It can be difficult to recognize when you’re engaging in unhealthy patterns of behavior unless you take the time to acknowledge your own instinctual response to trauma. However, ensuring you stop engaging in any unhealthy behavioral patterns is an important and internal part of the healing process.
Frequent self-reflection will help you understand that a toxic cycle is repeating over and over again, if it is, and allow you to access those internal tools to break it once and for all. It can be very frustrating to discover that you have allowed yourself to be taken advantage of time and again. It’s a hard pill to swallow. But, it is important to acknowledge and accept this rather than suppress it, because continuing to experience life-altering trauma hurts even worse than deciding to face it.
The long-term effects of trauma on the whole self are immeasurable, and part of healing needs to be building strength through facing fear and being willing to very tangibly remove what is causing it. Although uncomfortable, remember that the worst is behind you. Trauma can no longer maintain its clutches on you. You are free physically and must allow yourself to be free mentally and emotionally as well.
Trauma can only remain a prevalent part of your life if you let it. Allowing toxicity to endure will induce trauma over and over again. Stop setting yourself up. Reflect and reconnect with your internal intuitive guide and allow it to lead the way.
By being honest with yourself and focusing what you want to improve in the aftermath, you’ll be able to find constructive ways to rebalance your life. You have full control over your healing journey and it’s up to you to make this happen. Consider the following expressive writing exercise:
Who am I, really?
What did trauma take from me?
How can I regain what’s been lost?
What needs to be added to my life to heal?
What needs to be removed?
What is one positive affirmation I can offer myself today?