10 Unexpected Truths About Trauma Healing

In today's episode of the podcast, I'm actually going to talk to you about the 10 things that I didn't know were going to happen in my healing journey. And if you don't know me, I am Michael Unbroken. I'm an author, speaker, coach, and podcast host, obviously you're listening to this. And my mission and my goal is to help other childhood trauma survivors heal and become the hero of their own story.

And if you don't know my background, I'll hit it just briefly. Mother was a drug addict, alcoholic, stepfather, super abusive, spent most of my childhood homeless and deeply in poverty. In fact, 30 different families in four years, at 12, I started doing drugs, at 13, drinking, and by 15, I was kicked out of high school. I made almost a million dollars by the time I was 25. Legally, mind you but that just destroyed my life. And for the last 13 years, I've been on my own healing journey, learning to love myself, be the hero of my own story, and ultimately to be unbroken. And I'm here to share that with you.

These are The 10 things that I didn't know that I was going to learn that radically shifted not only just my life but the way that I see the world.

Number one, accountability. When I started this journey I had no idea that the very thing that was gonna set me free from all the chaos of my past was accountability. And accountability wasn't about other people. So let me be clear about that. This level of accountability was for myself. Looking at my choices, my decisions, and how I got to where I was. Now, I'll be honest with you, I spent a tremendous amount of time in victimhood mode, of blaming other people and making excuses for everything that happened in my life.

Now, I'll be clear, the bad things that happened to us, that's not on you. It's just not. But at some point, you have to take a look at your life and ask yourself, how did I get here? What role am I playing? And that's what accountability did for me. It actually taught me that there's some effort that I'm putting into my own demise. If you look at your life right now, you take a step back, ask yourself a question. How are my relationships with other people, with my intimate partner, with my family? How are the thoughts in my head about the way that I think about myself and my kind and my compassionate, my showing up. Ask yourself, are you taking care of your physical body? One of the things that we do if we've been through trauma is often we don't take care of our physical body. For me, this holds very true between smoking two packs a day, drinking myself to sleep, and being 350 pounds when I was 25. So let me be the first to tell you, I get it. When you ask yourself these questions, you start to get a really interesting dose of reality.

Most people, I'm not saying this is you, I'm just saying most people, they live in a reality that they are creating, not in the reality that is true. There's a very big difference in those two things. And once you get into this place where you're looking at your life through the scope of accountability, reality really starts to set in. And if you're like me, and I'm not saying this is you, but I'm saying if you were like me when I started this journey, you start to recognize the role that you play. The excuses that we have in our lives, 100 percent valid, I'll never take them away from anyone. But you must recognize that if you're leveraging excuses every day, and that if you are playing the victim, you cannot be the hero of your own story. Those are two competing ideas and they will clash and they will never be able to bring you whole and healthy and happy in the same way that you can have when you start taking responsibility and accountability for your life.

Number two is self love. I know that people talk about self love and the healing journey. I know that they talk about this idea that as you go down the path, you'll figure things out about yourself, you'll grow as an individual, so on and so forth. We know that, I know that, you know that. What I didn't understand is how true it would be. Learning to love myself is arguably one of the hardest things I've ever done. When I look back and I measure this journey, the self love game really caught me off guard. Because I went from this place in my life where I wasn't taking care of myself, I wasn't doing the things I needed to do, I wasn't living life in accordance with my wants, needs, interests, and values, and then suddenly what started to happen is I realized the little things were self love. What would happen? If I would wake up in the morning and just brush my teeth, not eat the chocolate cake for breakfast, not beat myself up when I made mistakes. A lot of you guys, you gotta hear me here, you're beating yourself up over nothing. You are destroying yourself for no purpose. And it's taking away from all of your potential, your happiness, your love, your joy, all the anchor points in your life that really can define a revolution internally that will change you forever. And when you can get into the place of self love, what's really beautiful, and again, this comes with a lot of acceptance, accountability, and other words we'll get into in a moment, but when you really step into self love, you'll find freedom, it's incredible. I'm gonna say that again, because I really need to hear this. When you truly find self love, you will be free. That freedom, however, requires a tremendous amount of discipline. Self love isn't just bubble baths. Self love isn't just, I'm taking the day off for mental health. Self love is actually doing the thing that you said you're going to do, because you said you're going to do it, and holding yourself to a higher standard. When you look at the journey for most people who have healed, and you understand the dynamic of their past, you look at their family over here. Mom, dad, grandmother, foster homes, care groups, however they were raised, you often find that they were let down time and time again, and they've learned, that it's okay. It's okay if you're let down, it's okay if you don't have the people show up who say they're gonna show up. It's okay if life isn't what you expected. And then over here you start to learn self love and you recognize raising the standard for yourself, learning to love yourself in a deeper capacity is actually what this is all about. And when you raise your standard you find out that doing what you said you were going to do, showing up, playing all out, and living life as the person you choose to be, like that Is the journey.

Number three is forgiveness. It's very difficult word for many people. When I was four years old, my mother cut off my right index finger. Talk about multiple surgeries, multiple skin grafts, I can't feel it, I'm missing half the nail and it is a scar that is a part of my life. I see it every day. And arguably probably the number one question that people ask me when I'm a guest on a podcast or a speaking event, or even when I'm coaching, they go did you forgive your mother? And the answer is yes. Did I forgive my stepfather? 6 foot 4, 220, who knows how much this guy weighed, beating up a 7 year old. Did I forgive him? Yes. My grandmother, super racist, weird, I know, I'm biracial, black and white, what am I doing with a racist grandma? It was America, Indiana, in the 80s, it is what it is, right? Did I forgive her? Yes. But most importantly, I've forgiven myself. And forgiveness takes this really beautiful turn in your life that leads you down a path of unbelievable happiness and joy. Not that's the goal, because you're not always going to be happy. Some days life just sucks. You know this, I know this, right? I'm not going to lie to you. But with forgiveness is freedom. And there are certain acts, the actual acts, that I don't know that I will ever forgive. But the people, I do. Why? Because I need it too, because I'm going to make mistakes, I'm going to mess up, I'm going to be out of my moral character, I am going to do things I wish I didn't do. And in that, I'm going to hope, I'm going to hope, that people will forgive me as well. And the old adage, as it goes, an eye for an eye makes the world blind or, attempting to hold a grudge against someone else is like giving them poison and expecting them to die when it's actually you. I know I just butchered that, but I can never remember that quote oddly enough. And yet I forgive myself, because it's fine. It doesn't actually matter in the scheme of things.

Number four is patience. Patience. patience, patience, patience. The ability to delay gratitude is one of the greatest tools that I have put in my tool belt as not only a healing professional, but someone on this journey, like the ability to be patient and delay gratification will change your life forever. I had no idea this was going to happen. If I go back and I look at my life and I assess my need for immediacy in everything. In relationships, in friendships, in family social dynamics, in work, in career, in all the things that I was trying to do when I was younger, I needed it now. It filled a gap, whatever the it was, and I have learned that with patience and that ability to delay gratification, the journey is much more sweet, because you take a little bit of expectation off of yourself.

And I think all of our expectations are far, far, far too high for ourselves not, let me be very clear. Not that you should not have standards. Hold yourself to a standard. You will only ever get that in which you allow yourself to have. And patience is about not having the expectation in this moment. It's can I do the work? Can I show up? Can I play the game? Can I invest? Can I take the time for this to play out? When I was younger, and I wasn't patient, I paid a lot of penalties for that. As an adult, now a healed man, I find that patience and the ability to delay gratification makes my friendships better, my intimate relationships better, my money better, my health better. It's about playing the long game, it's just like investing. And this isn't money advice, so please, if you want to know money advice, go listen to Ken Honda on Think Unbroken Podcast. It's amazing. He has a book called Happy Money. It changed my life forever. Highly recommend the Ken Honda Thinkin Broken Podcast.

So what happened is if you look at the way people invest, they're playing the 20 year, 25 year, 30 year, 40 year, 50 year game. And most people in their healing journey are playing the 15 minute game. You are not being patient enough. If it took you 20 years to go to therapy for the first time, if it took you 25 years, 30 year, 40 years, 45 years. To start working on this, it's going to take a minute. You need to be patient. You have got to recognize that you've got to delay that gratification, but here's what's going to happen.

Number five. Grace. Number five is grace. What does that mean? As you're on this journey, you're going to have to take it a little easy on yourself. Now, that doesn't mean you're not showing up for yourself. What do I'm going to extrapolate this idea a little bit more. I always ask myself every day, am I taking care of myself or am I taking it easy on myself? And these are two very different concepts. And so if I'm taking it easy on myself, sometimes that means I gotta hit the eject button on everything, and I've gotta stop.

And sometimes taking care of myself means I have to show up and do it anyway. Now you have to really assess, this really comes into the knowing, not lying to yourself, being honest, looking in the mirror and making a real assessment of where you are today. Because most people are like, Oh, I'm tired, life is hard, I need to go and drink a bottle of wine and get in the bathtub.

No, you don't. What you probably need to do is go get on the treadmill, work out, go and be community with your friends, volunteer, hang out with your family, read a book, do something productive, listen to the Think Unbroken podcast. Like whatever that thing is probably more important. And that is actually the taking care of yourself. And people fail to recognize that doing the thing that you need to do. That is it. But you're going to mess up. You're going to mess up. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to fall back. You're going to do the thing you said you were never going to do again. You're going to break people's hearts and have your heart broken. You're going to get mad at the world and things aren't going to go the way you expected them to go. And you have to have grace. And grace is just allotting the space. For life to life, I always teach my clients. If you come into our Monday programs, whether it's in the group programs or Men's Monday, which you guys can go to unbrokenmen.com to learn more about that. What I'm always teaching is this idea of, it's yeah, life is going to life, bad things are going to happen. You are probably going to do things outside of your character. And it's about regrouping, recouping, reassessing, re-engineering and showing up. And that only happens through grace, 'cause if you're beating yourself up, you will never progress. I'm telling you right now, if you're beating yourself up, you will never progress in this journey. So you need to take a step back and offer yourself a little bit of grace.

Number six is clarity. Clarity comes in this healing journey through recognizing what you want, through the path in front of you, through laying out a framework and a game plan. One of the reasons why I have found, and I've coached thousands of people over the years, one of the number one reasons that I have found that people do not have success in this healing journey, they don't have clarity. They have no idea what they want. They cannot sit down and articulate in a single sentence the life that they want to have. I want this that, maybe this, oh, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, you've got to get crystal clear about what you want. You have to know, you have to know it to the T. Where if you're like, I want this kind of car, I know the leather, I know the color of the leather, I know how many miles I want it to be, I want to know if I'm the first driver or not, I want to know where I'm picking it up, how much it costs, the cost of the insurance, I have so much clarity, I know without a shadow of a doubt exactly the thing that I'm seeking. Most people can't even order at a restaurant. Think about this, I'm going to challenge you. If you are the person that goes to the restaurant and you ask the waiter or waitress for their recommendation, you're actually setting yourself up for failure.

Here's why and I know people are like, this doesn't make sense. Just follow me for a second, because you are not in a position where you're making your own decisions. You are letting someone else interject into your life who has no idea who you are, what you like, your preferences, your desires your food sensitivities, like whatever, like I'm gluten free and if I eat shellfish, I'm going to die, right? Like I can't let a guy go get this shellfish etouffee. No, it's over, game over. Send me to the hospital, put my tombstone up, it's over, right? And they don't know that, because they don't know me. Trusting yourself is so much of this healing process, and when you get clarity, you can sit in that restaurant across from this person, and you go, I want this. And have conviction in it, this is what I want. Conviction and honestly, confidence comes through clarity. Because when you're able to extrapolate who it is that you are, and you have clarity on it, you're unstoppable. It's interesting, like, when you have a job, I assume if you're listening to this, you probably are gainfully employed, and if you're not, that's okay, we can help you, if you're, especially if you're a guy and you're trying to figure this out, message me, we got plenty of options that we can help you figure this process out. But here's the reality. Here's what I'll tell you. If you have ever had a job, ever, and even if you're not employed now, but if you've ever had a job in your entire life of any capacity, or if you went to school and you had a syllabus, or if anything that you've ever done required you understanding what was in front of you, then you know what it's like to move in a direction with clarity. You get a job, you go in, and they break down everything that you can expect. And you go, is this what I actually want, yes or no? You take the job, you go do the thing, that's clarity. You know exactly what's in front of you. However In most people's lives, they can't articulate what they want, and so they never get it. They don't talk about the relationship they want, they don't talk about the health they want, the money that they want, the travel they want, the hobbies they want, the self care that they want. They don't have it laid out in this way in which they can framework it, and they can look at their life and say, Oh, this is actually who I am and the direction that I choose to go. And so clarity for me came in this journey and helped me understand at depth who I am as a man. Who I am as a leader, who I am as a coach, who I am as a podcast host, who I am as an author, who I am as a speaker, who I am as a brother, as a friend, as a lover, all of these things came because I have massive clarity. I've actually even had people say to me, they're like, you are so different because you know everything that you want. Here's a trick that I learned from one of my mentors, it's life strategic planning. Where, multiple times a year, I sit down with a piece of paper, and I write down the life that I want to have. And I measure all the activities that I have that are moving me to or away from that life. But I can only do that by having clarity and sitting down and asking myself, what do I want? What do I want? What do I want healing to look like? What do I want my coach to look like? What do I want my therapist to look like? What do I want my interactions with other human beings to look like? Can I have clarity about my own expectations? And so as you go through this, you get the awareness and you lock that in, everything will be different.

Number seven, Acceptance. Okay, this is a tough one. This is a really tough one. Because acceptance means that you have to actually stare down the belly of the beast. Acceptance is looking at the worst things that have ever happened to you, acknowledging them, and saying this happened, and it's unfair, and it sucks, and you should not have had to had this experience. But with acceptance comes the ability to heal. This list is in any particular order, by the way, but if it were, acceptance would probably be number one. We can hide. We can run, we can drink, we can smoke, we can try to have all the sex in the world, make all the money, buy all the clothes. But until we accept, and until we stop hiding, we will never be free, we will never heal, we will never grow, we will never change and transform, we will never get paid for our pain, we will forever be a victim, we will never become the hero of our own story, and we will never become unbroken. Not until we accept it. And the hardest part about accepting it, is people tie acceptance to shame and guilt, and they blame their self. They say, I should have known better. It's bro, you were seven. Miss, you were twelve. It's not on you. And when you accept it, you can let go. Even though it's difficult, I promise you it'll be the hardest thing you do. Because at 25, 26 years old, when I had my moment, I looked in that mirror, it was acceptance that brought me to where I am today, without a question, unequivocally. People ask me constantly, they're like, what's the number one piece of advice you'd give somebody on their healing journey? And I'm like, accept the truth. The reality that we live in, the reality that you live in, not the fairy tale that you wish you did, and that's where healing exists.

Number eight empathy. Empathy is so important on this process. And in this journey, especially on the backside of acceptance, because empathy, especially for yourself will give you the ability to be human, to be empathetic is to be human, right? You hear the old adage to heiress to human. I agree, I agree, that's not incorrect. But to be empathetic is to be human, to your own suffering, to the suffering of others, to your own faults and mistakes, to the faults and mistakes of others, and to understand we don't know what nobody knows what they're doing. If you know what you're doing, if you woke up on the day of your birth and you came out and your mama's holding you and you got somebody who handed you a guidebook for life and they said this is the plan, will you please email it to me at Michael@thinkunbroken.com. Because I can stop making these videos. I can stop making this podcast. I can stop coaching people, but that's not true. Nobody got a guidebook. We are all figuring it out day by day. And did our parents do the best? Yes. Could they have done better? Yes. Did we do our best? Yes. Can we do better? Yes.

Absolutely. Yes is across the board. But now you're in this situation, in this position where you have to look at your life, you have to ask yourself a very simple question, and that question is, can I be empathetic to myself and to others? Because when you do it's incredible what starts to happen.

You humanize everything. You are a human living a human existence in a human world. And in the human world, humans are faulted. You are one of them, we are faulted, we are not perfect, don't pretend it. We are all a little bit screwed up. I am too. To be honest, I don't even know why people listen to me. I'm like crazy. I'm as crazy as you are for listening to me. But I'm empathetic to it, to my own mistakes, my own journey, my family, my friends, my community, my lover, whoever. It's how it goes.

Number nine is compassion. I was probably, arguably, the least compassionate person ever. I had to become a robot for survival. And you may have too.

I don't know. Most people, I'm not saying you, but most people who have traumatic experiences, they shut down emotionally, they become robots, they turn off, they choose, subconsciously, they choose, because it's a survival mechanism, and even consciously, because it's a choice, to shut down. To hold people to impossible standards, themselves included. To fight about everything that doesn't matter, and to really be, not even just a robot, but less than human. Because you have to be, because it's the way you made it out. It's how you stuffed your emotions down, how you hid, how you ran, how you broke down, and how when you rebuilt, because you weren't given the appropriate tools, instead of building a space of love and compassion with green grass and an oasis of healthiness. You built a 25 foot wall, 10 feet wide and 100 feet deep, and inside of it is just lava, and it's dark in there. And you think that's the thing keeping you safe, but it's not, and not until you have compassion for the experience that you're going through, will that lava turn into grass, turn into heaven, turn into peace. And I know it's hard to be compassionate, especially to people who hurt you, I get it. Why should I be compassionate? They hurt me, they took from me, they did imagine what happened to them I was sitting in my therapist's office one night and I was sharing a story with him and I was just like dude I just I don't know why my mom did all these horrible things and married this horrible man And my grandmother was a crazy person and all these things and he goes, have you ever just stopped and asked yourself, what was my mother's childhood like?

And when he did that, my life changed forever because I hadn't, I'd never contemplated that, maybe just maybe. Her childhood was horrible too, and her mother's, and her mother's, and his father. And that this problem wasn't just my family, but this was generations, and it was global, and it was a pandemic.

And it made me, it literally forced me, like almost in a moment, it made me be more compassionate, because I just realized man. I can't imagine what she went through, and I knew my grandmother, and I couldn't imagine what she went through, and I didn't know her parent, but it must have been pretty dark.

And I know it feels very difficult, because this was, and I was like, man, really? I've gotta, I've gotta be compassionate to these people? Are you kidding me right now? And I'm telling you I know as crazy as it sounds, and people see me, and they're like, man, this guy, he's so intense, and he's covered in tattoos, and blah, blah, blah, what does he know about compassion? And I'm like everything. It's what brought me here, it's what drives me to do this on hard days, because trust me, this isn't easy, and I'm not a millionaire, and this takes a lot of effort, and thank God I have an amazing team, and people who support the show. By the way, if you go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com, you can support as well. We have coaching programs. If you go to thinkunbroken.com, you can support, and I will support you in return. And so being compassionate allows me to show up every single day.

And finally, number 10, and I never would have guessed this was coming, is fearlessness. Number 10 is fearlessness. When you start healing, you recognize something if you're really paying attention. Like you look back here at the past and you really look at it, and you look over here at the future and you really look at it. One of the things that happens is you understand one unequivocal truth, that the worst thing that has ever happened to you has already happened and it allows you to sit fear to the side, to step into your journey, to choose to be the hero of your own story, and to do whatever it takes. Now of course there's moments of being scared, I'm scared all the time, it's a part of it. Is this going to work? Is this not going to work? Is that going to take off? Will it not take off? Am I going to lose a lot of money? Am I going to lose that relationship? It's a part of it. But fearlessness allows you to continue forward even in those moments because you choose to not be a victim to the unknown, but instead to take the reins, walk down the path and see what's on the other side.

And these ten things, while they seem like just words, when you start to assess your journey and you look at what is really happening in your life, will free you, they truly will. And they'll also be markers on the path, and you'll be able to ask yourself more and more every single day about how you got to where you were. And as you check off each one of these markers, you will recognize the growth of the journey. And so my hope for you, is that you take this information, and you look at your life, and you look at everything that you've been through leading to this moment, and just simply ask yourself, have you experienced these ten things? And if not, and if you haven't, what do you need to do to have the life that you want to have?

With that said, my friends, thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching if you're on YouTube. Remember, go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com for this and more episodes. Check out thinkunbroken.com to join our groups, including Men's Monday, which is a private men's group for coaching, healing, and growth.

And Until Next Time,

My Friends,

Be Unbroken.

I'll See Ya.