Therapy Isn’t Enough: Keep Showing Up For Your Life Too

Many of us want to live our lives to the fullest and reach our full potential, but the journey towards healing and growth can be challenging. Trauma survivors often face unique obstacles as they work to overcome the lasting effects of trauma on their minds and bodies.

In this blog post, we will explore the importance of actively retraining the mind and body to feel safe in the present moment, as well as the role of therapy in providing corrective emotional experiences that support healing.

Retraining, rewiring, remapping, and relearning - it’s a journey, not a “one-and-done”. This means checking in with our feelings, bodily sensations, and parts as we move through life, and strengthening new neural pathways for how we respond and relate to the world around us.

To actively retrain the mind and body, it's important to give our nervous system and younger or wounded parts what they need to tap into the joy and pleasure that's available in the present. This could mean making a healing choice, such as going to the beach instead of staying in bed all day, even if it's just for an hour. By doing this, we're able to gently create a safe environment for ourselves where we can relax and enjoy the present moment in a way that’s restorative and not regressive.

Alternatively, sometimes part of creating a safe environment can involve shutting off notifications and shutting out the noise and sensory overload of the world. In this space perhaps we visualize ourselves being held, checking-out so that we can later check-in to engage with the world around us. By deeply tending and attuning to our ever-changing needs, we're able to connect with our younger selves and provide the care and support they need to feel safe and secure, with the knowledge they’ll be taken care of.

These intentional moments are essential along the healing journey, as they allows us to create corrective emotional experiences in the present that support our growth and healing.

Therapy also plays an important role in the healing journey, as it provides a secure model of attachment and a safe space to explore and process our emotions and experiences.

By internalizing the therapeutic relationship as a secure base from which to go out into the world, we're able to show up and try new ways of doing things. Having this secure space to go back to, with someone who is committed to our healing journey, is also a powerful source of healing in and of itself.

By checking in with our feelings, bodily sensations, and parts, and giving ourselves what we need to feel nurtured, protected, and held, we become more embodied and grounded in the present.

Through this embodiment and continuing to show up and do the work, we can give ourselves the gift of a brighter, more fulfilling future.