Trauma can be severe and incapacitating. We can find it painful and its effects debilitating. It can be totally destabilizing, knocking us off our center and causing us to feel disconnected from ourselves. When we feel destabilized, we can feel lost, misguided and utterly alone. We feel like we don’t know where to turn or who to turn to. We can feel like no one understands us or our pain. Our symptomatic responses often reflect that instability.
When we’ve been traumatized, we can struggle with intense depression, anxiety, panic attacks and other mental health issues. We can struggle with racing, terrifying thoughts and even feel like we’re losing our minds, going crazy, or having a nervous breakdown. We can experience nightmares, flashbacks, visions, and other visceral reminders of our trauma. We can feel particularly vulnerable, sensitive, and susceptible to further trauma. We can feel like our thoughts and feelings are all over the place. We don’t feel as if we’re in control of them, ourselves or our lives. We can feel victimized by our trauma, by our life circumstances, and by the pain we continue to feel.
When we’re destabilized, we struggle to feel grounded, centered and aligned. We no longer feel connected to our inner selves, our intuition, or our faith. We lose faith in ourselves and in our ability to recover. We lose hope. We can also feel disconnected from the people in our lives. We isolate ourselves and distance ourselves from other people, especially those people that remind us of our trauma or that continue to bring it up, concerned that we’re not getting the help we need.
Trauma can also cause us to feel disconnected from our higher power. Where we might have been found solace in our connection with our higher power, now we question why it allowed us to experience such devastation. We wonder if we’re to blame, if we’re now unforgivable. We wonder if our higher power is punishing us, denying us of forgiveness and compassion. When we lose our connectedness to our higher power, we can feel even more isolated, lost and alone.
When our instability continues uninterrupted, we can develop extremely toxic thought patterns as well as disordered thinking, obsessions, compulsions and delusions. We can lose touch with reality. Our trauma can permeate everything in our lives, causing us to become paranoid, panic-stricken, or overly defensive. We might lash out at other people or harm ourselves. We might even blame ourselves. We often will turn to our addictions for comfort, distraction and escapism.
Healing from our trauma involves learning more about it, including the many ways we can be painfully destabilized by it.
The caring, compassionate staff of The Guest House is here to support you as you start your journey to recovery and healing. Call 855-483-7800 today for more information.