Self-Love: The Badass Edition

Ch-1 journey to self healing.

"The healing process begins with understanding that trauma is not just the event itself, but the response to it as well. Your pain and self-criticism after a painful relationship are just as much a part of your trauma as the relationship itself. To truly heal, you must come to terms with yourself and face your pain head-on, instead of suppressing your feelings or running away from them. Healing is not about perfection, but about progress and facing discomfort to grow.  Also, a lot of times we think we've completely healed and then one day we're doing great and then the next something happens, we feel like we're back to square one, but that doesn't mean we're doing anything wrong. It takes time, perseverance, and patience to heal. "Embracing the ups and downs of the healing process is essential, as they all contribute to your growth and resilience. Every challenge you face in this journey will teach you something valuable, just as the positive moments will strengthen your resolve. Good things take time, and that's what makes the journey of healing truly worthwhile."

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"I believe in a different approach to dealing with trauma and grief, based on my own personal experiences. The stages I've come up with include not to avoid trauma and blaming oneself for what happened. However,

Step 1- it's important to acknowledge that you are not completely okay and that you have to learn about your trauma and its effects. For instance, after leaving an abusive relationship, I had to become aware of the impact the abuser had on my mental and emotional well-being. Researching about narcissism helped me to understand the effects it can have on a person, including brain damage. Once I fully understood what was happening to me, I finally came to terms with it."

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Step 2- Now, moving on, this is super simple, this is about acknowledging harm over health. This is where you need to start to hold yourself accountable in all of the areas where you self sabotage. This is about having poor boundaries, not being forward with your needs, reaching out to people from the past, being too nice, putting other people first, still having people pleasing tendencies , suppressing your emotions, living in low vibrations around a low vibrating environment, not standing up when it comes to yourself, and  lastly having a victim mindset. So let's say that you have parental issues, like mother or father issues, so your help over harm is to reparentimg yourself, rather than retraumautising yourself and holding grudges and then projecting onto other people, blaming and not focusing on what you can actually control.

“Step no 3. Embrace the suffering. You're not a robot, love. Why are you beating yourself up for crying? You're telling yourself you're too sensitive. I feel like there's this misconception that to be emotionally strong, you can't be affected by others, but that is so far from the truth. I believe in detachment but I also believe that negative emotions are part of the human experience. You are a vulnerable, caring and loving person, who loves and lost and that takes a lot of courage. All these emotions are a part of you, it's what keeps us going. So don't suppress your emotions, and get through it and over at once.

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Step no. 4 sometimes closure is needed.

This is not for everyone and this is NOT an excuse to go back to your ex. However, if you've been suffering with something for years and you cannot get your head around it and so you really feel like you need that last conversation, sometimes it helps. I had an emotionally absent father all throughout my life and it wasn't until last year i decided to talk more openly to him, just to finally have those conversations face to face and I went through my entire teenage years with this father wound affecting me every single day. Since last year having a couple of conversations and then finally cutting him off for good, the situation doesn't bother me at all. I feel like that one step finally healed me, same with traumatic relationships in the past. Sometimes you just need to be out with people so so you don't spend most of your life wondering ”what if?”

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Step. No. 5. Take responsibility for your life. You have to stop thinking that “ this is the way I am because this happened to me.” or “I react like this because this was how my childhood was. ”

When you say phrases like these you're giving your past all of the power to run the rest of your life. So now you have to start with shifting your speech and thought patterns. So instead you'll say, “oh well,I reacted like that because I was triggered from an event that I'm still working through.” that way you're making it a habit to remember this is only temporarily and you won't be this way forever. It's a constant reminder to yourself that you WILL heal and it's a process you're going to get to the end of .

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Step. No. 6. Let go of your expectations and shift your focus. I've dealt with family trauma and it took me years to get over and stop hurting about it on a daily basis. And the uncomfortable truth is that we have the power to change our stories no matter what happens to us.

The narratives we tell ourselves can limit us and keep us stuck in our past. So you need to hold yourself accountable for the stories you continue to tell yourself about different situations. I blamed my parents so much throughout my life and I felt so unlovable but then i shifted my mindset that i have to stop expecting treatment from people who were not capable of giving that to me. And so I realised I can create my own safety. I can give myself love and affection. I am strong and independent and I can create a beautifull fulfilling life for myself. My worth and the beauty of my life is not dependent over how this one or two people treat me.

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Step. No. 7. Release the memory. Do a thought dump, record yourself on-camera and speak about it for as long as you want to. Journal it and scribble it all out, rip the pages, write down swear words, whatever, it's gonna do to make sure that you've gotten all of that emotions out of your body. This is so that you're no longer harbouring any of that resentment or negative energy. This is a really important practice of emotional and physical release because you're putting your words onto paper, you're releasing all of  your thoughts from your brain and all of the emotions out of your body as you're writing it down.

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Step.no.8. Rewire your nervous system. It plays a very large role in your stress response to your trauma. After a traumatic event,your nervous system picks up more cue than ever in response to your environment around, which is why you start to feel triggered by normal everyday things. You start to feel more stressed  and you start to see more danger in everything around you and you become more hyper vigilant. It can cause many physical and mental issues so a few ways to kinda rewire your nervous system and calm down the stress response, for example you can do it by practicing meditation, which is a very big one in order to heal from your trauma or start the process of doing so, you have to disconnect from your ego and from the thoughts in your brain. This links into that narrative that we constantly tell ourselves which just keeps re victimising us and makes sure that we live in our trauma for a longer period of time.

Breathing, sitting still, doing yoga , eating,even just taking a cold shower grounds you and calms the stress response in your body. Cold exposure, exercise and taking deep breaths are the best ways to fix your nerves and begin the process of emotional regulation.

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And lastly, step no,9. You must accept the event. It's a simple saying to yourself

“That I went through x,y,z event and that this person took advantage of me”

A lot of the times we can't heal from our trauma is because we are not accepting it, and so the negative energy doesn't leave our body. ”