Healing Trauma: A Quick Guide to Self-Love

Welcome back, friends!

I know I went a little hard last week, but I promise it was from a place of love. Facing hard truths about ourselves is never a good time. Believe me, I know all too well how it feels to suddenly realize you might not be as good a person as you once thought.

But here's a little secret for you:

Having that feeling automatically makes you a better person than a lot of people on this planet. Because you're self aware, you're acknowledging your faults, and you want to be a better person.

I've noticed a lot of my Thriends talking recently about being in a dark place mentally. Our world is in a dark place right now. Things are changing, rapidly; and for a lot of us, it feels like our very lives are in danger. Situations like this can bring a lot of dark thoughts to the surface, leaving us to either handle them, or succumb to them.

Healing is messy work. The beginning phases can feel like you will never come out the other side. But if you can stick this part out, and just keep putting one foot in front of the other, you can find yourself on the road to having your best days ahead of you.

This is not about toxic positivity. That mindset is just another form of victim blaming, and it sent me spiraling more than once, almost taking me out in the process. This isn't about smiling in an effort to blindly ignore the pain. This is about confronting and accepting the pain, and smiling in spite of it.

Let's get into it.

These days won't last forever. But they are an important part of the healing process.

Self Love During the Dark Days

One of the most important parts of healing your trauma is learning to love yourself.

The dark days come in when we become overwhelmed with it all, and we turn that overwhelm inwards. Suddenly, we're not just upset about the things that have happened to us, we are now blaming ourselves, and hating ourselves because of it. We start to feel completely helpless, and powerless to stop whatever it is that is happening.

These thoughts can manifest in a million different ways, but they ultimately focus on blaming you for what's happening. It feels awful. But in a weird way, this is your brain trying to protect you.

Because if you are to blame, then that means that somehow you did have control over it at some point, and you will be able to have control over it in the future, so it can never happen to you again.

You have to remember that thoughts are not facts. Just because you think it, doesn't make it true. You're going to remember things, and think all sorts of wild thoughts about it all. You don't have to believe it. This is just a part of the processing period.

Thoughts are not facts.

These days are like a mourning period. You're going to go through all the stages of grief, because you have lost something. Be it your innocence, your former identity, the partner you thought you had, your friends, the life you built, your ability to trust, your sense of self... And these are just a few of the things that I had to mourn in my own healing journey. The reasons are going to be different for everybody. But the phase remains the same.

You have to allow yourself the time, space, and compassion to mourn any and everything that you have lost. Yes, you still have a future. Yes, you still have things to live for. But leaving things behind, no matter the circumstances, can be a significant loss. Mourn it.

Things started turning around for me when I learned to treat myself with compassion. We are our own worst critics, and I definitely held my own head down in the mud during this process. Don't do that. You have to have compassion for yourself now more than ever. If you saw your friend laying on the floor, sobbing, broken, exhausted... Would you tell them to suck it up and get back to work? With a whole bunch of insults and gut punches thrown in there for good measure? No, you wouldn't. So don't do it to yourself, either. Hold your own hand through this process. When you're too exhausted to move, give yourself the time to rest and heal. Hustle culture is dead. It's time for radical self love and acceptance.

We will get into how exactly to go about "loving yourself" (such a foreign concept, I know) later on, but I really want to drive this part home. There is this incredible woman I follow on Instagram, @nottheworstcleaner_ you should follow her immediately. She has worked in mental health, and now she does free deep home cleanings for people suffering with mental illnesses and struggling to stay on top of their housework. It's phenomenal work, and the messages in her videos are ✨beautiful✨ There is one quote of hers that really started to shift the way I thought and spoke about myself:

You will never hate yourself into a version that you love.

Read it again. Memorize it. You will never hate yourself into a version that you love.

Learn to love yourself exactly as you are, while you work on becoming your favorite version of yourself.

Find your own Sasha Fierce 👑

Toxic Positivity Doesn't Work

The road to healing is long and hard. I've really only just begun, but it's starting to feel like my darkest days are behind me. I didn't just hit rock bottom. I hit bedrock and kept digging until I found magma. It felt like the dark days were never going to end.

I was desperate to feel better. I have things to live for, there are parts of my life that I can't talk about publicly just yet, but believe me when I say that I am surviving out of spite at this point. Getting better became a hyperfixation. I wasn't sleeping. For over a year, I would sleep for maybe an hour at night, then wake up in a panic attack and spend the next 6+ hours throwing up/panicking until sometime around 5am when my body decided that I could sleep for another couple of hours. I couldn't eat, I was nauseous all day. The weight fell off of me, I felt like a walking skeleton, everything was spiraling out of control and I felt powerless to stop it.

Then I realized that I was the only one who could stop it.

So I started studying. I would be in the bathtub for hours every night, it was a way to snap the focus off of my nausea and onto something else. Podcasts, audiobooks, and of course endless hours of comfort shows to ride the wave as needed. I was undoing over a decade of brainwashing from both a cult and abusive relationships. I turned to every resource I could find.

This sent me down a lot of interesting paths. I am agnostic; I'm a spiritual person, but I don't really know who or what I'm talking to up/down/over there. Unfortunately, there are a lot of wolves dressed in hippie clothing, just waiting for the chance to sell you their latest snake oil as a ✨perfect✨ cure for whatever ails you. Spirituality is good, victim blaming and toxic positivity disguised as "spiritual healing" at top dollar rates is just another form of Scientology.

I was trying to change my mindset, but I was doing so from the wrong direction. For a very long time, every time I started throwing up or crying again, I felt like I must have done something wrong. I would obsess over everything I had said and done, or failed to say or do, and how it inevitably lead to me feeling bad again. My dark days were a sign of weakness, not grief or processing. The idea that "your thoughts can change your life" is absolutely a possibility. But it doesn't mean that when things go wrong, you must be doing something wrong to cause it, or that it happened because you were thinking negatively. Life is random. Chaos rules our universe. We can only be responsible for the things we have control over. Nothing more.

It is great to be able to think positively. When it applies to the situation. Having a positive outlook on life is a beautiful privilege that everyone deserves to experience. And this can be achieved again after trauma. But you won't get there by ignoring the negatives.

Embrace your darkness

Shadow Work: Learn to Love Your Dark Side

There is a lot of brainwashing that comes along with being in an abusive relationship, or really just existing in this current society. They slowly convince you that you are worthless, pathetic, weak, and that you deserve the abuses against you. Undoing this takes a lot of work, and self awareness.

It is important to acknowledge both what was done to you, but also what you did. This isn't about blame. Many truths can exist at once. Just because you haven't been perfect, that doesn't excuse anybody else's bad actions against you. But holding onto those things you're ashamed of, that opens you up to feeling like you do deserve it. Start acknowledging your short-comings. I promise you, you're not as bad as you think. Hiding it from yourself only makes it worse.

This step was especially hard for me. Yes, I was abused and traumatized. But I also joined a cult. I was a counselor and minister in Scientology, and I said and did things during that decade that I would NEVER do under any other circumstances. But that does not change the fact that I did them, and that they were bad things to do. It took a lot of work, but I can now acknowledge that I did awful things, but that I did them thinking that I was doing what was best for the world.

Especially as women, we are convinced that unless we are perfect at all times, we are worthless. If I can't be of service, why am I even here? This was my great undoing. I bottomed out. For months I existed solely on the couch and the bathroom floor. I was already struggling to process my past, and now here we are years later, and I'm too sick to be able to lift a finger for months on end. My entire sense of self worth was shattered. I was useless. I added no value to the world. What was the point?

If this spiral sounds familiar, you have come to the right place.

Instead of running from your dark, you have to embrace it.

Here's a fun activity for you: Imagine you are Morticia Addams, and you're talking to Gomez. You know that man loves his dark queen. Write it in a journal, do it in your head, whatever works for you. And feed him your dark. You don't get anywhere pretending these places don't exist, we all have demons waiting in the wings to devour us whole. Dive in, and shine the damn spotlight on them. I was sickeningly co-dependent, I had no idea who I was outside of a relationship. I completely relied on the opinions of others to dictate my entire life. I have hair on my big toes. I snooped through my ex's phone when I thought he was cheating. I allowed a cult to take over my identity. And these are just a few of the things that I'm okay with admitting on the internet. Dive in. You have no idea how ✨freeing✨ this activity can be. Unburden your soul. Let the dark out. That's the only way to move forward and do better.

Dear future partner: this or nothing 🖤🥀

Flip The Script

This stage of my healing, I like to refer to as my ego death. I doubt I'm even using that term correctly, but for me there was no better way to describe it. Everything that I thought I was, every belief that I held, every random thought I had throughout the day, I ripped them all out of my head and laid them on the ground before me.

Which of these are true? Which of these should I toss in the fire?

Because here's another little secret for you:

Your brain lies to you.

An activity that I did with one of my therapists was to start isolating the negative thoughts. Things like "I'm a failure," "I'm weak," "I'm a bad person," "I'm not worthy of love." Take some time to think about the negative thoughts that cloud your mind the most often, and write them down.

Now, flip the script.

"I can succeed."

"I am strong."

"I am a good person."

"I am worthy, exactly as I am."

Look for evidence to back up the good thoughts. Those negative voices, that inner critic, they love throwing evidence back in your face. Any time these negative thoughts start to come in, suddenly an avalanche of memories comes flooding in right behind them to prove them right. You know this feeling: one thing happens, and suddenly you're crying about everything.

You have to start training your brain to spot and stop those thoughts as they are coming in; it takes time, but it is possible. Then, immediately start looking for evidence to the contrary. Look for examples of times that you succeeded, times you were strong, remind yourself that you are worthy simply because you exist. Even if the only thing you have is blind faith that it can turn around, that can be enough. Speaking one hundred percent from personal experience on that one.

Mantras made me roll my eyes at first. Telling myself that I'm worthy and beautiful felt so unbelievably cringe. But I was determined to stop hating myself, and I was willing to try anything. I couldn't remember to repeat things to myself throughout the day, ADHD brain, so I started listening to guided meditations instead. And then I found affirmation music. Not just "cheesy" full-on affirmation music (honestly I love those, too) but amazing women singers and rappers with lyrics focused on female empowerment and owning your power (Qveen Herby, Toni Jones, Shanin Blake, I'll put together a playlist) And then one day... It actually started to work.

Yeah, I know, I couldn't believe it either. It took a while, and it did not come naturally, but over time I slowly shifted that negative voice inside my head into my biggest cheerleader. This only happens with repetition. Think about just how many negative thoughts you have about yourself in a day. It's a lot, right? You have to start spotting and stopping them as they come in, and then replacing them with even more ✨positive thoughts✨ about yourself. This takes time, work, and dedication. But you can do it. And eventually, you won't even have to think about it anymore. If you wouldn't say it to your best friend, don't say it to yourself. Period.

Let's Wrap It Up

This is really just the baby steps to healing. What works for me might not work for you, and that's okay too. But the key points remain the same: Have compassion for yourself, start paying attention to how you think and speak about yourself, acknowledge and embrace your faults instead of hiding from them, understand that your brain will lie to you, and start feeding it positive things to think instead.

Healing is no joke, please make sure to talk to your doctor if you're struggling. The steps above wouldn't have been possible for me if I wasn't also on lots of medication. Mental health is important, and you need to take care of yourself. Talk to your doctor, and see if you can get a therapist. There are free options out there, and you do deserve help.

Have compassion for yourself. Learn to love yourself not in spite of it all, but because of it all. You're an incredible person, and you deserve to be here. Never forget it.