Down to Earth Psychology - How to Heal Childhood Trauma in Adults

in #life7 years ago

Most of us have experienced some form of trauma in our childhood. Chances are, the emotions it caused were never processed properly and are stored in our subconscious and affecting our daily lives.
Many episodes that you may consider minor as an adult, could have been traumatizing to a young child. And without bad intentions, our parents stopped us from dealing with the feelings at the time. No parent likes seeing their child cry and saying things like 'Don't be upset' or 'It's ok, stop crying' is quite common.

The process of dealing with stored emotions is a bit difficult, but very rewarding. Many of our undesired issues and impulses are caused by things we can't even remember.

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How do you go about healing past trauma?

Start with minor trauma, something from the not-so-distant past

Become mindful.

Take some time to become aware of yourself. Sit on a comfy chair and take some deep breaths whilst analyzing what your body is experiencing.

Find the emotions

Recall the experience in your mind and everything it made you feel. Continue breathing and scan your body for the sensations this brings. Describe these feelings to yourself in as much detail as you can.
Now try to name the emotion associated with each sensation. Be aware of the subtle differences between some emotions.

Accept and experience

Love yourself for feeling each emotion. Accept them all as part of your humaneness and observe each sensation without trying to avoid it. Embrace the discomfort and let your body respond in any way it feels to, whether that's laughing, crying or yelling.

Learn and share

Listen to the emotions brought up and see if they connect with other experiences from the past. Write down everything that comes to you about these feelings.
If you can, share your reflections with someone else. Talk about the incident and about how you have come to see it now.

Let it go

Performing a ritual to symbolize the release of the trauma can be very effective. Maybe burn a letter you wrote to the person who hurt you or you could simply visualize the hurtful energy leaving your body.

Remembering things that hurt us can be very hard. Our first impulse as humans is to push the difficult thoughts away and distract ourselves. Take your time with each of these steps and be kind to yourself.

This is a basic process to begin uncovering and healing emotions from the past. At any point you may feel that this process is too difficult to carry out on your own and a therapist can really help you with it. All of us can benefit so much from therapy.

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interesante nombre el tuyo xD

Wonderful post

Thank you @niloyroy although I am not sure you had time to read.

Thanks. I can relate to this.

Let me know how it goes @crowtheconquerer

Well @corina this is an interesting post and specially about dealing with our subconscious it’s really not that easy but it important to do
thanks for sharing with us

Thank you for your comment.

Keep up such nice posts

Your post is great and an eye opener. I've had some traumatic childhood experiences which lingered for a while, but as time went by, I worked on my inner mind and forced myself to forget them.

I did this by convincing myself that whatever I experienced actually happened in my sleep, and that it wasn't real. With time, this became like a second nature and whenever I experience something bad, I psyche myself to believe that the experience isn't real and simply forget it.

Thank you for your comment @mayib. Your way of dealing with trauma isn't ideal, as the experiences you pushed away and pretended they weren't real are still stored in your subconscious and affecting your personality. Give this exercise a go and see how you feel.

Okay. I will give it a try. Thanks.

pretty good tips :) upvoted.

Thank you

The important thing is let it go

Thanks for your sharing. 😊

Always! But it can be hard to do..

So I read through, every piece of this work, and I can relate though, because I am a psychologist ,well it was a beautiful write up. You on discord?

Sounds good in theory but in my experience I'm thinking it may take a lifetime of letting go and a lifetime of all the above. Sharing is the best part of it. Accepting is the road to travel through the whole process. Learning might be the most important in the process of love.

I agree with you. Although this is a start in becoming more aware of the way childhood trauma is affecting you, actual healing can take much longer.

@corina ,this is an amazing post, there's a topic I'd like to suggest

Thank you so much. What's the topic, would love to hear your suggestion.

The topic is about maturity being forced on kids, I've seen parents indirectly or unconsciously forcing their kids to grow up faster than they should.. what do you think?