaviors in the scheme of it all? This lack of personal awareness is common when you’re still in the process of being traumatized, or when you’re still fresh from the process of an emotional reckoning. We have to give ourselves time to wake up and realize where we’re at so we can put ourselves back together.
You’re stuck in a cycle of guilt or shame
Do guilt and shame play a major role in your everyday life? Do you feel as though you’re living under a dark cloud and forever searching for a break of sunshine? Guilt and shame play a big part in trauma. It’s part of what keeps us attached to what happened and quiet about it. Rather than allowing ourselves to internalize what happened to us, we have to find ways to be open. When we’re open, we enable ourselves to let go of what happened and live in our truth.
You’re enjoying the sympathy
Trauma can create a number of toxic traps in our lives, but it’s up to us to avoid them before they further wreck our happiness and our lives. One such trap is the sympathy trap, and it can be a heady and hard-to-avoid brew. This is especially true of those with the traits of covert narcissism, or those who engage in micromanipulations. To these people, the sympathy they get becomes a means of control. It gives them a taste of the power their traumatizers denied them, and that’s addictive.
You don’t have support systems in place
When we undergo trauma, it rocks the foundations of who we are and the life we’re trying to build. It touches the core of who we are and teaches lessons that run deep into the root of our beliefs. Although we may prefer to keep our trauma hidden away and under wraps, it’s not always possible to heal on our own. We very often thrive when we have the help of a support system in place (which includes a mental health professional). When you don’t have that in place, you aren’t ready to tackle the big pains.
Your emotions are still too raw
Trauma occurs whenever our emotional and mental stability is rocked in ways that destabilize our sense of self or our sense of safety. These traumas activate our nervous systems and leave them that way, keeping us forever in a heightened state of alertness and emotion that makes it hard to process our reality accurately. Do you still become emotionally overwhelmed at the mere thought of processing or the things that happened to you? Your trauma may still be too close at heart to handle in any serious way.
Your environment is too volatile
Not all trauma stems from one single person. Sometimes, there may not be a single source of trauma to blame. That’s especially true when you’re stuck in an environment which is — overall — toxic and traumatizing by nature. Simply for existing, you encounter daily emotional disasters and upsets that shake your sense of self and stability. Your body (and your brain) can’t heal when it’s in survival mode, waiting for the next blow to fall. That’s exactly the state we exist in when we’re in traumatizing environments.
How to step back and find your peace.
Realizing that you’re not ready to heal is a powerful place to be. As a matter of fact, it’s the launching point from which we take charge of our destiny. Are you ready to pull out the knife and find that deeper sense of self and meaning that you’ve been missing? Step back and find a way to peace with these techniques.
1. Focus on finding you
There’s no point in jumping into action or grand gestures until you know (fully) who you are and what you want. That’s a process only you engage in, and it’s filled with questions that only you can answer. Where do your core beliefs and values lie in this life? What do you want most from your relationships? Your future careers? Your friendships? Your family? All of these things matter, and so does the level of belief you hold in yourself.
Emotionally and mentally step outside of your current circumstances. Look inward and try to figure out who you really are and what really matters to you. Within that process, look too to build up your self-confidence and the unshakeable sense of purpose which drives you on and motivates you.
Allow your authentic self to be revealed. Be honest about your passions, your motivators. Be honest about what you want from your life and your relationships too. Consider all of these things away from and outside of the things that family or society asks from you. Put all that pressure on the back burner. To get to the core of who you are, you have to let all of their expectations go.
2. Build up a support system
Trauma is not something that generally happens to us alone. We are traumatized by our experiences with others and our experiences with the world. Just as others are involved in our injury, they are very often needed in our healing. This includes both mental health professionals, and those loved ones who simply hold our corners and remind us that we hold value in bad moments.
Build up a support system that can bolster you through the tough times ahead. While it should certainly include a mental health professional, we should also seek to surround ourselves with platonic loved ones who see and want the best for us in life.
Stop wasting your time and energy on people who want to tear you down. Stop investing everything you have in someone who traumatizes you, belittles you, or makes your life worth for their time in it. Instead, opt to invest in the friendships and relationships that make your soul blossom. Look for those who believe in your ability to lead a good life, even when you don’t.
3. Experience more of life
Considering who you are and what you want is powerful (as is building a support system). It cannot always provide us with the answers that experience can, however. To experience life is to get solid answers on who we are and what matters. Knowing you need your own space in order to heal, you have to get out there and actively seek that space out for yourself — wherever it lies.
While discovering yourself and building a support system is powerful, it’s not the only revelation we have to open up the doors to. This isn’t enough information to figure out where we need to be. In order to identify our physical and mental peace, we have to get out and experience the world so that we can find our special corner of it.
Try to break outside of your traumatic environment on small field trips that allow you to experience the other side. These are tiny “holidays” from your environment, which provide a taste of the better life that we need. Get out and experience life. Try new things. Put yourself in new experiences with new people. What makes you feel happier? What makes you feel connected to life, or more optimistic about the opportunities that you have? These are the avenues we should pursue.
4. Create a plan of action
Once you’re sure about who you are and what you want, you can begin to piece together an action plan that sets you free from your current circumstances. This is a long-range plan which encompasses all the steps you need to undertake in order to get yourself into a physical environment which you have greater control over. You need to get to a place where you can remove the abusers and traumatizers from your life at will, while establishing a small corner of quiet that is entirely yours and under your control.
Before you take any dramatic action to change your environment (or social circles) you need to make sure you have a plan. If you’re still in a state of trauma, your cognitive abilities are going to be impacted. Making an impulsive judgement could be catastrophic to your happiness and the success of your future.
Sit down with people who care for you and create a plan of action. You need to free yourself from those people and situations that are holding you back and holding you down. That’s going to take a lot of effort, and it’s going to take a lot of time. What do you need to do in order to take charge of your environment? What do you need to do in order to put yourself in a more physically productive and peaceful place? Be honest. Do you need a new job? More money? A new home or apartment in a different state? There’s no right or wrong answers in what it takes to get started again.
5. Find your deepest courage
Having a plan means little if you never find the courage to act on it. This is a theme that will reoccur throughout your healing journey. You have to tap into your deepest courage so you can stand up to your trauma and prevent more trauma from coming back into your life. This means learning how to verbally assert yourself, but more than that, it means finding the courage to act on your core needs and values.
Tap into that endless font of courage that exists within you. You are here right now because you are the product of centuries of people who refused to stop existing. You have their strength in you, and one day someone will look back on your courage for inspiration and for a sign that success is possible.
Use this courage to inspire action. You have a right to take charge of your life. You have a right to pick yourself up and replant yourself entirely new, if that’s what it takes. This life of yours is no one else’s to dictate. You’ve got to take action in order to take charge, and that’s going to cause some growing pains to both you and those around you. Accept it and find the warrior within yourself. You are strong enough to manifest a life you love, but it’s going to require taking dramatic action to get there.
Putting it all together…
We all go through trauma in this life, but not all of us are able to heal from it. This comes down to a lack of awareness, but a lack of access too. We need to have a great deal of space from our trauma (and traumatizers) in order to start the healing process. We need peace, but peace is hard to find when you’re still getting battered in all the same old ways.
Focus on finding yourself first, and within that process building up your confidence and figuring out what you want. Build a support system for yourself and find a way to connect with friends and loved ones who see and value you for who you really are. Reach out and experience as much of life as you can. The more you reach out to life, the more it will embrace you and show you where you need to be. There is a quiet corner for all of us, but we have to venture to find it. Create a plan of action and get determined on setting the rules for yourself. Have you connected with your deepest courage? Find the strength inside of yourself and use it to empower your way to freedom and independence. That’s where you’ll find the door to your healing.
- Herman, MD, J., 2015. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence. New York, NY: Basic Books.
