Healing Is Painful: A Perspective On Recovering From Trauma

If you’re reading this, it is likely because you are trying to come to an understanding about your trauma. Many resources identify the symptoms of different disorders and how to diagnose them, yet there is a limited number of resources on what healing would be like when you begin the journey. We all want to believe that when we walk into the therapist office we will instantly feel better, when in reality it takes many sessions with a therapist before one begins to have some sort of progress. Even then, the process is not as cut and dry as we would like to believe.   

 Healing is not a linear experience, nor is it pleasant or easy. It is far easier to let yourself drown in addiction and misery than it will ever be to drag yourself into a therapist’s office or rehab. It is easier to lock yourself inside and try to control your reality than re-enter a world that betrayed you. It is also easier to cheat on a test than learn the material, or steal instead of asking for assistance or obtaining gainful employment. Masking your pain with self-medication has the same sort of adverse effects as breaking the law does. For those who choose the hard road of healing, we have several obstacles that lay before us.  

 No one chooses to traumatize themselves, but we can choose how we deal with it. Our society does not make it easy to get support for emotional disruption because the first step is always admitting there may be something wrong, and the second is to confide in someone you trust for support. Society makes us ashamed for needing assistance, and due to this, if we reach out, our trusted support doesn’t know what to do with the information. There is a bit of pride involved on occasion, and people may attempt to hide mental illness; whether it is theirs or a loved one. This attitude prevents many people from getting the help they need.    

 Anyone seeking help will also face another hurdle in how we present our concerns. An individual, not a trained medical professional, would likely have no idea they were dissociating. Can someone drinking all of the time recognize that they were having flashbacks while drunk and not just drunk? Many seek treatment and initially get misdiagnosed and treated for the wrong disorder due to this. Sometimes we even misdiagnose ourselves. Any sort of setback can be daunting, but we have to keep pushing forward. With every misdiagnosis, bad therapist, and wrong medication, we are getting closer to being comfortable in our own skin. 

 The last hurdle that we face is the hardest, and begins when we finally find something that will aid us in the healing process. To begin to heal, we have to deal with all of those emotions that we have been shoving down inside. It feels like pulling off a band-aid and playing around in the wound. You’ll start to notice all of the physical symptoms you have once your mind clears up and you finally notice how tense you’ve always been. Some days you wake up and the sun is shining, and others you wake up into your nightmare. As time goes on and you continue to find what sort of medicines (including exercise and a proper diet) work for your condition these bad times will become less and less. At first, it will hurt, but you have to keep going. All of those things that you used to cope with your symptoms before will never compare to the relief of true healing.    

 The road to healing what ails us is a long and painful one. To get over it we have to go through and open up the old wounds of the past. Of course, there will be setbacks and we may have to try a lot of different kinds of therapies, maybe medications, and our lifestyles themselves will have to change in the end; but it can be done. Fight past the discouragement of a bad day because they will become less with time.