Currently Liking the How We Feel App

kellywilsonwrites

27 Sep, 2023

Trauma survivors have a tough time with emotions – connecting, identifying, processing, being comfortable with, and expressing them. I’m currently exploring how the How We Feel app can help with that.

Why I Like How We Feel

There are a few reasons I’m totally down with trying this app.

First, I stumbled on this app while searching out something on Karla McLaren’s website. She’s the Real Deal. I ran across her stuff several years ago, when I was trying to teach my young children AND myself about emotions and feelings at the same time.

Emotions and feelings are her thing. I bought The Language of Emotions and still have it on my shelf for reference.

Second, this app is directly tied in with colors, like Gottman’s Feeling Wheel (click to download). There are four choices to start with – High Energy Pleasant, High Energy Unpleasant, Low Energy Pleasant, Low Energy Unpleasant. From there, you’re directed to the most appropriate color, but you do not have to stay there.

Third, it’s easy to use. I set up notifications for myself to check in throughout the day. I can check in as many times a day as I want, plus I can add pictures and notes to my check-ins. This is REALLY GOOD for tracking triggers.

What’s the Point, Tho?

How We Feel app screenshots on the Google Play store

Knowledge is power.

We can’t do something about anything until we SEE what’s happening.

This app helps us to track patterns of emotions. For example, maybe you feel discouraged at the same time every day. By tracking that over time, it would be easy to see the pattern and practice curiosity about the timing of these feelings. It could be as simple as low blood sugar and needing a snack, or it could be something more complicated.

I’m excited about using this app because I typically experience depression symptoms in November and December and this year, I’m tracking it! I want to see the patterns and then see where it takes me.

Trauma Survivors Need to Know Feelings

While tracking emotions and feelings with this app, we get to learn how to identify emotions in our bodies in an accessible way.

Why is this important? Because to survive, trauma survivors (me included) disconnect our bodies and brains.

This disconnection makes it harder to know when we are having an emotional experience. Then we get into a cycle of getting overwhelmed by emotion, lashing outward or inward, and crashing. This is tough on our nervous systems.

And we don’t have to stay in this pattern. My life is evidence that we can learn how to identify emotions in our bodies, name those emotions with feeling words, give emotions and feelings meaning while processing them, and then communicate them in controlled ways.

Sounds like a big job, right? That’s because it is. This is one of the aspects of The Work of trauma and grief recovery.

All we need to do is begin.

Interested in the How We Feel app? Go here.

More About Emotions and Feelings

Talking About How to Process Emotions and Feelings on #sexabusechat

Emotions are Energy That Needs to Move

Practical Strategies to Tame Overwhelming Emotions

Try Trauma Recovery & Grief Recovery Coaching

Four Truths About Thriving in Trauma Recovery | Map Your Healing Journey

Sign up here to get a free copy of Five Things Every Trauma Survivor Needs to Know AND

61 Tips About the Grief Experience.

Find out more about Trauma and Grief Recovery Coaching

I offer one-on-one sessions, groups, PTSD Remediation, and classes. Appointments are offered in-person and online.

Try Trauma Recovery and Grief Recovery Coaching for Free! Book a free 30-minute Discovery Call to find out more!

Free Virtual Grief Yoga Session

kellywilsonwrites

25 Sep, 2023

SIGN UP NOW, because this virtual grief yoga session is Wednesday, September 27th! If you can’t make it, you get a recording of the session.

I’m definitely signing up for this. I have not done a lot of yoga that is purposeful about moving grief and other emotions through the body. I am VERY curious and excited about trying it.

One of my somatic and grief focused colleagues recommended Paul Denniston to me, and I’ve been following him on social media for awhile. I’m also curious and excited about seeing him in action.

Okay, here are the details:

Paul Denniston is offering a free training on Releasing Trauma and Grief in the Body on Wednesday, September 27th.

This Zoom Grief Yoga Training embraces a mind/body/spirit approach and techniques to guide your clients and community to transform grief, trauma, and anxiety into more empowerment and love.

This training will last an hour. If you can’t make it, it will be recorded and Paul’s team will send a replay to you.

Remember, you don’t get trauma without grief. So even if you are not actively grieving, this may be a great opportunity to move some older, stuck grief out of the body.

Releasing Trauma and Grief in the Body
Wednesday, September 27, 2023
11:00 am PT / 2:00 pm ET

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61 Tips About the Grief Experience.

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Try Trauma Recovery and Grief Recovery Coaching for Free! Book a free 30-minute Discovery Call to find out more!

Ready To Build a Life You Love to Live? Start Here.

kellywilsonwrites

22 Sep, 2023

I am evidence that you can build a life that you love to live. That you can overcome the negative effects of childhood trauma. That you can enter into a consistent healing cycle as you move forward in life.

I’m so happy to have been selected to speak at the Building the Life You want to Live 2023 Summit. You are, of course, invited – it will be FREE to watch for seven days.

I am speaking about PTSD, cPTSD, symptoms, and treatment options. Plus, I’m on the live panel that takes place on November 4th.

If you experienced trauma in your past, and the impacts are still affecting your life, relationships, health & happiness…

You are not broken, and you are not alone,

While these wounds might run deep, the good news is, you CAN heal from them.

Green background. Text - Healing Trauma: Building the Life You Love to Live Summit 2023; sponsored by The International Association of Trauma Recovery Coaching

To learn how, you won’t want to miss The International Association of Trauma Recovery Coaching’s latest online Heal Trauma Summit that I’m participating in – specifically designed to help you heal from your traumatic experiences.

It’s called Healing Trauma: Building The Life You Love to Live and begins November 2, 2023.

This online event is brought to you by Bobbi Parish, MA, CTRC-S, Founder and Executive Director of The International Association of Trauma Recovery Coaching. Bobbi pioneered the field of Trauma Recovery Coaching. The Association was the first, and remains the only, professional association for Trauma Recovery Coaching. With six different certification programs they have educated more than 800 coaches around the globe in the last six years.

Building the Life You Love Speakers and Subjects

Here’s just some of what you’ll learn from our trauma-informed experts, trauma recovery coaches, somatic practitioners, authors, comedians & more:

· Map Your Healing (that’s me!): Learn the difference PTSD and CPTSD, symptoms and treatment options.

· Reframing Responsibility to be Our Greatest Gift: When it comes to trauma learn what you responsible for and what you are NOT responsible for and how to recognize the gift of responsibility and how it can set you free from trauma.

· Raising Thriving Children after Leaving a Narcissistic Partner: Understand the impacts of narcissistic abuse, how to co-parent with a narcissist, how narcissists sabotage their children and how to recognize warning signs, how to support your children and help them build resilience and navigate what they are experiencing.

· What is Domestic Violence: Learn the SCARS (Survivors Carry A Real Story) trauma cycle of domestic violence model and the 4 stages of recovery.

· Process for Changing Undesired Behavioral Patterns: learn where you developed your behavioral patterns, why they developed and how to begin changing these patterns to serve you better.

· Embodied & Empowered – Somatic Tools for Navigating the World: learn somatic techniques for healing trauma, create awareness and presence of the body and nervous system.

· Respectful Parenting with Complex Trauma: Introductory for parents to learn how to recognize their own complex trauma triggers “unpack” them and transform their interactions and relationship with their children, caregivers, and even their own parents.

· Sibling Coach: learn why being the sibling of someone with a disability causes trauma and how recovery can be life changing.

· Not Parent Expected (NPE)– Learn to identify what the Not Parent Expected lifequake experience is and why it matters and discover practical tools to revive the mind, body and spirit.

Here is the lineup of other speakers during the online event: Dr. Paulette M. Bethel, Jami Carder, Vincent Castellanos, Tana Gaudi, Pepper Joy Greggs, Sherry Yuan Hunter, Kristen Kellett, Bobbi Parish, Stacey Uhrig, Susie Miller Wendell, and Paula Wiese.

Attend Live on November 4th

Light green background, orange border. Text in orange: Join us November 2023 for three days of expert guidance about trauma recovery. Healing Trauma: Building the Life You Love to Live Summit

Don’t miss out on our LIVE day, November 4^th, from the comfort of home. We will have book giveaways from some of our favorite authors, a live panel, a Q&A with our audience and 3 live experiential workshops where you will learn more and experience powerful healing processes.

· Befriending Your Inner Critic Using Parts Work: learn the neuroscience behind the development of your inner critic and experience the process of befriending one of your inner critics and transforming it into a source of wisdom.

· Rapid Transformational Therapy: learn a pathway to release the grip of developmental trauma, rewrite your narratives, and embark on a journey of holistic healing and personal transformation.

· Restorative Response System Theory (RReST): learn this theory firsthand from the author and theorist and gain a comprehensive understanding of how these resources serve as powerful tools to regulate the nervous system and walk away with actionable insights to assist yourself or trauma survivors from survival modes to restorative states.

Will You Join Us?

Mark your calendar and save your spot right here.

After you register, keep an eye out for The IAOTRC HEAL TRAUMA email for specific details on accessing the expert workshops. (Replays will be available until November 10^th for FREE).

Now is the time to heal from trauma and effects that often follows…

…get started by registering right here for the International Association of Trauma Recovery Coaching Healing Trauma: Building the Life You Love to Live online summit.

Cheers to your ongoing recovery!

P.S. Please share the healing and forward this email to your friends, family and community – anyone who needs hope, healing and love. Thank you for helping us change lives.

Save your spot for The International Association of Trauma Recovery Coaching Healing Trauma Summit right here.

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Sign up here to get a free copy of Five Things Every Trauma Survivor Needs to Know AND

61 Tips About the Grief Experience.

Find out more about Trauma and Grief Recovery Coaching

I offer one-on-one sessions, groups, PTSD Remediation, and classes. Appointments are offered in-person and online.

Try Trauma Recovery and Grief Recovery Coaching for Free! Book a free 30-minute Discovery Call to find out more!

Healing Happens in Stillness

kellywilsonwrites

11 Sep, 2023

I like to sit on my back deck, especially in the mornings when I’m drinking my coffee. The dogs (Chloe and Milly) run around the backyard while I sip and think and stare into the distance and – quite frankly – wake up.

Right now, I can feel the season changing from the heat of summer into the more gentle coolness of fall. I pay attention to the breeze on my skin. I listen to birds chirping and whirring and cawing, and I watch them fly around. There’s no drama or chaos or anything but me in the present moment.

Is this comfortable? No.

Am I learning to like it? Yes.

Why?

Healing happens in stillness.

Trauma Survivors Have Been Raised in Chaos

For many of us as trauma survivors, chaos has been our reference point for daily life.

This can feel like walking on eggshells, living in survival mode, and feeling constant fear and/or nervous system activation (fight-flight-freeze). Wanting to hide and isolate. Never knowing what is going to happen next. Feeling hyped or “manic” or the opposite, defeated or depressed.

Because our nervous systems have been trained in chaos, we are attracted to it. Not because we are dumb (we’re not), but because that’s what our nervous systems KNOW.

What is known is far more comfortable than what we don’t know. And if we have never known safety, how are we supposed to recognize it when we see or feel it?

Chaos keeps us in a cycle that’s comfortable, but detrimental. Unfortunately, so does our culture.

Our Culture Teaches Us to Distract

Practical Strategies to Tame Overwhelming Emotions | Kelly Wilson | Map Your Healing Journey

One of the biggest epiphanies of my life was realizing that our culture works against trauma and grief recovery.

Our culture teaches us to avoid and distract, to spin in the chaos. To fill the void with any of a variety of vices: food (this has historically been mine), alcohol, sex, drugs, shopping, and sleeping are some of them. These are also coping mechanisms that work…until they don’t work any more.

I say this not as a shameful thing, but as an observation about what we have learned in lives of unprocessed trauma and grief. As we use these coping mechanisms, our culture encourages us to KEEP using them long after they have become detrimental to our well-being.

One of the Most Popular Trauma Responses

One of the most popular trauma responses – keeping BUSY – grows out of both a toxic family system and our culture’s love of productivity.

For example, when I was a kid living in my abusive family, staying busy kept me safe. If I wasn’t moving or busy with something, I would get into trouble. I learned early on to keep myself under the radar, looking busy when I was at home or being busy with school and sports and work outside of the home.

This morphed into decades of BUSY. Moving-moving-moving until I was exhausted, and then crashing.

Workaholism is how it showed up for me. Even still, I find comfort in “being busy” and working a lot. It’s an old comfort and it’s not sustainable for long, but I still see it.

This chaos-busy-work pattern kept me disconnected from abusive people, and then, when I was safe, it kept me disconnected from those I loved. I found myself stuck in an infuriating cycle of working myself into exhaustion, feeling completely alone and taken for granted.

This cycle worked until it didn’t. But here’s the thing about trauma and grief – there comes a time when it needs to be processed.

We are not meant to live in survival mode.

We are meant to transition out of survival mode and into a more calm state in order to process what we’ve gone through and find some peace and healing.

How to Get Comfortable Healing in Stillness

So how do we do that? How do we move into a more calm state when our nervous systems, toxic family and group systems, and even our cultural systems are encouraging us NOT to?

There are many things in our lives and beings that we can NOT choose.

There’s far more in trauma and grief recovery that we CAN choose.

One of the ways to begin feeling more comfortable in a regulated state (inside) and calm surroundings (outside) is to PRACTICE.

Some of the choices we can make:

To sit in stillness (however long – 10 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 10 minutes – anything)
Practice being in the present moment (use the five senses)
Disengage from emotion spirals
Recognize when our physical bodies and nervous systems react to something/become activated
Regulate our nervous systems into a calm state
Process emotions and feelings from the outside in

Is this easy? No, but not because of you.

We are taught the OPPOSITE of how to make these choices. This is partly what makes trauma and grief recovery so dang important.

Feel It to Heal It

Woman in blue shirt and and blond shoulder length hair holding a coffee cup that says Wear Your Scars Like Stardust — Me, sitting on the back deck, drinking coffee. Sept 2020, halfway through PTSD Remediation.

One recent morning, I sat on my back deck with my coffee and felt…off.

Even with my knowledge of the Gottman Feeling Wheel, “OFF” was the best I could do.

As I sat and sipped my coffee, I allowed myself to be still.

I noticed the feelings bubble up – deep sadness and anger. I noticed that these feelings felt…older. When emotions and feelings feel older, this is typically – for me – grief-related.

I realized that this particular day was five years since I had separated from my ex. He and I had a conversation that afternoon, which was the day before we were to leave on our 23rd anniversary vacation, and he said, “You have been unhappy for a long time…perhaps we should separate.”

And then, the next day, we absolutely went on that trip to Niagara Falls. It was, after all, non-refundable.

So…yeah. I’ve got a lot of Big Feelings about that time in my life and the decisions that I made, and my body remembered. I spent time that morning and throughout the day in calm and quiet, feeling and grieving.

“Feel It to Heal It” has been coming up a lot lately, because it is necessary in the trauma and grief recovery work that we do together.

One of the reasons that I hold a safe container for myself and my clients is to allow us to FEEL whatever we need to feel. To PROCESS tough emotions and feelings, to grieve and mourn, and to INTEGRATE our experiences.

In other words, to make open wounds into scars. This healing process happens in stillness.

There’s nothing wrong with you. No shame in this game. If something in this post touched a nerve, I would love to chat in a Discovery Call.

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Sign up here to get a free copy of Five Things Every Trauma Survivor Needs to Know AND

61 Tips About the Grief Experience.

Find out more about Trauma and Grief Recovery Coaching

I offer one-on-one sessions, groups, PTSD Remediation, and classes. Appointments are offered in-person and online.

Try Trauma Recovery and Grief Recovery Coaching for Free! Book a free 30-minute Discovery Call to find out more!

What You Can Do When Grief & Trauma Show Up in the Body

kellywilsonwrites

27 Aug, 2023

You don’t get trauma without grief.

One of the aspects of trauma that many mental health professionals don’t know or don’t talk about is that trauma and PTSD recovery require grief processing.

This is the main reason why I got education and certification in both trauma and grief recovery, so that I could offer practices that cover both.

Why Grief AND Trauma?

Gradient background, from ivory to light blue, right to left. Text: Trauma survivors grieve the family they had, and they grieve the family they did not have.

The easiest way that I can illustrate this idea is with an example from my own life.

I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse by my father. This predatory behavior does not happen in a vacuum; instead there’s a whole toxic family system that supports it. In my toxic family, there was alcoholism, disordered eating, narcissistic behavior, enabling, emotional abuse, and more.

I officially entered trauma recovery in 2006, when I was diagnosed with PTSD. As the years have passed, I’ve been able to see my sexual abuse experiences in context of this toxic family system. A lot of these realizations happened when my children were young, and I worked really hard to give them a childhood completely different from my own.

In this process of parenting my children and re-parenting myself, I grieved.

I grieved the family that I DID have, and I grieved the family that I DIDN’T have.

Releasing Trauma & Grief

One of the reasons why The Body Keeps the Score is so popular is that it validates what we’ve always known on an intuitive level. Our bodies bear our burdens, physically and emotionally.

These burdens can be released. What is stored in the body can be released by the body.

This article arrived in my email inbox this morning, and it is fantastic – Physical Symptoms Of Grief: How To Deal With Grief Pain. I believe that this applies to grief AND trauma because the ways that our bodies store trauma is similar to how they store grief.

Here’s what’s covered in the article:

Physical symptoms of grief (and trauma)
Where we hold grief (and trauma) in the body
Why grief hurts so much
How long grief lasts
How to deal with grief
Releasing grief in physical ways, including somatic exercises

Hopefully this is a helpful resource for you to use now and in the future!

More Helpful Resources

I LOVE helpful resources. Why? Healing happens in community, and recovery opportunities need to be accessible.

If you haven’t seen it yet, the Resources page has changed in a good way! Now there are TWO different pages of free and low-cost trauma recovery resources: