Integrating Our Stories: From Pain to Healing
When I tell people that my therapy practice centers around trauma and grief, there is inevitably a story that longs to be shared. I want to hear people’s stories—they’re a core part of the person they’ve become.
In therapy, we talk about the ways a person’s stories have shaped them. I describe survival strategies like learning to ride a bike. The first time you try, your body learns what muscles to engage to stay upright. Eventually, it becomes something you don’t think about—your muscles engage and move from memory. You probably wouldn’t be able to aptly describe it.
It’s the same with surviving different experiences. You may fall at first, and then wobble as you get back up, but eventually, you stay upright. Your nervous system knows how to keep you alive by kicking into survival mode to get you through the worst of it.
Unlike riding a bicycle, which is great for strengthening your muscles and for your overall health, living in ‘survival mode’ long-term is not good for your health.
Time heals all wounds?
There is a myth when it comes to grief and trauma that ‘time heals all wounds.’
It doesn’t.
Time is a part of the healing process, but unless you ‘set the bones’, so to speak, your healing may leave you with an emotional limp in need of a crutch.
Healing does not understand time. And, our individual healing is as unique as the struggle we’ve experienced. It is not linear.
If you’ve learned how to do anything new, you know it takes practice before you become comfortable. Some days are better than others. It may take a few tries, or it may take years before it becomes something you can do without thinking of it.
Learning to move forward and heal from trauma is the same. There are many factors each and every day that contribute to how you cope, and how long it takes you to heal.
Driving with two feet
One of my old friends learned to use two feet when driving a car; one for the brake and one for the gas. You don’t want to be pushing on those two pedals at the same time, so he had to unlearn something that felt very natural to him. After many years of practice using one foot, the old two-foot way felt unnatural.
You can get used to anything with enough practice.
Skills to practice healing
These last few years have been extremely unsteady. There has been a lot to cope with in our external environments. I’m noticing that old wounds people thought they’d overcome are resurfacing.
When it comes to your healing journey, sometimes the first step is recognizing that there may be skills you need to practice to move forward.
Earlier this month, I did some additional training in a therapeutic strategy called Dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT), which was developed to help people learn to cope with difficult emotions. Marsha Linehan was the psychologist who originally developed it to help people living with borderline personality; however, it is now used as a core healing strategy.
There are four major skills one needs to learn as part of the healing journey, according to DBT:
Mindfulness – learning to stay present on whatever it is you’re doing in this moment without judgement of the thoughts/feelings coming up;
Distress tolerance – how to increase our ability to cope with the things in our lives that cause upset without turning to short-term pain relievers;
Interpersonal effectiveness – developing our relationships to be ones of strength and support; and
Emotional regulation – the ability to notice what is happening in the body and bring down the energy to a place more tolerable.
Although it is helpful to try and understand what is happening to cause us upset, DBT focuses more on the skills for putting those things into practice.
It’s the difference between reading a book on how to ride a bike and actually going outside and doing it.
How much time do you spend trying to figure out why you reacted—or over-reacted—in a situation and then find yourself casting judgment on your own actions? (I still find myself doing that from time to time.) Rather than cast judgment, it might be helpful to be reminded that maybe you need to practice your skills of emotional regulation and mindfulness since it’s easy to get distracted in a chaotic environment.
Luckily, our muscle memory kicks in easily once we have new ways of coping in our system. And, the more we practice new ways of coping, the less likely it is that old patterns will kick in. And the more likely it is that you’ll find healing from your trauma.
Of course, cultivating hope happens by believing that somehow, some way, you will make it through. In the aftermath, it is impossible to imagine ever moving through the heavy fog of grief and trauma. Hope can help us put one foot in front of the other when the world is spinning.
When you learn to cope and start to move forward from your trauma, it becomes a story that is a part of you. But it’s not your only story. It’s just a single chapter of many, how you survived and moved forward.
