Trauma Response: You're Okay - true love scam recovery

Trauma response is real. It’s also normal.
There’s nothing wrong with us.
In fact, our bodies are protecting us.
Go with it.

We’re truly amazing! Trauma response is normal, valid and to be honored. When our eyes are at half-mast, and it’s only 11:00 am. That time in the afternoon when our brain is mush… and by afternoon, I mean 1:04 pm. The wish from deep in our bones to curl up with Netflix or just nothing and do nothing but sleep…

Trauma Response is Normal

The trauma response is normal. It’s hard, it’s intense… It’s real. It isn’t permanent. Honor it. Let it be okay. Sleep. Watch fun stuff on the telly, simple-minded soothing stuff like Bewitched, Seinfeld, Schitt’s Creek… Whatever hits that spot inside that says: everything’s okay. I can breathe here in this spot. Audiobooks are great too. The news is not great. Stay away from any and all news for your well-being.

Here’s what happens physiologically when a human lives in trauma. The first aspect that hits us is we go into a state of shock. Is there a running phrase that pops up in your mind throughout the day, randomly, at any time it likes? Is that phrase I can’t believe it.

This phrase represents – is proof – of being in a state of shock. You we all are; there is no one who wouldn’t be. If we weren’t in shock, then there’d be something wrong with you. Right now, there’s nothing wrong with you; there’s everything right with you.

Shock: Physiological Changes Leave Us Stunned

trauma shock ptsd narcissistic abuse recovery

1. A sudden upsetting or surprising event or experience. Shock is demonstrated in the phrase, I can’t believe it.

2. An acute medical condition associated with a fall in blood pressure, caused by such events as physical accidents or harm or sudden emotional stress.

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Here’s What Our Bodies Do in Acute Trauma Response:

Our mental and emotional focus narrows onto the moment of the shock
Our minds stutter in a short-circuit stall
Our breath becomes shallow
Blood pressure goes down
A stunned, out-of-body feeling
Things around us such as daily mundane routine goes out of focus
We say I can’t believe it

In Prolonged Trauma, We Move into the State of Post Trauma

Have anxious and possibly dark thoughts
Loss of creative brain and artistic ideas
Concentration on work or things unrelated to the trauma goes out the window
Are edgy or agitated
Trouble sleeping: startle awake, insomnia, nightmares
Mood swings from despair to irritability to anger
Muscles tense and we feel tight and other body aches and stiffness
Blood pressure goes up
Heart palpitations
Lose track of bills, and upkeep of our homes
Lose the rhythm of daily life
Skip showering, dressing, tidying
Laundry is way too big a project
Self-blame, self-doubt, second-guessing ourselves
Worry and anxiety, panic attacks
Feelings of fear and not being safe

Trauma Response Slides Into Grief

Feel despair
Weep
Sadness, loneliness
Withdraw from others
Feel hopeless

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Trauma Response is For Our Protection: Go With It

In trauma response and in PTSD, post-trauma and grief, we have the natural desire to:

Eat comfort foods or eat nothing; food may not be on our minds at all.
Zone out with films, TV, or anything mindless
Play video games, game apps, and other things that lift us out of our daily awareness
Drink or use other drugs that alter our current state of worry and depressurize the trauma
Isolate, and paradoxically…
Want to connect with others who are in the same boat and have the desire to find answers, recover and heal the trauma

How to Manage the Trauma Response

Drink lots of water, herbal tea, bone broth, water with lemon warm or cool, and more water
Eat as healthfully as possible especially greens… and eat comfort foods
Sleep as much as you like
Open the drapes and curtains and soak up the sunlight
One time per day move your body for 20 minutes in things such as doing gentle aerobics with someone on YouTube, do some yoga-type stretching or light strength building
If you can’t make it to 20 minutes of movement, go for 15 or ten minutes
Maybe move for these short spurts twice a day
Specifically to Covid-19 trauma: Connect: by Facetime and phone and Zoom
Turn off the news and social media that are rehashing the trauma
Play music that inspires, soothes, and lifts us
Use candles as we take it easy and dim electric lights
Take baths and do anything that soothes you
Get a stuffed animal to sleep with
Adjust your bedroom for sleep, the new weighted blanket might help
Envelop yourself with compassion and patience

Win in The Morning

Rise as early as we can, maybe before we’d like to. Immediately drink water. Leave some by the bedside the night before for this purpose. Once out of bed stretch up tall, drop-down dangling towards your toes. Breath in deeply…

Hit the bathroom. Shower and groom as if you had somewhere to go. Smile at yourself in the mirror. You are beautiful. Make your bed… leave it nice and tidy and fluffy for the evening.

Next, drink more water. Eat something nourishing such as fruit, yogurt, a smoothie, banana, soup, or spinach. Drink more water.

Mornings Make the Day

If you have a spiritual practice that supports and sustains you or builds your life and inner life force, engage in it even for a few minutes or an hour. This is where we win; in the morning is where we win for the entire day.

Alternately a fantastic morning ritual along with the spiritual practice or in place of one if you have none is something called “morning pages”. It’s simple and requires zero thinking, zero concentration, or thought. it’s also kinda amusing and insightful to watch what comes out of our minds to our pens.

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Morning Pages: from The Artist’s Way

Morning pages balance the subconscious and conscious mind which is key to being free to spontaneously make action for our well-being. It aligns us and dumps out the gobble-dee-gook from our subconscious and those things that are bugging us without us knowing.

Morning pages go like this: keep blank paper and a pen or pencil by your bed or in a place where you’ll use them as soon as possible after waking. When you’re awake and up in the morning or maybe barely have your eyes open and are still in bed in a dreamy state, take the paper and write. As in dump all the nonsensical anything that comes up out of your body and through your arm and hand and pen and onto the paper. Write mindlessly for three pages.

Here’s What Morning Pages Are Not:

An essay
A short story
Writing that is logical
Anything that makes sense
A study in perfect spelling or grammar

Here’s What Morning Pages Are:

Dumping out our subconscious mind in metaphorical imagery; in gibberish
Stream of consciousness dump; things you had no idea were in there clogging things
Scribbling in an illegible stream of seeming nonsense
Imperfect; no concern for spelling or grammar
Penmanship is not a consideration
Not you or anyone else is going to read this after
When you’re done with three pages, throw those pages in the recycling
Or use any clean backside or the scribbled pages to write over tomorrow morning.

Here’s What Results From Morning Pages:

A clear mind, a sense of flow
Spontaneous action taking care of your “todo” list
A looseness and vibrancy
A feeling of full access to your body and mind

Focus on Our Wellbeing With Simple Small Things

After morning pages open all the curtains. Let in as much sunshine as we can and soak it up. Do some mini aerobics, or lift some hand weights or soup cans for that matter. Have more water and do one chore before sitting down.

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Take Things Nice and Easy

Once we win in the morning, the rest of the day is a bonus. Set a routine and add one task to each morning. Make just one phone call and knock it off our to-do list. Do the laundry, or fold the laundry from last week.

Vacuum just one room. Try to make a habit of keeping the kitchen tidy. Remind yourself that any dish you use, if washed right after means there won’t be a pile in 3-days time that seems huger and more insurmountable than Mount Everest.

Tidy our lounging space before we go to bed each night. Fluff the couch cushions, fold the blanket, put our slippers away, or near our bed where they can wait for us through the night. Add that glass of water for the morning to our bedside table. And that paper and pen for our morning pages.

Use The Trauma To Find The Way

Take this time to embrace our lives with compassion. Protect one another. Unite and realize the true interconnectedness and interdependence our lives are made of. Take this time to remove the toxic, even the toxic in human form.

This is an incredible opportunity to rest, reset, revive, restore, and rejuvenate. To stand up for good over evil. This is how we will win. Let this run underneath all the TV watching, and apparent “doing nothing”.

Hold this in our prayers and in every breath. We will win. We’re in a natural process, please firmly resolve to tilt the world – your world – to a place of great harmony and good.

The Way of Life

This is what it means when it’s said that it’s difficult to be born a human being… And this is when we must win.

After the shock, the trauma, the loss, and grieving come restoration, rejuvenation, and a renaissance. Look for this. Expect it. Demand it. Know this is coming, and this is the natural way of things. Be your recovery and restoration. Create it. You are needed here in this world.

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As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.