(Nimue)
Over on Blue Sky, I follow a chap called Dr Glen Patrick Doyle, who posts steadily about healing a recovery from trauma https://bsky.app/profile/drdoylesays.bsky.social I've found his insights tremendously useful, so thought I should mention him.
One of the things he's been posting about recently is the importance of finding and becoming your true and authentic self as part of the recovery process. I think this is especially relevant for people dealing with complex PTSD.
When trauma comes from a single event – like a car crash – it damages your relationship with the world. You may end up feeling disproportionately in danger all the time. It takes work to get over that and to rebuild your expectations. Complex trauma isn't caused by a single event, but by a lot of damaging things over a longer period of time. This has the effect of damaging a person's relationship with themselves.
To recover from all of this, you have to rebuild your sense of self. You need to find out who you are, not what you've been told you are. Victims of abuse are always blamed for what happens to them and can end up feeling they deserve the abuse – which is very much the point of doing it. Learning that you are not responsible for what's been done to you is critically important for healing.
One of the things I've been saying for some years is that the most authentic version of yourself is the one you choose to be. Any of us, at any time can try to draw a line under the past and set out to be a new and better version of ourselves. The choices we make, the ways in which we act and speak, or how we put ourselves into the world are real and can be trusted more than anything we've been told about who we are. Our most real self is a person we can construct deliberately day by day, no matter what went before. Healing involves learning to trust that process and trust the reality of the person you most want to be, and the person you are actively undertaking to be.
If you aren't working on this kind of recovery, you can help people who are simply by being affirming. Positive feedback helps everyone, you don't need to know whether they are fighting demons for it to be relevant. Getting feedback about what we're doing well, what works, or is good in some way helps a struggling person to orientate themselves. Evidence that you are getting things right can be a good antidote to the poison of abuse. It helps people find their own core and power and to use that well and trust themselves.
You can find me on Blue Sky here - https://bsky.app/profile/nimueb.bsky.social
No comments:
Post a Comment