If you’ve faced incredible trauma in your life, it’s changed you. It has changed the course of your life, impacted your self-esteem, and maybe put you in a place of despair. Trauma can lead to mental illness, substance use, or both. But even when you’re feeling your worst and most helpless, help is available.
Healing from Your Trauma Is Up to You
The first important step of healing your trauma is to understand that what happened to you is not your fault. You didn’t do anything to deserve it. Any mistakes you made did not make it okay for someone to hurt you.
Once you understand that the traumatic experience was not your fault, you can take a deep breath and ask the next big question. “If the trauma isn’t my fault, am I really going to let it control my future?”
There’s no way around it: yes, trauma is awful and undeserved–but it’s still up to you to get help and to take charge of your healing.
If You Don’t Do Something, It’s Not Going to Get Better
Time doesn’t heal all trauma. It may help you forget, but it doesn’t take away the ways trauma changed you. Trauma, from sexual abuse to verbal assaults to horrific accidents, can change the way we think, feel, and behave. For example, you may:
- Use drugs to numb the pain.
- Stay in a bad situation because you think you don’t deserve better and/or cannot see a way out.
- Rely on other people to take care of you.
- Give up on your dreams.
- Feel powerless.
All of these behaviors lead to one thing: a life unfulfilled and full of suffering. You’ll miss opportunities to be who you are. You may sit and wait for help, but it’s not likely to come soon enough. That’s true even if you have a loving family and dozens of friends.
It’s up to you to change. It starts with understanding what’s happening to you and reaching out for help.
Consider what may happen if you don’t find help for yourself. You could spend years dealing with the mental pain and anguish of what’s happened. You may find that it eats up more and more of your time. You may also feel more at risk in your daily life. That may limit you from doing the big things that are so important to you. Other people can help you, but you won’t fully heal until you decide to take back your life. It’s up to you to make the change.
Can Counseling Help?
Understanding that healing is your responsibility helps you come to grips with reality, but it may not give you the tools you need to heal. If you’ve experienced trauma and are ready to move past it, seek help from a therapist. Therapy can help you:
- Answer the question “why?” Why did this happen to you?
- Rebuild your confidence. Therapy helps you feel valuable and worthy.
- Reclaim your life with the support of your therapist.
- Learn how to make the best of your future and of the person you are right now.
- Feel hopeful that tomorrow will be better.
If you’re the victim of trauma, reaching out to a licensed therapist is essential. If you are using drugs or alcohol to treat the pain, you need help for substance use disorder as well. When you take that initial step towards improving your health, you’ll rebuild your confidence, learn more about who you really are, and find a way forward.
At DK Solutions, your addiction intervention and recovery mentoring center in Marietta, GA., you can get help for overcoming the trauma that’s taken over your life. Start today. Let our team help.