The brain and body often have difficulty processing a traumatic event. The process can be painful, and it's tempting to find ways to bury feelings instead of working through them. Unfortunately, painful memories that are buried have a way of creeping back to the surface, sometimes exploding.
Moving on and healing from trauma is an essential part of living a fulfilling life. It can also be extremely challenging. Fortunately, there are some steps you can take toward recovery. Let's look at some healthy strategies for recovering from trauma.
Take Time for Yourself
Self-care is always important, but it's even more necessary when going through stressful or challenging situations. In fact, it's one of the first things you should focus on when going through something particularly hard.
Unfortunately, self-care is also often one of the first things to disappear when someone experiences trauma. It can be easy to dismiss your own wants and needs because they don't feel worth the effort or like something you deserve. This couldn't be further from the truth. Make sure you're making time for yourself to focus on your needs.
Practice Mindfulness
After experiencing a traumatic event, it's easy to find yourself living in the past. In fact, a lot of anxiety actually stems from worry about past or future events that haven't even occurred yet. Practicing mindfulness is a great way to stay grounded and help bring the body and mind back to the present moment in time.
Don't knock it until you try it! Here are just a few of the different ways you can practice mindfulness:
Deep breathing
Meditation
Yoga
Eat a Well-Balanced Diet
When you eat well, you feel well. Eating a healthy and well-balanced diet filled with proteins, healthy fats, and carbs can help ensure that your body and brain are functioning to the best of their abilities.
During times of stress, cravings for sweet treats or fast food are common. While most things are fine in moderation, it's important to be mindful of how you're fueling your body. Make sure you're giving it what it needs so that it can perform and make it through your day-to-day tasks and responsibilities.
Prioritize Your Sleep
Sleeping problems can occur after experiencing a traumatic event. A person may experience flashbacks, nightmares, or difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep throughout the night.
Sleep is essential for helping you recover after each day so that you can make it through the next one. Try aiming for at least eight hours of sleep each night. You can help yourself with this by creating and sticking to a routine where you try falling asleep at the same time each night and waking up around the same time each morning.
Avoid Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
It's important to learn more about healthy strategies for recovery, but it can be equally as important to recognize and avoid unhealthy strategies. Unhealthy coping mechanisms like alcohol, drugs, gambling, driving recklessly, or unsafe sex may seem like great ways to dismiss uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, but that's all they do.
These are only temporary solutions to a much larger issue. If you continue to cope in unhealthy ways, the impact of trauma can worsen over time. This ends up only delaying recovery.
Seek Professional Support
Recovering after a traumatic event isn't something that happens overnight. Even if the traumatic event took place within a few minutes, it takes a lot longer to process and release all of those feelings, thoughts, emotions, and memories. If you're still struggling to recover fully after a traumatic event, we're here to help. Reach out today to see how a trauma therapist can help you implement healthy strategies for recovery.