What is Trauma Mind?
Trauma Mind
Healing and Thriving Beyond Trauma Mind.
Feeling Stuck in Trauma Mind
Our minds create meaning and can deduce and predict. This is what makes us unique thinking mammals. Sometimes this can be adaptive and sometimes maladaptive as we can create meaning or thoughts about what happened to us that are harmful. When we take our thoughts at face value without examining them we can become stuck. When we experience Trauma Mind we can believe the trauma means something about who we are. We create self-defective beliefs about ourselves and life. We identify with it.
Healing the Trauma Mind
The good news is we can use these same human powers to start labeling when our mind is personalizing, catastrophizing or making life events in the past become permanent or pervasive. We can identify when we have created a distorted self-defective reality. We can work on dismantling any thoughts that the trauma that happened means something about the person we are. Self exercises, trauma-informed therapy and trauma specific treatment can help us with healing the Trauma Mind.
Thriving Beyond Trauma Mind
Once we have taking the healing steps to help us recognize the trauma is in the past, it does not mean something about who we are, but rather is integrated in to how we have loved and want to live. Our trauma starts to inform how we want to live, embrace life, be congruent in our values and our actions. The focus becomes on how we want to live, give back and move forward to just be in life.
Additional Information on Trauma Mind and Complex and Severe Trauma, go to the Trauma Type Self-Test here:
Healing the Trauma Mind
First Steps
Treatment Recommendations
Self-Healing
First you need to recognize whether you are identified with your Trauma Mind or not identified with your Trauma Mind.
Trauma Mind-Identified: This is when you believe trauma that happened to you or your loved one means something about who you are. Your identify is now defined by the trauma.
Trauma Mind: Non-Identified: This is when we kno
First you need to recognize whether you are identified with your Trauma Mind or not identified with your Trauma Mind.
Trauma Mind-Identified: This is when you believe trauma that happened to you or your loved one means something about who you are. Your identify is now defined by the trauma.
Trauma Mind: Non-Identified: This is when we know our thoughts about ourselves are distorted or not a complete picture but we can not help our thoughts from happening.
Through the right kind of healing and treatment, you can recover motivation, perspective, and joy that you once had in your life.
Self-Healing
Treatment Recommendations
Self-Healing
Many individuals can experience symptoms associated with painful and traumatic circumstances. Anxiety, fear, and hopelessness are a few emotions that can linger post traumatic events. You can overcome these symptoms when you start to recognize when your mind is starting to make stories or narratives about these symptoms. Talking with a professional can also help you process through your feelings.
Treatment Recommendations
Treatment Recommendations
Treatment Recommendations
When you feel like some of your self-healing exercises are not working for you, then this is the time to consider therapy with a trauma-informed clinician or a trauma specialist.
Empowering Change with Trauma Techniques
Self-Narrative Exercise:
How you identify with the trauma that happened to you and the story you have about it is imperative on your healing journey.
- Try to describe your trauma in less than 120 seconds. If you do better talking, then audio record yourself on your phone, if you do better writing than write your narrative in less than 120 seconds.
- Now try to describe it in 60 seconds. Did it feel different? If so, how?
- Now change any 'I', or 'my' pronouns to it. So rather than 'I was assaulted', to 'the assault happened'. Rather than 'my trauma from childhood' to 'the experience of trauma in my childhood'. Notice the my was moved in front of childhood rather than trauma. Did it feel different? If so, how?
- Reflect on any changes in sensations and how difficult/easeful this was for you.
- Now do this exercise every day for a month and see after a month if your identification with the impact of the trauma on you starts to change. Does it start to move to the past? Does it start to feel like something that happened rather than it meaning something about you?
Self-Narrative Examples:
- For childhood trauma: I was abused, I experienced abuse, it was hard to experience abuse as a child
- For single event trauma: I was shot, I survived being shot, I've been in recovery since being shot
- For trauma to your loved one: My sister's assault changed me, the assault of my sister has changed all of our lives, It has been a long road of healing since my sister was assaulted
Integrating and Moving Beyond Trauma Therapy
A Guidebook to Healing
Read or Listen to: The Thriving Self: A New Paradigm for Healing Trauma in the Mind, Body and Spirit and Moving Beyond It on Amazon or listen on Spotify.
