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Traumatic experiences can come in many different forms, impacting lives in every way imaginable. Even when multiple people experience the same event, every person will have a different response, which creates unique impacts in their lives. This is why it’s important for trauma treatment to be individualized. The Guest House will tailor treatment to help you be successful in your recovery. Part of your treatment will be uncovering the feelings about your trauma that you have buried down for so long. Although it won’t be easy, we are here to help. Recovering from trauma is attainable if you are ready to take the first step toward your new life.

Bringing Your Feelings to the Surface

Imagine yourself on the beach. You use a shovel to dig a hole in the sand as far down as you can go. Your goal is to dump your trauma and all accompanying feelings in the hole and then cover them in the sand. You might do a pretty good job of this. A stranger may walk by and not even realize that something is buried there. You might even trick yourself into forgetting that you buried anything there because you did such a good job of covering up the trauma and feelings. Nothing stays buried forever, though. The wind will blow the sand away and the waves will crash onto the shore and uncover the once buried trauma. This process can be extremely triggering if you are caught off guard. The Guest House doesn’t want to catch you off guard. We want to help you prepare for treatment and recovery. We don’t want the wind and water to find the trauma and cause you further pain. You have to make the choice to uncover it and walk into it so that you can process what happened to you and how it is impacting you. We can help you slowly bring your feelings to the surface and walk through on your own terms. Walk with The Guest House into recovery.

Healing Emotional Wounds

Healing emotional wounds takes time. It’s an intense and exhausting process to work through trauma, but it is such a rewarding experience to come out on the other side a much stronger person. The first step is to recognize and accept your feelings. Processing emotional wounds means uncovering all that you have been fighting to keep down. To heal, you must truly feel and walk through the pain, instead of just masking it with self-defeating behaviors like substance use or self-harm. As you work through your experiences, think about the following question: How has my life and vision of myself been changed as a result of what has happened to me?

Unravelling your answer to this question is a life-long journey. Each time you uncover a piece of yourself, you feel empowered and full of freedom, peace, and hope. These wounds you carry will slowly begin to heal over time as you allow yourself to let go of the belief that you have to fight your feelings. By working in your recovery, you’re allowing yourself to shed the feelings of pain and thrive in life after trauma. You have the power to heal your emotional wounds and find your place in this world.

Moving Forward With Healthy Coping Skills

Once you give yourself permission to feel those intense emotions, instead of fighting them, you must develop healthy coping skills that will replace the unhealthy, self-defeating coping skills that you currently possess. 

A helpful method to consider is often practiced in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). In this type of therapy, you will consider how your thoughts impact your behaviors. By changing your thought patterns, you’ll be able to take steps to change your behaviors and help you cope with your feelings. For many people who have dealt with trauma, they have adopted some cognitive distortions which create problems in their life. The list below includes some of the most common cognitive distortions:

  • All or nothing thinking: This cognitive distortion is when you see things in black or white, without any gray. For example, you may think that if you don’t do something absolutely perfect, you have failed.
  • Disqualifying the positive: This cognitive distortion is when you make an excuse for why the good things you have done don’t matter or are a fluke.
  • Emotional reasoning: This cognitive distortion is when you assume that because you are feeling one thing, it must be true.
  • Jumping to conclusions: This cognitive distortion is when you assume that you know what others are thinking or that you can predict what is going to happen in a certain situation.
  • Magnification and minimization: This cognitive distortion is when you blow small things out of proportion or significantly shrink large things so that they appear less important.
  • Mental filtering: This cognitive distortion is when you filter out the information you don’t want and ignore it so that the only information you do receive is what you want to hear.
  • Personalization: This cognitive distortion is when you take responsibility for everything happening around you.

By understanding how you may be using these cognitive distortions in your own life, you’ll be able to recognize them in the moment. The sooner you’re able to realize that your thinking is distorted, the sooner you’ll be able to reframe your negative thoughts. You must ask yourself if there is any truth in the thoughts you are having and how they are impacting your behaviors. The more you practice reframing your thoughts, the better you’ll become at problem-solving to help you cope with difficult situations.

 

The Guest House is here to help you process the trauma you have experienced so that you don’t feel the need to bury it deep down inside of you. We can help you heal the wounds you have and work toward coping in healthier ways. Call us today at (855) 483-7800. We can’t wait to speak with you!