7 Things To Help You Heal From The Past

I believe that to some degree or other we’ve all been through trauma of some kind, something significant and painful that changed you in the way you behave towards yourself or others.

In today’s post I’ll be talking about some of the things you can do to heal from the past.

Here’s my YouTube video on the topic, if you prefer to watch that instead…

The truth is that 100% of us will experience some form of trauma in our lives. Of the 100% of us that do, 75% manage to move through it and lead lives that are to a greater or lesser degree unaffected…

However that leaves 25% of people that get stuck in the pain of the past. Many people I know and have Coached have experienced trauma that has altered the course of their lives, so I support them in overcoming that and living full, happy and abundant lives.

The saying “time heals” has its place, for sure. Time allows for us to process the events of our lives and in some way come to terms with them and just allows they body and mind to adjust to the newness that we are faced with following a traumatic event.

But time does not heal all.

Only using time to heal allows the event to embed itself more deeply into the unconscious part of us and take shape in the ways we behave and operate in the world.

Through years of working with people in psychiatric care and in my own practice, what I know is that what heals are some very important things, some of which you can do alone, some you’ll need support to do. I’d like to share some of there with you here:

1. Going inwards, which unfortunately can be really painful, because you’re going to possibly uncover and dig up very painful emotions… but this is absolutely essential to the healing process. I would absolutely recommend getting support with this. But to start you could begin with journaling. This can help you to understand yourself more deeply and to understand why you feel the way you do. You simply start by writing about your thoughts and feelings.

You may think that you won’t know what to write, but if you take time to buy yourself a nice journal especially for this exercise, when you find some quiet time to be present with yourself when you feel like writing and getting what is inside your head out onto paper, as soon as you open your journal and put pen to paper, you’ll know what to write.

Remind yourself that you’re not writing it for anyone else, so just allow your thoughts, fears, dreams, hurts to spill onto the paper. Get it out of your head and onto paper. Exploring yourself in this way can be such a cathartic and freeing experience and one that you can return to time and again.

If you do uncover painful emotions that you need help processing, be sure to reach out for help and support with that and know that there are ways of moving through the pain and finally being free from it.

 

2. Loving yourself

Learning to love yourself is so important when you’ve been through traumatic experiences, but can also be one of the hardest things to do simply because of what you’ve been through. Loving yourself isn’t just bubble baths, candles and self-care, which are important too. But when I say loving yourself, I mean really learning about your worth.

It might look like inner child work – especially if you experienced childhood trauma – again this is certainly for the brave and ideally should be done with support. Loving yourself is about accepting yourself for who you are, while identifying that there may be things about your life that you want to change. Realise and acknowledge that you’ve done the best that you could with the resources that you had up until now. Learn about your wants, needs and likes and do more things that nurture and nourish your soul.

 

3. Accepting yourself and believing that what happened was not your fault.

I mentioned this in the point above, but I think it deserves a point all of its own because it is so important when it comes to childhood trauma. We can spend so much of our lives and our energy beating ourselves up for what happened to us, even if it was out of our control, which is so often the case with childhood trauma. Reprogramming and reframing our thinking is so important in accepting that whatever happened wasn’t your fault. You may have been told by others that it as, and so you came to believe that. But it is not true and once you take responsibility for wanting to feel and think differently, you’ll start doing things to help you do that. Changing the way you think about what happened will definitely help.

 

4. Listening to your needs.

This is related to the point about self-love, but again, I think it needs a point of its own. In order to listen to your needs, you need to take time to be present with yourself so that you can hear them. Sometimes the mind is so noisy, filled with the thoughts and words of others. Those might be mean and nasty words; perhaps the words of other people that you’ve heard often enough and play on loop in your mind without even realising it. If you have very negative self-talk or internal chatter, this is highly likely to be the case. To get clear about what your needs are, sometimes first you have to quieten that negative chatter so you can actually hear yourself – the real you. I’ve created a beautiful and enchanting free audio programme to help you do exactly that.

Click here to download the programme for free

This FREE Mindset Mastery Audio Programme will help you to eliminate and re-programme negative self-talk, which will take you one step towards overcoming what you went through as the way we talk to ourselves is hugely responsible for the way we feel and the things we achieve in our lives.

Enjoy and I’d love to know how you got on with it, so come back and leave me a comment when you’ve downloaded and listened to it!

5. Addressing your emotional and trauma history.

This is something that I believe you should do with help and support. Again journaling is definitely one way to do this, but hiring a healer, alternative therapist or Coach with the right experience and expertise to guide you through the process is where you’ll get the greatest benefit. Addressing emotional trauma and your history is likely to bring up very painful emotions, but emotions that the right person will be able to help you heal and let go of.

6. Follow your intuition.

Learning to connect with your Unconscious Mind, the part of you that runs 95-97% of your functioning, is possibly one of the most important things that you can do when it comes to healing from trauma. The Unconscious Mind is the part that is aware of the backs of your legs on the chair you’re sitting on, or the feeling of your feet on the floor. It’s aware of the feeling of your chest rising and falling as you’re breathing, the feelings that you weren’t aware of before I mentioned them. Your Unconscious Mind listening to everything and taking it all in. If and when you learn how to connect with that part of you and listen to what it wants you to know and understand, your life will change in remarkable ways and your ability to heal from the past will open up like never before.

 

7. Get support

As I’ve said a few times already, there are definitely things that you can do to heal from trauma. I’m sure there are many options that I haven’t mentioned that you could also try, however, I will not hesitate to say that the best and most effective way to heal from the pain of the past is to work with a professional that you trust and that you know will be able to help you overcome what you went through.

My speciality is helping people just like you heal from trauma and overcome the pain from the past. If you’re interested in finding out more, click here, or simply schedule a free call with me to discuss how working with me will help you live the life you know that you deserve.

The truth is that ultimately, you have to do the work. If  you’re not happy and there are things from the past that are impacting on your now AND you want things to change so that you can live a happy, empowered and abundant life, doing the inner work is the way to do that authentically.

I hope you’ve taken something helpful from today’s read. If you have, please do share this blog with at least 3 people you know that need to hear this message too.