Friends with Trauma

Image credit: timesofisrael.com

So if we’re always telling ourselves a story, and those stories control our lives because they lead our Parts to behave or not behave in ways that we might like or not, then it is essential to get to know our Parts so that we may understand where our minds are leading us.

I’m trying to make this sound a bit for-the-publicy because I have the blog on the brain. I’ve not posted at a frequency of my liking, thus it's built up in my mind. Had to get that out there to get back into that needed headspace for my writing to be at all enjoyable, a prerequisite of it being good.

Just had a mental health therapy session in which I learned a lot. Here are my learnings:

1) Empathically look at the Parts of yourself. Or a Part. Meaning, an aspect of your personality. Could be a repeating, haunting memory that comes to haunt whenever the triggers come.

2) Dialogue with and understand that Part until you’re on friendly terms.

3) Fit that part into a timeline of a story within your life. Has to be, if a painful memory, something that made you stronger. A pain and gain aspect must be assigned to the trauma. It’s the muscle tear that helped harden that sculpted physique. It’s the lessons learned, the “ouch, fuck, damn, that hurt, but now I’m better for it.” Or it was, as Arny Schwarzenegger would say, motivation that helped him gasoline his energy tank with “fuck yous.”