Something about heartbreak totally changes a person. Repeated heartbreak. Changes your life. I’m not sure I can put words to it yet, but I know it happens. Depression. Sadness. Loss. Grief. Pain. It consumes your thoughts, your mind, your time. What hurts the most? Abandonment? Abuse? Neglect? Betrayal? Dishonesty? Physical pain? Sexual trauma? Aloneness? I … [Read more...]
Being Hated, Feeling Hated, Overcoming Self-Hatred
Practically every dissociative trauma survivor that I have spoken to has said to me that at some point in time or another, they have felt hated, truly hated. What's worse, they didn't feel hated by strangers -- they felt hated by their loved ones. These trauma survivors felt hated by their mothers, their fathers, their siblings, their spouses, their children, their friends. They felt hatred from the … [Read more...]
Cats and Dogs and Trauma Survivors
Pets are very important to trauma survivors for a variety of reasons: A place to express love, affection, and tenderness Many abuse survivors have difficulties with attachment issues due their extensive histories of trauma, abuse, and neglect. Because people were the perpetrators, trauma survivors frequently find it difficult and complicated to express caring and affection to other people. And yet, … [Read more...]
20 Signs of Unresolved Trauma
Many people enter the therapy process with minimal awareness of their trauma history. When the trauma survivors are dissociative, they have the ability to block out an awareness of their trauma. They may know that their family had problems, or that their family was dysfunctional, etc, but they may believe they were never abused. However, blocking out conscious awareness of trauma does not mean … [Read more...]
12 Tips for Reducing Shame
Need some tips for reducing shame? One of the hardest areas of healing work in trauma disorders is dealing with shame. For many survivors of sexual abuse, healing work involves learning about a lot of intense memories that leave them feeling a great deal of shame, humiliation, and embarrassment. These are difficult emotions to process, and the memory material is typically very overwhelming. Some survivors … [Read more...]