When we move away from trauma and enter the recovery period, it’s important to remember to find quiet moments alone in which we can be mindful of our thoughts and just relax. Ensuring we allow for such moments will enable us to reconnect with the parts of ourselves that may have been lost or suppressed beneath the weight of our circumstances. We need to learn how to become self-aware again and reconnect with those pieces.
It’s important to focus on self-awareness so we have a better understanding of what we want to allow into our lives moving forward and what we must keep out. Often, we enter into abusive situations because we haven’t taken the time to truly understand who we are. Thus, we allow others to tell us who we are, and they manipulate us into believing these things until we are stripped of our individuality entirely. Abusers are liars. They are manipulators. And, they know they are capable of doing this so long as they can find vulnerable prey.
By becoming more self-aware, we are less vulnerable to manipulation because we create healthy boundaries and secure a better understanding of when someone or something crosses a boundary. Only in finding time for moments alone can we gain a sense of who we are rather than who anyone else may want us to be.
There are many tried and true methods for surfacing our inner voice. Two especially effective ways to do so are through meditation – particularly, mindful meditation – and journaling.
Mindful meditation encourages the meditator to observe passing thoughts as they pass through during moments of stillness. Rather than focus too intently on these fleeting thoughts or judge them, we allow them to pass freely. As we become more comfortable with the practice of mindful meditation, we start to understand that the mind often judges quickly and that our thoughts tend to come and go in patterns. When we have better control over these patterns, we can better control our trauma-response.
As we become more mindful of how our mind operates, we become more in control of our thoughts and reactions. We are, therefore, more likely to be immediately aware of anything in our environment which throws us off balance and we can quickly restore balance by eliminating troubling stimuli from re-entering our space.
Journaling during times of stillness is also a great way to become more aware of our passing thoughts. It is second nature to be constantly in motion. Thus, it is counter-intuitive to be still. We can start to document our thoughts during these moments of perceived discomfort and try to understand why we are uncomfortable with the very concept of being still. As we garner a better understanding of what is troubling us, we can work to correct any imbalances.
For journaling to be most effective, we must allow our thoughts to wander freely, just as with mindful meditation, instead of providing ourselves with preconceived writing prompts. In other words, we must resist the urge to set up questions for ourselves prior to any designated quiet time. Rather, we can enter into this time unprepared and allow our mind to go where it may, undirected.
When we allow our thoughts to wander freely, we become more in tune with how we operate unfiltered rather than relying on the more socially directed and composed dialogue we engage in daily with others. This means, we understand who we are rather than who society wants us to be.
We don’t have to share our journals with anyone. These are our treasured pieces of self and what we write down is meant only for us to get a better understanding of what makes us happy, sad, angry, or fearful. When we understand this, we are less apt to allow anything that disrupts our happiness to break through.
The primary purpose of mindful meditation and journaling is to self-reflect, so we are better able to keep trauma from re-entering our lives. We can also, in the process, begin to comprehend why trauma entered our space to begin with and accept our circumstances for what they are rather than suppress or deny them altogether. We have to learn to accept what we were and what we are in order to leave that troubling chapter behind us and appreciate life’s blessings moving forward.