How I'm Literally Mapping My Own Healing

kellywilsonwrites

16 Aug, 2023

Okay, first…I don’t usually say “literally.” I generally say, “little-larry.” My youngest said this probably a decade or more ago, and I vowed to always say it like that.

Whew. Glad that’s out of the way (LOL).

One of the things I LOVE about doing this work is that I must practice what I preach. Whatever advice or professional opinions I give, I also have to do. I mean, I’m a trauma survivor, it makes sense, and what kind of trauma recovery coach would I be if I didn’t live this way?

Mapping Each Small Healing Step

A person in a red sweatshirt is centered on a rural road, walking towards mountains in the distance. Grass and trees are on either side. The words, "Trauma Recovery is Slow Work, Every Step Counts" is above and below, along with Kelly Wilson, CTRC-I, MapYourHealing.com

I am known for saying, “Trauma recovery is slow work. Every step counts.”

One of the ways that I practice what I preach is to keep track of how I’m changing. If every step *does* indeed count, then I need to celebrate the tiniest to the hugest steps that I take in my own healing journey.

About a year ago, I applied to be a speaker at the HealtheVoices conference for online advocates. I work as an advocate for trauma survivors who have PTSD symptoms and have not served in the military. (There’s a longer story about this, but that is for a different post).

My presentation for this conference was accepted.

My nervous system REVOLTED.

I couldn’t sleep. I felt nauseous. My body developed cold sores and hemorrhoids. Constant sweating. I fell down and rolled my ankle – an odd but consistent sign of high stress.

These symptoms went on for weeks, ramping up as the conference weekend got closer. We arrived at the hotel/venue, and I was *miserable.* I felt completely self-conscious. My inner critic would NOT shut up.

At that point, I had gotten used to the symptoms, so much so that I didn’t realize just how miserable my nervous system had been until I was done giving my presentation.

As soon as I was done speaking, my entire nervous system relaxed. I cried with relief.

I Got VERY Curious

After I got home, I talked with my therapist and colleagues about what had happened over those several weeks leading up to and including the conference.

In fact, I was taking a trauma recovery class at the time, and one morning during our class check in, I explained what I had experienced.

“I would get very curious about that,” the instructor said.

My first response was, “UGH.” But I knew the wisdom in her words, so I decided to get very curious.

By the time my next therapy appointment rolled around, I had A LOT to process.

The Golden Child Syndrome

I’ve long been an over-achiever. My role in my toxic family system was the Golden Child, the perfect one who doesn’t have needs or feelings or thoughts. She does what she is told and does it “right” the first time. (whew, even typing all of that stressed me out)

I was raised to be a people pleaser and rule follower. No thoughts, no feelings, no needs, and if I had them, they were not important, anyway.

Especially DO NOT rock the boat or challenge anyone or anything or express something that has not been specifically given to you to express (this includes the permission to express it).

One of the impacts of the Golden Child pressures in my life was to perform for love. A compliant and quiet woman, considering all other needs and wants first. I was exhausted and depressed for *decades*. Not exaggerating. This has played out in many areas: school, work, my first marriage. The prevailing feeling was, “You are not good enough, and you need to prove you are good enough so that you will be loved.”

First, this is a lie. I am good enough. You are good enough. We are worthy of love simply because we exist.

Second, this is a never-ending cycle that does not reap love and acceptance.

No matter how hard I tried or how many goals I achieved or how much I did for *everyone else* and how much I sacrificed my own mental and physical self, it would *never* be enough.

And here’s the clincher: I WAS DOING THIS TO MYSELF.

I Figured Out Why My Nervous System Revolted

A sketch of a person sitting on the ground, arms around their knees, dark cloud over their head. Words: But as I cried buckets of tears with my therapist, trying to process through why my body had revolted over this speaking gig, I yelled out, "I JUST WANT TO BE IMPORTANT. I JUST WANT TO BE LOVED."

With trauma, strategies work until they don’t.

This cycle of living as the Golden Child kept me safe for a long time, through my childhood and getting into college and starting my teaching career and into my first marriage.

But as I cried buckets of tears with my therapist, trying to process through why my body had revolted over this speaking gig, I yelled out, “I JUST WANT TO BE IMPORTANT. I JUST WANT TO BE LOVED.”

The strategy – the overachieving, “perfect”, Golden Child – didn’t work anymore.

In fact, using this strategy made me physically sick.

Now the task was figuring out what DOES work. What does my nervous system want? Why do I strive and what do I strive for now?

I didn’t know, so I took time off from striving, over-achieving, and professional over-working. For six months, I did not apply for anything. I did not respond to calls for essays, presentations, speaking opportunities, podcasts, classes – nothing.

I focused on my nervous system, my relationships, and my clients.

This was HIGHLY uncomfortable, and I had many opportunities to get curious.

The Latest Opportunity

I recently had an interview with mental health professionals who are putting on a summit this fall.

I had decided to submit a proposal. The prevailing belief in our culture is that PTSD is for soldiers and veterans. Full stop. I’ve had conversations with almost every single client about how PTSD was not even on their radar.

My presentation is about how trauma survivors don’t seek PTSD treatment because they don’t know about PTSD.

I was taking a huge chance on myself. I had meditated and connected with my nervous system before submitting the proposal and agreeing to the interview, and everything felt great. All systems go.

In my interview, I said in no uncertain terms that I am an expert in this (almost 20 years of study and experience), have tried almost every treatment modality available, and that I professionally treat PTSD.

I said that over the last two years of my practice, very few of my clients have come to me for PTSD treatment. And that’s why I started my practice.

One afternoon, I was sitting on the couch in my office and I swear a bolt of lightning struck in my brain and I realized:

MAYBE TRAUMA SURVIVORS DON’T SEEK TREATMENT BECAUSE THEY DON’T KNOW THAT THEIR SYMPTOMS ARE PTSD-RELATED.

My Motivation is Different Now

In the interview, I told them that together, we can change this. We are ideally positioned to raise awareness, provide information and education, and change people’s lives.

They looked…stunned. One person said that they’ll be thinking about what I said, that it deeply resonated. My writer and speaker parts silently celebrated (yyyeeeesss).

I don’t know if I will be selected to speak. Competition is high. Trauma recovery subjects are vast.

BUT I felt REGULATED and SAFE (and excited). I advocated for myself and for others.

I was acting out of the safety of my nervous system, responding to a need. Not responding to old trauma patterns and trying to make a presentation in order to be loved.

HUGE game-changer for me.

After the interview, I stayed in the present moment, congratulating myself for doing a good job, marinating in the positive stuff that has happened.

The culmination of MANY tiny steps on my path of healing old wounds.

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How Old Wounds are Stored in Our Bodies

kellywilsonwrites

8 Aug, 2023

One of the first things I learned as a trauma and PTSD recovery specialist is that we store old wounds in our bodies.

It’s one thing to know that with my head, and a whole different thing to integrate this knowing into my heart.

But first, a review for context.

I had a weird medical thing with my lower back and corresponding nerves in January.
Since that time, I began experiencing more pain and stiffness and decreased mobility.
I wrote about how my chiropractor figured out the source of my problems last month, which I wrote about in Sometimes Getting Better Looks Like Getting Worse

For about four weeks, I’ve been getting consistent chiropractic and massage treatment in the most painful areas. And I can tell you that the pain has been EXQUISITE.

But more than that, I started to feel super weird.

The Old Wounds Stored in My Body

My lower half began to loosen and cause this exquisite pain during my week of fun at the Oregon Country Fair. This is the place where, once a summer, hippies gather near Eugene and celebrate art, music, food, and general hippy-ness.

They also have massage services there, which I fully take advantage of. (Massage has been a friend of mine since I started my PTSD recovery in 2006. I try to go minimum once a month, and I work with minimum two massage therapists at any time, so I can get appointments. What am I spending my money on? MASSAGES.)

Anywho, the massage therapist who worked with me during the week of the fair really connected with what was going on in my hips and legs. After the bodywork, I started feeling what I could only describe as “super weird.”

Not physically, that was just straight up pain.

A graph of the window of tolerance by mind my peelings

Emotionally, I felt…surreal. Like a time traveler, but with emotions.

After coming home from the fair and doing chiropractic and bodywork, I started feeling even MORE emotionally “super weird,” even as I started to physically feel joints and muscles and tendons start moving.

I felt emotionally “all over the place.” Crying a lot. SO very tired. Snappy. Very little capacity. Overwhelm. A much smaller window of tolerance.

My emotions and feelings did not make sense AT ALL with my present life. And I have been feeling impatient about that.

Why These Emotions Did Not Make Sense

I kept talking with my husband about it because I needed to apologize a lot, especially for snapping at him. One day, I was expressing my frustration and impatience with my emotions and the lightbulb snapped on:

a large crack in asphalt with a bandaid placed over it — This one “cracked” me up…

The EMOTIONS DIDN’T MAKE SENSE WITH MY PRESENT LIFE BECAUSE THE WOUNDS ARE OLD.

That area of my body – the sacrum – started locking up as the pandemic shut everything down. Tighter and tighter and tighter over the last few years.

THE BODY STORES TRAUMA.

Like old emotional wounds, old physical wounds have attached emotions.

Remember how I posted recently about how getting better can sometimes look and feel like getting worse?

Yeah! That!

Through this process, I am not only healing physically from the trauma of the pandemic, I’m healing emotionally.

Connecting The Mind and Body is Vital to Recovery

Obviously, the pandemic affected me in ways that I’m just starting to deal with. It was – in plain language – traumatic. And I’m not the only one.

Plus, I’m fairly certain that the trauma I’ve been emotionally processing through healing these physical wounds is not just from the pandemic.

The sacrum is considered a sacred space, connected with the reproductive and sexual organs. This area is known as the Sacral Chakra, and it is considered the central place for our emotions, creativity, sensitivity, sexuality, intimacy, emotional well-being, and self-expression.

Whether we practice a spiritual connection with the chakras or not, my connection of my sacrum to trauma is common sense. I am a survivor of sexual abuse and complex trauma. It makes perfect sense for me to have stored my experiences of sexual trauma in this area of my body.

Making the connection of my mind and body gives me three things:

Awareness of how my body and mind work together
Validation of my body’s storage of this trauma until I could better process it
A chance to fully process these traumas, grieving openly and letting them go.

Now I can use this experience as I move forward in my own trauma recovery journey, as well as working with clients through painful processing experiences.

Letting go to move forward.

Really, that’s what it’s all about for me.

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Sometimes Getting Better Looks Like Getting Worse

kellywilsonwrites

31 Jul, 2023

Recently someone close to me said, “Sometimes getting better looks and feels like getting worse.”

I was intrigued by this statement, which resonated on a deep level. I let it roll around in my head and heart, very curious about it. Was this true?

This Certainly FEELS True

Two brown eggs suspended in a metal vise

For several months, I’ve been dealing with a painful and confusing set of issues with the lower half of my body.

Last January, I went to my doctor as well as the ER due to a very painful spot in my right lower abdominal area. This is where the appendix is located, and this is also where I’ve felt ovarian cramps before due to cysts. Naturally, I thought I was having some kind of ovarian cyst issue or that my appendix was starting to request to check out of the Kelly Hotel.

Using humor as a coping mechanism, I joked around that this issue was the fault of The Thunder From Down Under. I had gone with a bachelorette party to Vegas to see this band of scruffy bum-shakers, and I claimed that their dancing was so good that it was now causing my ovaries to explode.

It Wasn’t The Thunder From Down Under

While in the ER, I got a CT scan, which showed that…

There was nothing wrong.

Whew, talk about a trauma response to that bit of news. That old wound of not being believed about my abuse surged up from my gut. This pain from my childhood trauma, intertwining with the pain in my midsection.

“But I’m in so much pain,” I said to the ER doc, tears streaming down my cheeks.

“The pain is not being caused by an emergency situation happening inside your body,” he said.

I nodded. I understood, and still wondered, well, what do I do NOW?

Working at Getting Better

After a day or two, I headed back into my doctor. Now that we knew my ovaries or appendix weren’t exploding, she felt comfortable poking around my midsection and back.

The midsection revealed nothing, so I flipped over. She began poking around my lower back, which was extremely tender to the touch.

“I think this abdominal issue is from this area in your lower back,” she said. Sure enough, with some stretching and careful pressure, the pain decreased.

To the chiropractor I went, who confirmed that the pain was the result of nerves trapped in a mass of tight muscle fibers that were being pinched. I went to a series of adjustments to help work it out.

But Wait! There’s More!

So I was done, right?

No.

Because my lower back wasn’t the problem. We were treating the symptom, not the cause. Which works for awhile, until it doesn’t.

For months, I noticed that I had relief in my midsection, but that the pain had moved into different areas.

My hip muscles were sore and tight, along with my – ahem – glute muscles. No amount or kind of stretching helped at all.

Pretty soon, I had pain not only in my hips, but my butt shelf, legs, ankles, and feet. My mobility began to decline. I could no longer walk comfortably and my balance was off.

I was LEGIT SCARED.

I kept going to doctors and massage therapists and chiropractors until…

It Got Worse, and That Was a Good Thing

Part of a model skeleton with a sacrum and five vertebrates above it, all attached with yellow tubing.

I found a chiropractor who figured it out.

“This isn’t your lower back,” she said, “this problem is with your sacrum.”

I laid facedown on her table, and she poked around my sacrum, which was locked into place. “Hmm, no wonder you can’t move,” she said. She dug in, and I felt the muscles begin to relax.

After working with my back and legs, I sat up and she explained what was happening.

“All around your sacrum, muscles and ligaments attach at connection points,” she said. “During the pandemic, everything connecting to your sacrum got tighter and tighter and tighter. The sacrum is the point where everything is being pulled.”

“And that’s why I can feel everything being pulled in my legs and other parts of my body,” I said.

She nodded. “I’ve been seeing this a lot,” she said, “due to the pandemic lockdown in 2020.”

“Ah,” I said. That made a whole lotta sense. Now that we perceive more safety since 2020, our brains and bodies are starting to relax, expecting to process the trauma that we’ve been through.

Getting Better is Pain With a Purpose

Recently someone close to me said, “Sometimes getting better looks and feels like getting worse.”

The chiropractor has begun treating my sacrum and surrounding areas. As of right now, I’ve been getting treated for this for about a month.

The pain has been excruciating. The accompanying emotional flooding has been overwhelming. The pandemic hit me hard, and I stored a lot of emotion in my sacrum as it tightened.

Background of yellow electric sparks, like neurons, with opaque vertical rectangle over it and the words "Sometimes getting better looks and feelings like getting worse."

But here’s the thing. We are treating the cause, not just the symptoms. And the resulting pain has a purpose. The pain has forced me to pay attention, to slow down, and to process so that I can move forward.

My body is grieving the pandemic experiences – the fear, trauma, grief, sadness – and learning how to function without those stored emotions, without being completely locked up. This is painful, but the pain leaves as the emotions are processed.

Trauma and grief show up when and how they want to. Treating the symptoms and not the cause works…until it doesn’t.

And I would say that this statement is pretty spot on ~

Sometimes getting better looks and feels like getting worse.

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Heads Up! Small Fall Price Increase

kellywilsonwrites

27 Jul, 2023

Here’s my deal about money.

I offer:

what helps me feel good in my nervous system
what doesn’t build resentment
with open hands and an open heart
what will help me pay my rent and, eventually, pay me (I’m in year 2 of my business, this is the way it goes)

If you have been to the grocery store lately, then you know how shocking it is to try and buy your favorite brand of butter or chips or anything else. For example, I recently wanted some pecans for a recipe. A FOUR-OUNCE bag of pecan pieces (aka, 1/2 cup) was $4.99. There was a larger bag there…for $13.99.

OUCH. Prices for many items have doubled. And it’s not just at the grocery store.

The Small Fall Price Increase

The second anniversary for Map Your Healing Journey is early September. It’s been two years, and it’s time for a small price increase.

Here are the details:

Individual appointments and PTSD Remediation prices will remain the same.
Package prices will go up to $55 per session. For 6 sessions, this amounts to $330. For 8 sessions (Grief Recovery Method and PTSD Basics), this amounts to $440.

The price increases take effect on September 5, 2023. This means that there’s some time to take advantage of the current pricing structure if you are into packages.

I have learned A TON in the last two years of running this business. I’ve not owned and operated a small business OR a mental health practice before, and it has been a highly educational and enjoyable experience.

I am honored to do the work that I do. THANK YOU for your trust and for being part of this community.

Latest Posts

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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!

The Value of Reframing

kellywilsonwrites

24 Jul, 2023

Reframing has shown up quite a bit in my own trauma and grief recovery journey.

Two primary ways are through writing and comedy. Writing out my trauma and grief experiences helps me to process that what happened was real, to explore my emotions and feelings about it, and to see not just the terrible parts, but the positive parts as well.

Practicing comedy skills is literally taking something terrible and finding what’s funny about it. There’s a reason why “Comedy = Tragedy + Time” is a popular saying. I also discovered while taking and teaching comedy classes that practicing writing jokes from our trauma and grief experiences helped change the brain for the better in terms of resilience and being able to practice reframing on a regular basis, which rewires our brains.

What is Reframing?

One important fact to know about our brains is that they are hardwired for negativity. Reframing is a skill that helps balance out our innate tendency to go negative.

This is a survival skill that in the past quite literally kept us alive. To keep from getting eaten or otherwise killed, our brains had to be aware of dangers of all kinds. We continue to be super-sensitive to negative stimuli, and our brains naturally respond in stronger ways to negative events.

A great example of how this bias shows up now is how we are far more likely to remember someone insulting us versus someone giving us a compliment. It’s far easier to hear and remember the insult.

This is very important to remember when processing trauma and grief. Dwelling and spiraling only on the negative can keep us from moving forward in recovery, taking us down those well-worn neural pathways. Reframing can help us rewire our brains for the positive.

Reframing vs. Toxic Positivity

Toxic Positivity is NOT the same as reframing.

Toxic Positivity simply ignores and pretends that negative thoughts, emotions, feelings, and attitudes occur because we are human. This way of thinking believes that we should only feel “good” emotions and that a positive attitude – and only positive – can and will solve your problems.

That’s a lot of pressure. Especially as humans living in our world.

This kind of pressure leads us to ignore our emotions, bottle them up, feel guilt and shame over “not being positive enough,” pretend that everything’s fine, and invalidate feelings.

Reframing is a skill that observes events, emotions, and feelings for what they are, using pieces of those events, emotions, and feelings to balance out the negative.

A blond woman wearing sunglasses points to parts of a chair that recently dissolved beneath her

Like taking pieces of a broken table and making a chair out of it. All of the pieces are there and valid, we just made something that’s useful, positive, and more comfortable.

My Latest Reframing Opportunity Happened at My Ex’s House

This is an article I recently wrote for my column over at Sweatpants & Coffee. This awkward and embarrassing event was a perfect example of how I make my way in the world, why I feel so awkward in general, why I have an EXCELLENT sense of humor, and why I’m so good at reframing. Enjoy!

I mean what I say when I state that I am awkward and clumsy.

Some ungainly and embarrassing events in my life have included:

Running into a sliding glass door (BONK)
Spilling an entire glass of tea on myself (OW)
While driving a surrey, crashing us into the rear panel of a shiny white Lincoln Town Car (nobody was injured)

These three events happened in the course of one weekend.

Other events of my lifetime have included:

Falling into an underground ancient German baptismal pool (to be fair, the stairs were slippery and it was dark)
Getting hit by balls in various places on my body while “trying to play” (“hit by balls” = that’s what she said)
Rolling my ankle when stepping off my porch (regularly rolling my ankles, actually)
Stumbling down a step of about an inch in height and tearing a quad muscle (this was while traveling; I needed a wheelchair to get through the airport)
Falling down a flight of stairs wearing only a shirt and underwear (yes, I got a ride in the ambulance for that one, plus a super fun catheter to check my kidneys)
Sitting on an Ikea slat bed that promptly dissolved (to be fair, it said the weight limit was a hundred pounds, so that one’s on me)

I am LEGIT afraid of getting older as I am clearly a fall threat. I’m 48 years old, and I already take an exercise class for seniors at my community center that is built around maintaining good balance (and I’ll continue to take it until I leave this earth, probably from, you guessed it…falling).

So I Was At My Ex-Husband’s House

I recently encountered an outdoor dining set while attending my youngest son’s high school graduation party at my ex-husband’s home.

To reiterate, I was at my ex-husband’s home. At a party. Socializing with friends and family and acquaintances that I did not know well and/or haven’t seen in a long while. As in, these were the friends that he got in the divorce.

My ex-husband and his wife had purchased this table and chairs – officially known as the Brown 5-Piece Acacia Wood Rectangle Counter Height Outdoor Dining Set with White Cushions – in 2021.

And it was nice, I admit. The table had a smooth, slatted top with tall, sturdy legs that tapered.The matching four chairs looked innocuous. The white cushions covered the wooden seats, but the back of each chair was slatted and the legs were all solid, matching the table. Each piece was stained a lovely walnut color.

The seat did not turn or rotate in any way (I checked, due to my history of clumsiness), and it had a footrest. (Hint: if a chair needs a footrest, it’s too tall.)

Basically, the chair looked like a regular chair, except taller. Not like the threat it would invariably turn out to be.

The Home Depot website description claims that the table and chairs are “convenient” bar height, but even at my current height of 5’9”, I ask you, is ANY bar height chair really “convenient”?

No. No, it is not. But I digress...

Head Here to Read the Rest of the Article at Sweatpants & Coffee