I don’t know what life event happened to bring you here, but if you’re reading this, likely you’ve been through something traumatizing - be it an illness, injury, abuse, something else horrible. Recognize that what you’re been through was traumatic and it will take time for you to heal. Everyone says this, but until you go through something traumatic you won’t fully understand or appreciate how long it takes to really be ‘over it’. And that’s okay. The important thing is to love and be kind to yourself during this process.
One thing I want to say right up front, and not everyone will love hearing this, but it can be very helpful to recognize that you may never ‘go back to how you were’ before this happened to you. And that’s okay. If you were meant to still be that person, you would be. Life changes us. It always changes us. Everything, good or bad, changes us in some way. So your focus shouldn’t be ‘to get back’ to who you were then but to discover who you are now.
I always use Doctor Who as the analogy in these cases. If you’re not a Whovian (what up, Tardis onesie!!) than you should be. Watch it. Just trust me. Because it has such great examples of how best to recover from anything. When the Doctor regenerates and we get a new Doctor, those are my favourite episodes because he has to go through the process of ‘discovering’ who he is now. He doesn’t hold onto the ‘old Doctor’, but rather throws himself into figuring out who he wants to be now. What does this new Doctor like to eat? What outfit best fits his new personality? What expressions? How does he want to interact with those around him? When you can change your perspective and embrace who you are now, you get to go through the amazing process of discovering yourself. It’s so beneficial that I love to do it every few months now instead of having to wait for an accident or injury to use as an excuse. Why deny myself the ability to constantly change and update based on my current life experiences? Everything changes us. As it should. So once you can let go of some arbitrary line in the sand of who you used to be, you can get on to the much funner task of figuring out who you are.
So how do you go about that?
First, let’s assume you’re recovering from an illness or injury and talk about nutrition to help speed recovery. Here’s a great overview for what to eat or supplement for optimal recovery. It also gives you a great rundown of the recovery process and what to expect.
Second, you want to make sure you’re spending as much time in your parasympathetic response as possible, as tissue healing only occurs in this phase, which is why you tend to sleep more when recovering. So how can you purposely click into your parasympathetic response if you don’t have time to sleep all day? Here’s a great list of ways to life hack your sympathetic/parasympathetic balance.
Okay, now on to the focus of this article - how to go about discovering who you are now, post injury. There’s a great Wiki How To on it. Mostly what I tell patients is the following:
1. Create ‘Ten Things’ lists. As in, ‘Ten Things That Make Me The Happiest Ever’, ‘The Top Ten Foods I love the Most’, ‘Ten Activities That Cheer Me Up’, etc. Then actually do those things. For real.
Why this helps - Maybe I don’t actually like bowling anymore. Maybe those puppy pictures just aren’t cutting it. I might think I know who I am, but maybe those things just aren’t actually true anymore. Doing the ten things helps me to narrow down the three things I actually LOVE, and helps me remember how to actually go through the process of trying stuff out. This testing and validating of your beliefs helps you to learn HOW to test and validate your beliefs. Maybe you find out that you don’t actually enjoy half the things you thought you did, which allows you to clear out and free up time for the things you actually do love. A lot of times we don’t realize we’ve stopped making time for things in our lives that make us happy because we didn’t realize those things actually weren’t making us happy anymore. We did them out of obligation, or habit, but not because we loved them. And once you realize that, you can figure out how to make sure you only do the things you love the most from that point forward.
2. Do the things that make you happy. So now that you hopefully have your real lists of what you love the most, do some of those things every day.
Why this is important - A lot of the time we don’t do this. We know what would make us happy, but we don’t give it to ourselves. Once you realize you’re the only person stopping you from enjoying life, it leads to some great questions of why not. But, the important thing is that you choose to start. Start by doing one thing every day that makes you happy and build up from there if you must, but start giving that kind of love and joy to yourself. If you find yourself struggling with that, then I’ve got some great therapists I can refer you to to help you figure out all of the reasons why not. But maybe the answer is that you weren’t being very honest with yourself about your lists to begin with. Maybe what you really love is staying home by the fire and reading a good book but you feel like you should love being out with friends. Remember that what you love is a very personal thing. No one can tell you this. And if being home makes you happy, there is nothing wrong with that. Just ask yourself whether or not you actually love it, or are you avoiding social situations out of some other complex emotion? This leads to:
3. Give yourself the freedom to be who you are now. Let go of all the old attachments to who you think you should be and embrace who you are now. Does that mean you’re going to have to change friends? Maybe. Does it mean some awkward conversations with family about why you no longer want to do x, y, z even if it’s tradition? Yup. But at the end of the day, your happiness is worth a few awkward moments.
Why this is important - A lot of times we blame other things for why we’re unhappy, but really, the truth is that we choose not to do the things that would make us happy. The more you start doing the things that make you happy, the more you’ll notice when you're choosing not to. The people who love us just want us to be happy as well. The more you stand up for yourself and do the things that make you happiest, the more you’ll realize that it really has just been you holding yourself back all along.
Now, I recognize that that sounds blamey. In zero way do I mean it that way. Let me explain further.
Your brain is going through a process. This process means that it has currently labeled just about everything as a potential threat. And that’s okay. It’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing right now. It’s like inflammation after you twist your ankle. It just has to run its course. And the same way there are things you can do to help your ankle heal, there are things you can do to help your brain heal. This is where I say making an appointment with a councilor or therapist who specializes in trauma recovery would be extremely beneficial in this process. But so too is seeing someone who understands how to retrain and rehabilitate your nervous system, as there are genuine physiological changes that take place throughout your nervous system at this time. The same way you need to retrain the proprioception in your sprained ankle, retraining your nervous system to respond properly after trauma can help speed up the process.
My point with number 3 is that often times during this ‘inflammation like phase’, there are behavioural changes that correspond with it. The same way that you limp with your swollen ankle. It’s just that the effector neurons for your brain, in this case are, well, your mood and thought processes… So we can utilize these systems to help retrain the dysfunctional pathways. One of the ways we can do that is to notice the changed behaviours, recognize that they don’t correspond with the circumstances and then actively change them. In this case, notice when you are choosing the behaviours that make you unhappy, realize that you have the power to make the choice that makes you happy, and then make that choice. And repeat until that part of your brain relaxes and remembers that nothing bad will actually happen to you should you choose the happy thing. Keep doing it until choosing the happy thing becomes your default pathway and then move on to the next thing to retrain. Does that make sense? I feel like I got lost in Science Land here…
Let’s get back on track.
Life is full of traumatic events, but that doesn’t mean it has to wreck your enjoyment of being alive. Sometimes those events can set the stage to clear out a lot of things that weren’t really fitting you anymore anyway. So focus on what you CAN do now, and find the things that make you happy now. Start there. Rebuilding your life is like rebuilding a house - one brick at a time.