Few people feel empowered, strong, resilient, and capable when they come to recovery. Most often they feel broken, tattered, shattered, weak, shameful, guilty, and at a low point. Choosing to recover- be it from trauma, addictions, or mental health issues- is a great mark of strength. Even when your thoughts and feelings tell you the opposite, recovery is giving you strength.
You choose who and what you answer to: Empowerment statements tend to include sentiments about only answering to yourself and not having to answer to anyone else. Trauma, in many forms, is about loss of control. Coping with the effects of trauma can feel like you are answering to someone else or something else. That something else feels as though it is your authority and you are sentenced to obeying it. Recovery is liberating. Recovery is freeing. Recovery gives you the autonomy to answer to yourself. Many people take comfort in the idea of a higher power and building a relationship with that higher power. Rather than answer to themselves, they find a greater sense of peace in answering to a transcendent power instead. You do more for you: Answering to yourself or a higher power you have developed a relationship with means doing things that are in better interest for yourself. Trauma is demanding. Avoiding, fighting, sabotaging- these are exhausting behaviors done out of spite to ourselves for the sake of something, and oftentimes someone, else. Instead of answering to pain, you build hope for yourself. You participate in self-care, and you truly start to take care of yourself. You realize where peace comes from: “Inner peace” is an ironic designation. What would be its opposite, “outer peace” isn’t heard nearly as often. People aren’t encouraged, guided, and treated to find “outer peace”. They are taught to realize that striving for peace on the outside does not lead to peace on the inside. Peace, happiness, and serenity, come from the inside. Resolving trauma isn’t something that happens externally- time doesn’t go backward, resolutions aren’t always made, and the memories do not simply disappear. However, you gain something on the inside and you realize that is ultimately where your strength comes from: yourself.
Everyone has a story that starts before treatment. Treatment is an opportunity to change the story of your life. There is hope. There is help.
Call The Guest House Ocala today for information on our residential treatment programs for trauma, addictions, and related issues: 1-855-483-7800