Self-Care After Trauma

It Always Starts with You

Photo by Jared Rice on Unsplash

My name is Lizzy, and I am a survivor of child abuse and trauma. It’s been several decades since I escaped my childhood and started again in a new place. No matter how far I’ve come, the past is still living insi

de me. If you are a trauma survivor like me, you will understand what this feels like. Traumatic memories never really go away, but they fade with age, a bit like paint on a wall that weakens it’s shine over time. Except trauma memories aren’t shiny - they hurt. Our healing journeys are as unique as our individual situations, and we go through the emotions of everyday in this complex world. The memories don’t sting as much when we heal.

In this article, I want to address the importance of self-care. No matter who you are, where you live, or where you are from, we are all the same human beings. We have needs and emotions. Most people can shrug off stressors because they have a good foundation to return to and draw on when they are upset.

Trauma survivors often don’t have that experience to draw on, and a minor upset can become a big deal and disrupt our entire day. This is something many people cannot understand.

Why are you so sensitive?

Forget about it.

Let it go and move on.

Just get over it already.

Get a thicker skin.

No matter how many times I hear these, I cringe. Yes, I cringe because the people who say them have completely misunderstood me. People ask me to dig deep to a time when I felt safe and happy to get over a new situation, but the things that make me upset are constant reminders of where I have already been.

It’s like being shot by thousands of tiny nails and not being able to fend off a single one.

The emotional damage was done a long time ago when the brain was still developing. Certain situations affect a trauma survivor more intensely than others. We don’t want to feel this much pain, but our over-reactive brains have reached their quotas for a life time and reacts to everything.

When I hear people argue, fight or raise their voices at me – it all comes back, instantly. I cannot help it and the flood gates open. If you are not a survivor, this sensation feels like being dragged out of a warm bed and thrown into an icy ocean with wave upon wave attacking every follicle of your body at the same time. It is not a nice experience, and it is not something you can just “get over.”

Healing takes time. Time that we often do not have in our busy schedules. I cannot just pop in, emotional meltdown, in my calendar and take a sick day to recover. Life doesn’t work like that. So, I end up crying in the restrooms or at the end of a hallway or in an empty room where I try and mop up my own emotional meltdown off the floor as the tears stream down my face.

These are moments that happen to all survivors. Life gets tough and we need a do-over, a break from our busy schedules and just try and hit that reset button of our emotions.

This is when you need to take time out for self-care. It sounds corny, I know. Why on earth do we need self-care? Well, we do need it. We crave it and our bodies will thank us for it when we give self-care a chance.

Self-care means that we take care of our mental, emotional, physical, environmental, spiritual, recreational and social aspects of our lives.