Emotional trauma is a life-changing event that may make your life a living hell or build the foundation of a new beginning. Let’s start by understanding what emotional trauma is? Emotional trauma happens due to a particularly stressful circumstance that undermines your sense of security and may even put your life or safety in danger. Emotional trauma can make you feel helpless, and you may struggle with emotions like tension and anxiety frequently.
It can be really difficult to recover from emotional trauma, and it usually takes a lot of time and patience. Emotional healing is the process of accepting every painful life experience and the unfavorable emotional reaction that trauma has caused. In layman’s terms, it is the correct technique to handle the numerous stresses that cause emotional trauma. Let’s now examine this issue in-depth and attempt to comprehend the many stages of emotional trauma recovery and how to mitigate emotional trauma.
Stages of healing emotional trauma
1) Conceding to suffering
We are always taught to avoid emotional discomfort and overlook things or experiences that hurt us from a very young age. It ultimately results in emotional pain by ignoring, shunning, and distancing our true selves. The key message in this situation is to understand your suffering rather than attempt to escape it. Running away from your problems and what weakens you makes it more robust and increases your vulnerability to emotional stress and suffering.
There should be no more resisting or avoiding reality once you’ve given yourself over to the pain; the only way to deal with it is to feel it and acknowledge it. Humans frequently use denial as a defense, but doing so blurs the distinction between what you perceive and what is true. While understanding what you feel will give you courage and optimism for the future to fight the suffering and constant pain from emotional trauma.
2) Getting Aware
Understanding the feelings and emotions that are creating the trauma is the next step in the healing process. Try to understand your feelings and the reasons behind them by digging deep. This approach will get you one step closer to getting rid of emotional pain. In this step, you should work to reclaim the stability and safety you had before experiencing emotional trauma. This requires the capacity to control your body, mind, and emotions and increased awareness of your emotional intelligence level.
This stage is action-based and will help you heal the deep scars that emotional trauma has left behind by helping you comprehend why you are experiencing sorrow and anguish. You could even use counseling or therapy for this step. By the time this stage is over, you will have a better understanding of your pain, and you may also have found a more effective coping mechanism.
3) Confrontation
This point in any journey can be the most challenging since you have to address the emotional suffering unbiasedly. You must now confront the problem you have been avoiding for so long. While dealing with emotional trauma, you could experience intense emotions like tension and anxiety. It may seem like an endless process, but you will feel relieved when it is over. To overcome the emotional blockage, be honest with yourself or seek counseling. Analyze the emotional issue and make an effort to understand it before you tackle it. Recognize your emotional triggers and bravely confront them. After all the chaos, you will feel relatively at ease and peaceful. After this stage, you will be able to deal with the emotional blockage bravely.
4) Expressing and Integrating
The next stage after confronting your emotions would be to try to express them honestly. Honor the suffering and let your emotions out rather than holding them inside. Cry when you’re unhappy, scream in a secluded space to get rid of your anger, or go for a run. Create a funnel for expressing your emotions. Never let your feelings linger because doing so will cause you to withdraw and become mentally exhausted. Time and patience are your practical tools for overcoming emotional trauma and will help you travel far on this path.
Create a new environment, a new identity, and redefine yourself after learning to express yourself. Trauma is no longer a driving factor at this point; it has become a part of your life story. Now is the moment to embrace your current life and move closer to your new life’s purpose. Accept what happened, which will take us to the last stage of acceptance and moving on, and try to incorporate that aspect of your emotional trauma into your life rather than just ignoring it.
5) Accepting and moving on
The most crucial phase in the process is acceptance, which will enable you to gain control over the feelings that caused the trauma. Acceptance creates a space where you can experience a wide range of feelings. When you accept the reality and realize that the horrific experiences can no longer influence you, you might feel numb about them all.
The suffering and tension will ultimately pass, and your life will no longer be governed by pain. In the end, you can move on from the old experience to new beginnings with greater confidence and optimism because this stage will test your emotional fortitude and bring out the best in you. In the end, you will be free to move on to the promising future that would have been waiting for you as old habits go by the wayside.
Ways to mitigate emotional trauma
1. Don’t isolate yourself when you are going through emotional trauma. Try to find a shoulder to lean on. Reach out to friends and family on whom you can lean. You can talk to them about your experience and share your feelings. You may also take professional help to talk and relieve pain.
2. When going through emotional difficulty, we frequently want to isolate ourselves and cut off any communication with others. We choose to watchword our emotions by either sleeping all day or binge-watching strange online web series. Face your emotions and make an effort to be more patient with them to find solutions to the emotional battle you are currently engaged in.
3. Get professional assistance if stressful or traumatic situations continue to occur in your life. You can handle the emotional trauma better if you seek professional assistance. Joining a support group can also help you feel better about yourself, and other group members may help you to deal with the trauma because they have been in your shoes.
4. Try placing self-care first. Consume healthy food, lead an active lifestyle, work out frequently, practice yoga or meditation, or anything else that can help you release some of your pent-up emotions. The other most essential thing is to get enough sleep and attempt to make time for personal development.
5. Remember to be smooth on yourself throughout the process because it can be a long and trying trip. Being calm and patient will ease this process and may even speed up your ability to adjust to new conditions.
Conclusion:
Everyone experiences emotional trauma at some point in their lives, and many try to avoid it rather than accept it. Because of our hectic schedules and limited emotional intelligence time, we frequently disregard our emotional pain, which eventually adversely affects our lives and health. This article primarily aims to understand the various stages that a person experiences while recovering from emotional trauma and how to prevent emotional trauma from occurring in the first place.
