How to Start the Complex Trauma Healing Process

[00:00:00]Well, welcome to another question time with  Tim and I'm just responding to some questions we get regularly around the healing journey.  And the question I want to speak to today is how do I get started on the healing journey?  And it's important question. It's question everybody asks. [snorts] I want to come at  this from a couple levels. And the first is you got to start where you're at. You got to make  yourself aware of the resources available to you.

[00:00:28]And just be aware that thanks to the internet  today, there's a lot more resources available than might be just in your geographical  area. But you got to accept where you're at, start where you're at. But then I want to  give you kind of four key components that need to be part of your healing journey if you're  going to really be successful. And I want to put it in the context of learning to walk, learning  to drive a car, learning to swim, learning to ride a bike, learning to skate. So if you look  at all of those skills that you had to learn, they were a journey. They were something that  was important for you to learn, to to master, to be good at in order to kind of get to where  you wanted to get. Look at recovery that way.

[00:01:20]So before I get into them, I just want to say  this upfront. Many people, I think, start recovery kind of mad at themsel that they've waited  so long, that they've done so much damage, that they made excuses for so long, and they  really start out just very angry. And I hope that you can [clears throat] realize that that's often  not a good place to start. You have to start by, hey, I I'm am where I at. I can't go back. I can't  redo that part of my life. It's done. But I can change from here. And I'm going to do it with the  right attitude. And we're going to get to that.

[00:01:58]So the first thing is there's an academic  element. So, if you're going to learn to swim, if you're going to learn to ride a bike or a car  or walk, whatever, you could sit down and read a book, you could take a course, you could get all  this academic information, you could understand the physics, you could understand every  component of the process of all of those skills and those will all be really, really  important. But I hope what you see is that's not going to be enough to be able to learn  to swim or to ride a bike. There's more involved, but it's an important part. And so to me, a huge  part of recovery is learning, self-awareness, learning about trauma, beginning to understand  recovery and healthy. Now, I need to be put a caution here because there's a lot of people  today that are claiming to be trauma specialists that are training claiming to offer quick easy  solutions to trauma. Be really cautious. Make sure these people really understand trauma because  many don't. They just understand the basics.

[00:03:07]So do your due diligence in making sure that  if you're getting information from people that you've checked them out that they really do  know what they're talking about. So there's the academic. Then you need support. So what does  a child learning to walk? They need somebody to hold their hand or to hold them so they begin  to walk. Child riding a bike, they need training wheels or somebody to hold the bike. somebody  learning to swim. They need flotation devices or somebody holding them. Somebody learning to drive  a car. They need somebody in the car with them talking to them, telling them what to do next.  We need support. There's so much to learn that we can't implement all those tools immediately on  our own. We need somebody to support us. We need things that are going to help us until we  master all the different components. So you need support. You need a a group of people  or one person that is going to be there for you.

[00:04:17]So again, absolutely essential, but still not  quite enough. There's more that is needed.

[00:04:26]And the third is practice and experience. So  there's some things you can learn in a textbook, but there's some things you're only going  to learn on the job through experience, through being in the actual situations. Then  you feel the situation and now you realize the black and white little skill you learn in  a textbook isn't quite enough. There's it's got to be nuance. There's got to be some micro  skills that you have to learn and you learn those very gradually within the situation. So there's a  couple things that I want you to understand here.

[00:05:07]This is the stage that requires practice. Practice  doing it over and over again because what you're doing is you're training your muscles, your brain,  and your nervous system for these new skills. And that's a lot of stuff to train. But you also need  to understand that in this experiential phase, some of the learning comes through failing. Some  of the learning comes through things going badly.

[00:05:40]So you have to be willing to accept that there's  an element of learning that we can't just get in a isolated cold vanilla setting where everything's  nice and like a lab. No, there's some stuff that only is learned on the job by doing and that often  involves failure, frustration, difficulty. And so that's why many people avoid this kind of learning  and they look for recovery without this kind of learning. You're not going to be healed just by  taking a course. You have to practice. You have to go through the experience over and over again.  And each time if you go with the right attitude, you learn. And that takes us to the last thing.  You have to start with the right attitude.

[00:06:35]So, you have to have a humility that's willing to  learn. That's willing to say, "I need to change.

[00:06:41]I want to change. I'm willing to admit it.  I need help. I'm open to input from others."

[00:06:50]That's huge. Then you have to be willing to be  open and vulnerable and honest about your life, about how you've coped, about your wounds,  about your past. There can be no more denial, no more making excuses, no more minimizing,  no more rationalizing stuff that you've done.

[00:07:11]You got to bring an openness and an honesty.  And then you got to have courage. This is going to require you facing fears. This is going  to require you facing push back from others. This is going to require facing wounds that are scary,  entering into painful emotions. So, courage is required. And that's saying, "I'm going to do it  regardless of how much fear is in my limbic brain.

[00:07:38]I'm still going to do the right thing." And then  you got to be consistent. You can't get healthy by just doing it when you feel like it. By just doing  it once in a while. You got to develop habits and routines every day where you learn to meet your  12 needs. Where you learn to keep growing and how to maintain boundaries. all of the things you got  to do it consistently and that requires commitment that you do it because your cortex knows it's  healthy and right and you're going to do it even if you don't feel like it on some days. You're  going to do it even though you're frustrated, even though you're feeling discouraged. You're going to  do it consistently because you're committed. Those are so essential. So start with that. I hope that  helps you get started. Check out the resources available you our programs. You can check those  out and that'll get you started and then we can help direct you in that. Thanks again for  being here. Have a great day. See you next time.