According to MFA England 2020 around 75% of adults consider themselves to have experienced a traumatic event in their lifetime and the effects of events such as COVID-19 has had dramatic effects on people mental health across the world. Whilst trauma can have devastating consequences such as PTSD, anxiety and depression along with physical changes to the brains structure there is often a positive side that gets overlooked. Naturally following a traumatic event your brain is hardwired to protect you from any further danger so the lingering thoughts about the trauma will cause you to feel unsafe, dread, worry and apprehension to name a few. These feelings might lead you to behave in a certain way and get into unhealthy habits such as isolating yourself, emotional numbing through false pleasures such as drinking, eating, zoning out. You might find your life-changing in ways that make you feel worse such as less relaxation time, poor performance at work, deterioration of close relationships with your spouse or children. The impacts of trauma can be huge but with commitment, compassion and in some cases professional help you can see the positive effects that it can bring. If trauma has started to negatively affects your life then reading this list will offer hope and reassurance that things can change. Here are my top 10 ways in which trauma can lead you to live a more fulfilled life.
- You can become an expert in self-care – trauma really does require you to take some time to focus on yourself and recover from its effects which you might not have ever needed to do before. Slowing down on your commitments will help give you space to learn how to really look after yourself and become someone that truly is an expert in caring for yourself.
- You will grow increased levels of resilience – those who have survived trauma can really understand what it takes to go on and live with its after-effects and still can love, learn and grow despite all the barriers
- You can learn to accept that bad things happen in life – Coming through childhood, it can be hard to accept life without the veil of fantasy that the Disney films, books and our own imagination can present to us, we are not taught the hardships in life as part of our education so it can be a hugely isolating when the bad things happen to us. Trauma can teach us to be present with our bodies, fear, desires and beliefs instead of trying to escape them.
- You can increase your ability to be compassionate – overcoming trauma involves allowing yourself space to heal and appreciating the huge impact it has had on your life. As you learn to talk compassionately to yourself you are also building your compassion for your fellow human beings which can leave you feeling more connected to life. As you learn to talk compassionately to yourself you are also building your compassion for your fellow human beings which can leave you feeling more connected to others and less isolated.
- You can increase your self-awareness – trauma can switch your brain into states of arousal without you even realising it and before you know it your world can look very different through the lens of the danger that you are perceiving. As you learn to spot the signs of hyper and hypo arousal you will learn to build the skill of observation which opens the portal of learning so much about yourself which was hidden from view in your unconscious.
- You can find a purpose in life that honours the trauma that you have been through – trauma can shake us up and leave us with low self-esteem and one of the ways in which you can build strategies to combat the low opinion on yourself that trauma has left you with is to use your trauma to create a purpose in life. Whether this is changing careers to help others to overcome trauma, creating a blog of your trauma experiences, working in a field relating to trauma or just committing to reaching out to those around you who might be going through their own trauma.
- Once you have been through a trauma you will realise that you can handle life – before the trauma, you were blissfully unaware that trauma would have such a profound impact on your life however once you have begun the process of healing you can learn to face the reality that trauma might happen in future and feel safe knowing that you have the tools to help you through it. Some people can even welcome trauma’s in life as they know that they grow and learn each time it happens.
- You can build a wide and diverse emotional vocabulary – early years education doesn’t really teach us much about emotions, so we grow up learning that emotions are categorised as either good or bad rather than just feeling inside our body. Going through a trauma you can learn to notice your emotions and describe how they feel in your body because you know that by doing this you automatically regulate and normalise the emotion. Using trauma-informed CBT, you can identify limiting thoughts and beliefs and deliberately create emotions on purpose so simply by changing how we perceive the trauma we can feel more at peace and excited about the future once again.
- You can learn the art of patience – trauma recovery is a lifelong process that can come in waves and might not be immediately obvious. You can’t rush recovery so you learn to accept progress instead of perfection.
- You can create more meaningful friendships – you will meet inevitably meet trauma survivors on your trauma recovery journey. Whether it’s through books, websites, support groups, therapists or other trauma survivors each person will give you something that you can cherish for the rest of your life.