What Healing From Trauma Looks and Feels Like

Hello,
It's Sunita here.

When I sought treatment for symptoms that had brought great challenges into my life, I had no goals or expectations of what I wanted as my end result.

All I wanted was for the pain and the voices that were ravaging my mind to stop! 

This pain had also gained entry into my body in a variety of nefarious ways.

I felt like there was a screech machine in my head that ran around the clock, and, on top of that, mercilessly played the same bad tune all the time. Attachment and complex childhood trauma had reached every cell of my body. It had invaded my brain in a way that my experience of myself, and, of my environment was distorted and broken. (You can read the poetic expression of my journey in my book 'Stripping : My Fight to Find Me'.)

As therapy progressed, I began to experience relief from many of my readily obvious symptoms. But the damage from my trauma was deep and repressed, so it was a while before I started to reacquaint myself with my true inner self, and was able to successfully break deeply ingrained behaviors and beliefs.

At this point, I still did not have a clue of what the end of treatment would look or feel like. Nor did I understand the time table of healing. But I do now.

There is no end to healing.

Healing is a direction. 

Healing is not a destination. 

The next question I had was what makes for a healthy mind? Because I wanted one.

Pain and suffering is a part of our lives- whether we have had trauma or not. We are all presented with challenges and situations from which we must rise in order to create a joyful existence. 

We are wired to connect with others. So our relationship capacities and our ability to co exist with others is the key to how enriched, fulfilling and happy our lives will be.

How we think and adapt to change is the key to living our best life.

Mind- A journey To The Heart of Being Human by Dr. Dan Siegel is a must read for anyone who is searching for their highest being. You can learn more about his back ground and  the Mindsight Institute and his background by following the links.

If you have suffered from any kind of trauma in the past, or are currently still suffering from trauma, then your journey towards health is especially hard. "Individuals who have experienced trauma that remains unresolved, those with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be seen as filled with both chaos (intrusive bodily sensations, images, emotions, memories) and rigidity (avoidance behaviors, numbing, amnesia)", writes Dr. Siegel in 'Mind'. But there is hope because there is clarity of who you can be, beyond even the elimination of symptoms. You can grow as a human being to be integrated.

Healing is Integration.

I find the following description of what an integrated, healthy human looks and feels like to be the most clear and comprehensive that I have come across in my quest to understand what a healthy mind is.

FACES and COHERENCE

F     Flexible

A    Adaptive

C    Coherent

E    Energized

S    Stable

Dr. Siegel explains, "A FACES flow of integration creates harmony, like a choir singing together by differentiating their voices and linking together with harmonic intervals. You may know the feeling of hearing or singing a song in harmony- it's exhilarating and full of life... Integration feels connected, open, harmonious, emergent, receptive, engaged, noetic (a sense of knowing), compassionate and empathic."

C    Connected

O    Open

H    Harmonious

E     Engaged

R     Receptive

E     Emergent

N     Noetic

C     Compassionate

E     Empathetic

I have found that healing is a lifelong process. Even after therapy, or other forms of help ends, we continue to build on our new selves. Our new forms are an amalgamation of our previous selves, but with new meanings attached to them. Our new form is capable of dealing with change, loss and failure in a new, and different way than how we responded before. We can only do that if we are in a state of FACES. 

Integration of all the dimensions of our existence is what a healthy mind is. The ability to adapt and move forward after, and in response to change is the work of an integrated mind. Of course, even with this integration, we feel pain, grief, stress, anger, worry and all the other negative emotions that are a part of life. But we don't get stuck there with them.

And that is the goal of healing. For us to be able to flow like a river that calmly navigates it's rocky bed, caresses boulders near it's banks, and curls around bends along it's way.

Wishing you integration this week and beyond!

With love,

Sunita

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