Map Your Healing Journey

I’ve had a lot of time to think about the process of building healthy relationships, being sick with “the covid” for the last week or so. It finally caught up to me, after two and half years!

As a trauma survivor, I have always hated being sick. Looking through the lens of developmental trauma, this makes sense. Feeling physically sick is especially vulnerable, no matter what regular life is like. We are often at the mercy of others to help feed us, help us take medicine, and pick up the slack of regular life while we rest and recover.

As children, we didn’t feel safe with our caregivers during the best of times, feeling physically sick felt even worse for our nervous systems.

Plus, the recovery process forces me to slow down, and I used to feel like slowing down my pace of life was death. Chaos made me feel safe. Busy-ness helped me feel safe. Slowing down only brought up misery and emotions and all kinds of stuff that I wasn’t safe enough to deal with and/or simply didn’t know how to deal with.

What My Wise Mind Kept Telling Me

I spend a lot of energy and time trying to figure out how to “get out of” being sick. Like that’s a possibility.

Logically, I know that this isn’t possible, but physiologically and emotionally, I am resourceful and creative. And I noticed a couple of things while going through this process:

I haven’t struggled nearly as much with feeling physically sick as I used to. I have felt awful with “the covid” symptoms, yes. But beyond that, I don’t feel under threat the way that I used to. This is amazing progress. Practice works.
I feel like I’m starting to understand what it means to love myself through something terrible. To be the parent I never had.

In fact, every time I would start to worry about something not getting done or appointments that needed to be moved or the class that I was missing or that the dogs needed to be walked, my wise mind said,

“Regulate your nervous system.”

The Key To Healthy Relationships

A woman stands in sunset light with hand on her heart and eyes closed

Every day. Over and over again, I heard, “Regulate your nervous system.”

I used my limited energy to look at the calendar and message people and do the absolute bare minimum. Every day, I have wondered how long – how many days – it would take until I felt better. Even just a little bit.

And I would hear that wise mind voice, “Regulate your nervous system.”

In between fevers and bone pain, I realized that this message was all about building a healthy relationship. A healthy relationship with myself. Healthy relationships with our partners, children, pets, plants, food, everyone and everything.

What could be better than offering someone – including ourselves – a calm and safe place to be?

How to Start Regulating for Healthy Relationships

I started regulating my nervous system when I was first diagnosed with PTSD in 2006, although I didn’t call it that. I simply tried different things on the advice of my therapist and doctor, like massage. At that point, I didn’t know how to physically regulate my nervous system, nor did I know what it even felt like to bring my physiology to a peaceful state. Massage is a safe and effective way for trauma survivors to learn what it means to actually feel safe in our bodies, along with other advantages.

There are a lot of other practices that help regulate our nervous system. Breath work (in as little as two minutes), stretching, yoga, walking, talking, tapping (EFT), vagus nerve work like humming and singing, sensory deprivation floating, dietary changes, visualization, affirmations, gratitude, meditation – the list quite littlelarry* goes on. I’ve tried almost all of them, and still use my favorite strategies (I use littlelarry because my youngest said it and I refuse to go back LOL).

And every 👏 little 👏 bit 👏 counts 👏 – every single thing you do, no matter the length of time, it counts.

If you know me at all, then you know that I don’t believe in “one” or a “right” way to recover from trauma and/or grief. The combination that works for me might not work for you. What works to regulate my nervous system, you may simply not like. And that’s okay, in fact, it’s great. Because you are in charge of your healing, always.

But what I do believe, especially after this week with “the covid,” is that the number one most important thing we can spend our time and energy doing is to –

Regulate your nervous system.

This work is slow work, and every 👏 little 👏 bit 👏 counts 👏 – I’d love to help you find what works for you. Book a free discovery call and let’s chat!