Healing

Lately, I have been having a lot of things weighing heavy on my mind. Weighing in on the scale at one million pounds is my childhood trauma. When this weight takes over, I begin to think about how life never really gave me the chance to dwell on my pain because it does what it’s good at doing, “it moved on.” I started to think about how my sisters went through a lot of traumatizing things as well, and they never got the chance to dwell on the pain, we never got to heal. After other thoughts, I began to think about how people go through so many things in their lives. Whether it’s from your childhood or adulthood, and they never get the chance to heal from it. The process of healing takes time, whether you are improving alone or with a support system. Regardless healing must happen; one of the reasons I feel like it is hard to heal is because of life. Many different versions of life happen for people; some people’s trauma is distracted by moving away, new job, new additions to the family, new friends, or even new relationships. When all these things happen, the trauma is pushed back, and the wound is still open. In my situation, after my trauma was acknowledged a big move occurred for my family and me, then at the age of 16 only two years after my ordeal ended, I was pregnant with my son. All the horrific things I had gone through were pushed back, and although it was still affecting me every day, I was so busy I was never able to bring it up again. Another reason I feel like people push back their trauma is that other people aren’t supportive of their healing. Both family and friends have a role in the healing process. Being supportive starts with communication, reaching out to someone and asking them how they’ve been doing after various situations is a start. There are adults now that have been through things as children, and they never healed from it because family members or friends weren’t supportive of their healing. Their mother, father, grandma, or uncle, etc. never talked to them about things they’ve been through, so they felt like it didn’t matter. The process is even worse when you’re an adult because you’ve been carrying the pain forever and other’s might not take what you’ve been through as traumatizing as it was then because it happened so long ago. As an adult, I can honestly say if I would’ve got the acknowledgment of what I went through in my past from a healthy support system I would be more healed at this point in my life. It is not okay to hold in the things you’ve been through because you feel like it is a waste of time talking about it or it happened so long ago that it doesn’t matter. It does matter, any pain that you’ve experienced matters when you haven’t healed from it. Whether it’s trauma from abuse, neglect, losing a job, finances, being robbed, it matters. A lot of people push their mental health to the side based on how people react to what they’ve been through.

At the end of the day, we’re all human, and we want to feel like other people care about the things we’ve been through in our lives. Holding in how life has treated us is not a healthy habit to create. Find a healthy support system from people you can trust and open to them. Healing is also about putting yourself first and making sure you’re good, especially when you have children. A lot of time went by before I realized that I needed to put my emotions first and deal with the trauma that I hid deep down inside of me. No matter you’ve been through, you deserve the time to get past it so you can remain healthy mentally. As I get older, I want to continue to take care of myself mentally so I can be a better person to my family and friends. As I continue to pursue my career as a counselor, I need to understand my emotions before I can begin to help someone understand theirs.