How to Work Through Trauma | CPTSD and Trauma Healing Coach

Hey! What's up friends. I hope that you're doing well wherever you are in the world. As usual, I just wanna take a moment and say, thank you so much for following me. Thank you so much for listening to the Michael Unbroken Podcast. And of course, for buying copies of Think Unbroken, it means the world to me, that so many people are taking the time to learn about childhood trauma, understanding mindset, growth, habits, change, and all the things that I'm constantly speaking about.

I believe firmly that we all do indeed have the ability to create the life that we want to have as long as we're willing to do the hard work. And so today I want to talk about in this episode of the podcast, something really important. And so, if you're watching, thank you as usual, I'll put this on YouTube, up on Instagram live, if you're listening, check me on an Instagram @MichaelUnbroken, same as on YouTube at MichaelUnbroken.

And I wanna talk to you about what it means to get yourself out of trauma. Now, I wanna be very clear when we start this conversation that this isn't about forgetting or leaving it behind or pretending it didn't happen. There's so many people who look at trauma as this thing of oh yeah, it happens, so I'm gonna pretend it doesn't impact me. I'm gonna pretend that it doesn't matter. However, how do you get through trauma? How do you work through abuse? How do you get through your past? I'm not saying get over it. I wanna be very clear. I'm not saying okay, how do you get over your past? How do you forget about it? What I'm saying is how do you work through it? How, despite all the insanity that may have happened, all the chaos, all the years of being stuck in the vortex, do you get to a place where you're good and that's what I want to talk to you about.

Recently, somebody asked me a really important question. And they're like, how do you feel about the difference between getting over trauma and working through it? And I don't think that getting over trauma air quotes there, if you're not watching, I don't believe that getting over trauma is really something that happen. And this is my own experience and your experience may be different. And what I mean by that is getting over it is kind of just thinking about nonchalant like, ah, it doesn't bother me, it doesn't impact me, it's not a part of my daily life. And this is my experience is this, I believe that we are the sum total of all the experiences that we've had leading up till this very moment.

And if we take that into consideration, what that leaves us with is this understanding that we are the complete person right now in this moment, based on everything that's happened to us leading up until now. So, every good thing, every bad thing, every in between every kiss, hug, tear, punch, all the things right equal right now. And we can't change that. We cannot go in the past and erase what happens. We don't have time machines, cuz if we did, I assure you I'd be using them. I would not be having this conversation with you right now, but we don't. And so, because of that, we have to think about what that means in regard to the direct impact on our life.

For many people, trauma gets stuffed down. This was my experience and probably yours too, where suddenly the things that happened to you in the past, the traumatic experiences, whether it's abuse or bad relationships or a car wreck, multitude of traumas can get pushed down and then begin to manifest. Right. And those manifestations can be in a litany of ways, you could find yourself acting out in certain ways, falling back into old past behaviors, hurting yourself, hurting other people. Maybe it's drinking, maybe it's food, maybe it's sex, maybe it's gambling. There's a litany of vices, right? It could be anything.

And the question that you have to ask yourself around those is do they serve you? Are the things that are happening in your life adding value to it? And for a lot of us, the answer is no, when it comes to those negative behaviors. Yes, even working out too much can be a really bad thing. Right. I think that a lot of people recognize that, especially now, as we move into these better understandings of not only our own mindset, but our bodies and our health and what's important and how to kind of navigate the world.

And so, you come back to this concept and this idea of if I'm stuffing all of my trauma down and it's manifesting in these negative, but I've been going to therapy and I've been doing the work and I write and I journal, I do all those things, why can't I get over it? And I think this is where the conversation's gonna get difficult. I don't think you do get over it. I think that you move through it. I think that one day you wake up and you assess the situation and you go, man, that bad shit happened to me. And on the backside of that, you go, but it doesn't get to impact my life anymore. From this moment forward, I get to go forward. And so much of that is based in the foundation of self-love and growth and compassion and getting this place where you are okay with who you are.

One of the greatest things that will happen in this journey is one morning, you will wake up, you will put your feet on the ground and you will go, I love. And it will become much easier for you to start navigating the other parts of your life that then needs your attention, work, relationships, friendships, family, all of those different things. And for me, I think about it like this, if I had the option to forget everything that happened to me, but I still have the ramifications of the physical pain, the mental pain, the anguish, the bad behaviors, I wouldn't do it. and what I mean by this place where you get, and you put your feet on the ground and you love yourself is that's about self-understanding, that's about compassion, that's about learning, about the impact that trauma has had on you. And for each of us, it's going to be different. And when you reflect on your trauma and you reflect on your experience, it's easy to want to shut it down and go. I don't want to deal with this. I don't want this to be a part of me. I don't want to ever associate the bad shit that happened to me in the past with what my life is like right now. Even if I have some really bad behaviors and practices in place.

And my friend, I gotta tell you this, and it's not easy. But sometimes the path through is by knocking on the door and saying, you know what?

This bad stuff happened to me. These things that shouldn't have happened to me did. The people who were supposed to protect me didn't and because of that, I'm hurt. But that hurt does not have to be the catalyst for everything that happens in your life moving forward, that hurt can be a fuel. It can be a tool. It can be a resource, right?

I often am ask am asked about anger and how you use anger in your life. And in America and most Western countries and really a lot of places in the world, we are taught to stuff down those emotion. It's no different than pushing down trauma, we put down our emotions and we don't acknowledge them.

My friend, I'm gonna tell you right now, it is okay to be angry. In fact, you should be angry. I'm angry all the time. And in milliseconds, I recognize it. And I go, you know, yeah, I'm angry. How does that serve me right now? What is my anger bring into my life? Most people want to move through their trauma so they don't have to deal with the emotions attached to it. And I would ask you this question, what would happen if you dove? If you dove into it a little bit deeper? What would happen if you actually sat with your trauma for a moment, your experiences, your anger, your feelings, your emotions, and let them exist? Instead of pushing them down instead of fighting them, you let them in a moment exist and bring to you what they will and decide what you do with them after.

For me, anger has become this really interesting catalyst where it is the byproduct of two things. One, the experiences that happened to me, and then the experiences that I did to myself, where I brought into my own life. And I look at that anger as fuel and motivation in two ways, one, it makes me feel relentless in my goal, which is to help change the world, to give people guidance and tools and understanding, and habits and mindset and think unbroken, all the things that I do. And honestly, the more important part is taking care of me first, right? It's the oxygen mask mentality. I've talked about that a million times, put your oxygen mask on before you put on your neighbors. And so, as you're in this, and you're filling these emotions that trauma, these experiences are popping up, that you feel rage or anger or hate or resentment or sadness, or maybe even its other experiences and other emotions and you feel happiness and joy and all of those great feelings, things lean into 'em a little bit, don't push 'em down. Don't run from, 'em.

When you decide, and this is where people get upset because they don't recognize that there is an ability for you to make a choice here. When people decide that they do not want to have their trauma, their past experiences leverage and be the catalyst for what happens in their life, they start to take control.

If you wanna work through trauma, you have to first make a decision and a declaration that you're going to not allow it to be the thing that controls everything that happens in your life. Every day, I get messages from people who don't yet understand this concept and I get it ‘cause I didn't understand it either. I didn't understand it for a very long time. And I constantly pondered the question. Why do I behave this way? Why do I do these things? Why do I let other people hurt me? Why can't I let the walls down? Why, why, why, why, why? And what I discovered in asking these questions was I had not yet gotten to the place where I was willing to accept the fact that bad things had happened to me and because those bad things happened to me, I needed to do a lot of work. I needed to work through them. And with that acceptance comes a sense of freedom, right? And some people find that sense of freedom through, you know, accepting other people's apologies and forgiveness and others do working on themselves and learning and growing and whatever that acceptance is, it all boils down to one thing. In order for you to work through trauma, you have got to understand that it is not your fault first and foremost, the bad things that happened to you, they're not your fault. You are not culpable for things that happened to you as a child. If you had a narcissistic parent, a bipolar parent, a drug addict, alcoholic parent, an abusive parent, a mentally, or emotionally abusive parent like that is not your fault as a child. And you've got to find the way to let that go, that concept, that thing that feeds in you, that's being stuck in the vortex. That's this place where all of the world is against you and it takes time. Because look, I'm gonna tell you right now, I had these moments in my life where I go, why was I born? I don't want to be here. Why do I deserve this? No one deserves to go through abusive situations, but that's not how the world works. If it were, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now and you certainly wouldn't be listening to it. Right. So, what does it mean to acknowledge. I don't think it means making yourself become culpable for those situations. So, any idea of guilt or shame you have to start thinking about how do I remove this from my life? How do I say yes, these bad things happen to me, but no, I'm not responsible. And then what you have to do after that, after you say, I am not responsible for the things that happen to me, I then have to declare, but I am responsible for what happens to me next and that's healing and that's this journey and that's health and learning and educating yourself about your brain, your body trauma, PTSD, CPTSD, all of these things you have to start to learn about because one system may not work for you. Right. I may say something and it kind of falls on deaf ears, but another one may come to pass and you go, oh, this is perfect, this is exactly what I need. And that comes through education that comes through learning and through you saying it is my self-responsibility to take care of myself, despite those bad things that happen to me, because I cannot use those as an excuse. And because I have decided to make this declaration of self-responsibility, I will do whatever it takes to get to a place where one day I wake up and I put my feet on the ground and I go, okay, I love myself. I'm willing and able to live this life. I am ready. I am honoring myself with going down this path that I choose to go down, not the one that was laid down before me, by those who hurt me or those who have expectation of me.

And it is in that declaration that you're gonna find your strength and your power and that's how you start to work through it, to get over it, to smush it down, to say it didn't happen that mentality of, oh, that was 20 years ago. You have to let that go and you have to let that go because that is like handcuffs, keeping you stuck, right? When you release that you become free. And again, it will take time. And once you start to taste this freedom, you have to then leverage your ability to grow, to change and to heal because it's on you, right? Here's the really harsh truth about this shit. Nothing that may have happened in the past was your fault, but everything from this moment forward is on you. You have to make a decision; you have to make a choice about what it is that you are willing to do to have the life that you want. What does it mean? What does getting healthy mean to you? It's subjective. There's no right or wrong. It could be about self-care, self-talk, about meditation, yoga, fitness, food, sex, drugs, alcohol, it could be anything. Healthy should be whatever it is that you feel like it needs to be defined us. And so healthy for you is waking up and saying, you know what, I'm gonna take on the day. I'm gonna work through this. I'm going to find a way, no matter what, then that's how you win. Right. This mindset about what was me, that's gonna keep you stuck. And it's not that it's not understandable. I get it. Like, fuck man like the shit we have to go through to have this conversation is insane. And I'm sorry that we have to have it, I wish that we didn't but the reality is that we do cuz that is the world that we live in. But that mentality has got you to where you are stuck against this brick wall and how do you move through it? Not by getting over it, but by going through it right through and saying, you know what, I'm gonna crash this wall down. I'm gonna step through the other side and I'm going to be a different person. And that takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of effort and it takes a lot of patience. A word that I don't think people think about enough patience while it is a virtue, this is true is the most important tool in your arsenal of moving through this because it's going to take time. It may be years before you ever get to a place where you feel like all the things that you do work. It's taken me a decade. It's taken me a decade to get to a place where I feel good about myself when I wake up in the morning and I still have those moments where I recognize I have to keep doing the work, I have to journal, I have to meditate, I have to eat well, I have to stay away from alcohol. Right. And those are about me, it is self-care and I've said it before there's nothing selfish and self-care.

So, I want you to think about a few different things as we kind of trail off here.

One, what does it mean to be healthy? And that's something that you get to choose.

Two, what kind of game plan can you implement? We all need a direction. What is it that you feel like will work for you that you are willing to do that becomes your game plan.

Three, patient. You have to be patient with yourself through this. It's not gonna happen overnight. I wish it was. If I had the golden pill to sell you right now, I would give it to you for a dollar and your life would be different, but it's not how life works.

Four, and probably the most important thing is to recognize that this process is about tapping into yourself, tapping into your power, tapping into your ability and self-belief which will take time to build, because we have spent so much time not believing in ourselves.

So as usual, my friend, thank you so much for spending time with me today, listening to the Michael Unbroken Podcast. And if you're watching this on YouTube, thank you so much. You can check out my book, Think Unbroken at thinkunbrokenpodcast.com. Check out the podcast. If you don't subscribe, please do please follow me on Instagram @MichaelUnbroken.

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And Until Next Time.

My friend, Be Unbroken.

I'll see you.