If you’ve reached a point in which you have reconnected with your lost sense of self, accepted what you’ve been through and have made an internal commitment to rise above it, and are determined to share the good news, pause to reflect on what you have achieved. Take it all in. Instead of allowing your past to define you, through trauma, you have evolved, ascended, and self-actualized. There are many people who never get to experience this state of being, and you should be encouraged by your strength, motivation, and dedication to the healing process. You could have stayed mentally and emotionally imprisoned by the circumstances in which you’ve physically escaped, but you actively chose not to. And, that’s beautiful thing.
Being able to rein in our energy so it’s not so haphazard and scattered across multiple commitments is a big part of the healing process in that it allows us to evolve from traumatized to self-actualized. We have to harness what energy we’ve got left and reclaim it as our own in the post-trauma state. We need to place our own needs in a prominent spot on our priorities list, maybe for the first time ever.
When you’ve come to understand this, any person, place, or thing that induced trauma can longer have control over you. And, there is power in this. In this power, your energy will rebuild, and you will be stronger than ever before.
Of course, connecting with others and sharing our stories also helps accelerate the healing process, so long as we’re careful not to give too much of our energy away at once. Mastering mindfulness and heartfulness is a great way to reclaim our energy and live a more meaningful life. We need to remember to check in from time to time and understand where we are at physically, mentally, and emotionally in the present, so we can make adjustments wherever necessary. Doing so allows us to better understand how we can help others as well as ourselves.
When you not only understand what is needed to heal but put this into practice and regain a loss sense of purposefulness, this is unstoppable. You will be able to move beyond a quest for internal peace and the dissolution of everything that plagued you by instilling negative energy, to a quest for a level of self-discovery in which you will examine the meaning of life. Instead of living on reactive mode, pausing whenever your energy is thrown off to try and figure out how to restore balance, you will proactively seek out the truth about your existence. This is the highest level of basic humanistic needs, and it can only be realized when an individual has ascended to this point.
This is what it means to self-actualize. There is no turning back from this point. You will be forever changed – for the better.
You will suddenly begin to understand things you previously would have never considered. As the twelve-step Promises suggest (which apply to any kind of healing): You are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness; You will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it; You will comprehend the word serenity; You will know peace; No matter how far down the scale you have gone, you will see how your experience can benefit others; That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear; You will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in your fellows; Self-seeking will slip away; Your whole attitude and outlook upon life will change; Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave you; You will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle you; and you will suddenly realize that God is doing for you what you could not do for yourself.
This is what it means to become enlightened. This is what is means to self-actualize. Continue to strive to reach this destination but appreciate the journey and everything you’ve learned in the process.
Break the silence. Break the cycle.