Trauma Breakdown 2: Reclaiming your life after trauma

In this episode, we go through the process of healing after trauma. This process can start within days or years of traumatic events. You might have heard many different ways to "heal" from traumatic events, but how do you "do" it? What can help or hurt the healing process? Let's talk about that. 

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Transcript

Welcome to “It’s Like This” podcast, your common sense mental and spiritual talk show. My name is Dr. Uejin Kim, a dual board-certified psychiatrist from Texas. In this podcast, I explain mental and spiritual concepts with fun analogies, real stories, and positive messages so you can not just survive but thrive. My goal for you is to gain understanding, acceptance, and healing. That you can know your worth, and live the life that you are meant to live. If you want that as much as I do, hit that subscribe button. Let's listen to today's episode!

In this episode, we will be entering the latter phase of trauma breakdown. I will be talking about steps that we need to take to reclaim your lives when traumatic events happen. I wanted to release this episode after the conversation I had with Jenny Lee because that episode was kind of that percolating episode about talking about cultural trauma, or trauma in your family. The steps that we can take to undo those cycles, and reclaim your life from that history of generational trauma. That helped me finish and make this episode's content complete. In the trauma breakdown two episodes prior, we talked about traumatic events, what are the definitions of trauma, what are the components of trauma, traumatic events that change our life course, and talked about the spiritual implications of traumatic events. Trauma leaves us wondering what do I deserve? Did I deserve this evil event in my life? Do I deserve hope and healing? In this episode, I'm going to be going through the steps and process of healing after traumatic events. Personally, I believe that no one deserves trauma, abuse, or neglect. I know that it happens quite frequently. So in this episode, we're going to be talking about steps of healing and growth after traumatic events. So that will eventually lead you to freedom.I wanted to mention a few caveats about this process.

Number one, you cannot rush it. I'm a person of utmost efficiency. So when I was going through the healing process, I dug deep into my wounds really fast hoping that that would get me faster to healing. What it did at times admit it made it worse. It made my emotions like a roller coaster so intense that affected how I was parenting my kids or how I was relating with my husband. That was when I reached out to get help, professional help. I needed to pace myself because I never knew how to pace myself. So I needed someone to slow me down and adequately finish each step. I want you to learn from my mistakes, and please get professional help when you're going through this process.

My second caveat is that you cannot skip a step, you cannot rush to step 4 if you have not completed steps 1, 2, or 3. Again, I've done it before, and it backfired on me. So please learn from my mistakes and get professional help. Who can guide you step by step?

Third, the camera might sound like it's going against this step two, but all of these steps can happen at the same time. Also, it can be repeated in layers. And I think as I'm explaining the 1 2 3 in my kind of makes sense at the end of it all, but give yourself grace to accept the emotions and thoughts and processes as they arise. It might be overwhelming and it might be steps 1, 2, and 3 together at the same time, but as you can get the hang of it, you will be more and more comfortable to handle the intensity of these emotions. So let's go to the steps.

Number one is grieve adequately. I emphasize on adequately because sometimes I say "Oh, I aggrieved. I got it. moving on!" I didn't know the art of, knowing what was adequate grieving. I'm gonna give you kind of tips and tricks that I learned in my training, how I'm treating my patients, or even going through my own stuff. So practically, you probably would need to make a timeline of all the traumatic events that happened at your life. I will say give yourself full freedom to name anything trauma. Granted, you can call it big letter T trauma or small letter T trauma, you're making your own timeline. It doesn't have to meet the certain criterias. This is your life. If you need to, if you think that you need to grieve it, write it on the timeline doesn't matter. And also, I will say that, in that timeline, put major life events to even good events can be very stressful. It can help you note the patterns of what it was like. So in that timeline, not only just trauma, but major life events.

What do I mean by grieving? Grieving is not just going through the painful memories of the past. Sometimes grieving is for past events, but also present events, how that past event affected you. Also future events, future of like loss potential of the relationship. This is important. A lot of times because if a parent-child had pretty traumatic relationship, and let's say the child has their own kid. For in your healing journey, you might have to cut off or the relationship is less than best. And you might have to grieve for your child not having that healthy and loving present grandparents. So this is what I mean by grieving for the loss potential of a relationship, and also grieving for your lost past efforts. That never fruition. And it does really suck when you put your effort and time and resources into something and never see the fruit of it. Never see the product of it is lost into the thin air. You have to grieve that because a lot of energy, a lot of your energy, was spent to sustain or heal that relationship. And it never happened. So grieve that as well. Grieve for that little you going through these events. A lot of times when I talked to my patients who went through trauma, they stopped that. Yeah, it was sexual assault. Yeah, it happens. It happened, or it happens to everybody. They sterilize it a little bit of not describing any further than generic terms. In that grieving process, a lot gets lost. This is a pretty intense exercise. This is why I recommend professional therapy, but grieving and going back to little you. Putting yourself into a little you shoes, not knowing a lot of things that you know. Now not being aware of a lot of things that now. What was that event like for you, and it adds really color to it. It adds depth to it. This is what adequately grieving might sound like. Also, grieving without judgment, or minimizing or calculating how intense that trauma was. A lot of times when somebody went through traumatic events, and they shared that traumatic events to a family member/friends, you most likely you have been measured. Your traumatic events could have been measured, or quantified to somewhat sense. Like, you might hear like, "Oh, you know, that's not the worst thing. That could have happened! It could have been worse, or imagine what happens to kids in Africa." It all became kind of relative terms to the point that your traumatic event doesn't really matter. But in this time, when you're grieving adequately of your own life events. There could be a lot of narrations or voices inside your head telling you, "This is no big deal!" "Why are you making a big deal?" Kind of tune that out a little bit. I would say explore with your therapist: where did that voice come from? You know, because a lot of times, those voices are in our heads for us to survive, be tough, and be stronger. Because grieving in front of people or even to yourself means that you're "weak"

So, grieve adequately without judgment or minimizing. What does this grieving adequately process? Why is that important? Why is it the first step? Grieving adequately, I believe, is it puts the kind of emotional life playing field evenly. A lot of times, when traumatic events happen, we talk about how it has a spiritual implication "Did I deserve this?" "Why did this happen to me?" "Do I matter? There's a lot of confusion here. When you when you grieve adequately, It kind of answers that spiritual question of "Do I matter?" Yes, I do matter. "Did I deserve this?" No, you did not deserve it because I'm grieving for that event that happened to you.

So, in the sense of reclaiming the value of yourself, your emotions, your journey, your reactions, and actions that happen from it. Now some people might be kind of like, "Is that enabling selfishness? Look at me. Attention seeking behavior." I think resetting the life potential for you and everybody because, like I said, I don't think trauma, abuse, and neglect should happen to anyone. But it happens. So for those that happened, I think adequate grieving would set the record straight to the ideals that abuse and neglect should not happen. Another question to reset the record of everybody's worth is to imagine if what you went through, traumatic life events happened to your loved ones, wouldn't you grieve adequately for them? And the truth is, your worth as a human being is just the same as the other person. So again, this is not attention-seeking. We always have to compare to those who have less or those who went through a worse trauma. I don't think that's true. I think grieving adequately sets the record straight. That ideally, nobody should go through what you or someone else who went through abuse went through. I think grieving adequately answers a spiritual question of, "What do I deserve?" I think you deserve an abuse, neglect, and trauma-free life. And that's ideal for everyone for you, the people next to you, and even people of your perpetrator who went through trauma themselves. I think grieving adequately, focusing on you, and what you went through just sets the record straight. That in an ideal world, nobody should be going through what you went through.

Now, the second step is setting boundaries. Boundaries is a popular word nowadays. I'm glad that it is because I think we can always use more boundaries, but sometimes it gets stretched to enabling unhealthy coping skills and stuff like that. But what do I mean by setting boundaries and is marking your safe space? You know, for a person who went through traumatic events, especially early stage, you didn't have a safe space. Because even if you thought that you had a safe space and said, "Hey, I got abused. You got gaslighted." or you got told "Oh, that's not abuse. That's just the way it is, right?" So there's really no safe space when you are a victim of trauma. So setting your safe space is also an art. There are many ways to go about it. And I'm going to be mentioning some of the options of setting boundaries.

First is going no contact with the perpetrator, or you can use the gray rock method. Making minimal contact, and not giving emotional effort into the relationship. So if they're wanting to talk about their life or something, you just say, "Oh, yeah, that's cool." Just emotionally removing yourself from the relationship is limiting the duration and frequency of conversations or meeting them. No longer being intimate, not thinking that you owe them to update them on the important stuff, and daily stuff. Involving them in just the decision-making process for your life. Also, saying, "No, you don't treat me like that!" It will be making statements like that.

One of my patients. We were talking about boundaries. He kind of mentioned, "I'm building myself a bubble. It's a comfort zone. So I don't like to talk to anybody, and go out to social setting. I know that I should come out of this bubble." I took that metaphor and told him, "Well, I think we should all have bubbles, we should all have our safe space, to relax and process kind of what's happening. But over time, as you get better, these bubbles should be porous. As if they should have holes in them so that you can allow other people's influence on you. You reach out and you socialize and connect with other people. And over time, it will be changing that sensitivity of what you let in and what you let out will be controlled. Depending on how well you are becoming. So setting boundaries, is reclaiming the safe space that you never had."

So grieving adequately was a first step.That really answered the question of we are setting the bar of ideals of "I deserve trauma-free life. I deserve abuse-free life. I deserve neglect-free life just like anyone else, including our perpetrator." Right? So we're kind of setting the bar high of what the potential ideal is for everybody. Now you're resetting the record to stop the cycle of things being taken away from you by setting boundaries. So let's say that your husband hits you all the time. Instead of letting him hit you, now you're setting the boundaries of removing yourself from the home seeking help. Saying, "You don't hit me like that." Right? So setting boundaries is just stopping the cycle is a very tangible, very real, practical action of this cycle of trauma, neglect, and abuse will not continue. And what it leads to is building a fence. You're gonna see the reactions of perpetrators, or even other people who are on the sidelines react to you building a fence. You build a fence, not just for giggles. You build a fence for other people to respect, right?. This is gonna be a very difficult step, especially that there was no fence in between two houses.

Now, third step of this healing process is actually to heal yourself by parenting yourself. When Patients with traumatic events history come to me. I already sense when they come in that they are tired, they're really tired, because they've been carrying this burden. Maybe to prove their worth after a traumatic event, or to prove that they're not like the perpetrators in any shape or form. So there's a lot of pressure that they've been carrying their whole life, and they kind of come to me at different stages in the 20s 40s, or even 60s. A lot of times, they have already done the grieving part. They have already done the setting the boundaries part, but they have really difficulty with healing part. And I think the reason why is, is that there's not a parent voice. A loving parent voice inside your heart and inside your head that sets the record straight. You can stop the future trauma, but what do you do with all the consequential hurts and wounds in your heart. If a trauma happened by your parent, when you're a child, a lot of times you were told, and you were placed in a position where you had to parent be a parent, to your parents. For example, a kid with alcoholic parents who are not functioning or maybe barely functioning keeping the roof over your head and giving you food and clothes. But emotionally, they were not there. They might have been abusive or just neglectful. A child had to parent himself at a young age to comfort himself, to give him motivations to live to encourage or praise. Or sometimes a child can not adequately do all of that for himself. So they live with less than that. So a lot of times a child had to grow up, and they don't know what loving parent voice is like, because a child's voice in that stage was the best voice that they had. And I want to just pause here and just kind of comment on the being tired and fatigue of a person that went through a traumatic event. When you are a child, and you had to parent your parents and understand them and empathize with them and take care of them in any shape or form. Without adequate training, or even role models. You're just kind of makeshift parenting, the parent figures that was supposed to parent you. And then you grow up with lack of love and warmth and cushion and comfort that everybody needed to have during their childhood. You're tired and now you're dealing with lack of childhood and lack of parenting in your adulthood. And it's really hard to just stop and here you have to parent yourself. And I think this is where it's key to go back to step number one and adequately grieve the childhood that you'd never had. And I think this is a really important step to kind of cure that fatigue. Just to relax and just give yourself grace. And then I think when you're charged up a little bit. I think you can go to the healing part.

So this is what I told one of my patients is that you've been carrying a lot of burdens that was your parents to carry and that was yours to carry. But what we're going to do in this session is we're going to take away. We're going to look and explore all the stones that are in your backpack. And some might have your mom's name on it. Some might have your dad's name on it. Some might have your name on it. But you know what, we're gonna throw away the responsibilities and the consequences of your parents from your backpack. And you're only gonna carry what is yours. And 100% guarantee, the new load is going to be so much lighter than what you've been carrying. So when you're in that situation, and you and your healing is important. Let's say that you're an adult now, maybe 20s, you know what healthy loving parent voices like, it might be awkward to hear. But it's important to kind of validate your feelings and narratives. You know, instead of that voice, we already talked about like, "Oh, there's worse things that could happen." Stop that voice and be that loving parent voice for yourself, "I'm sorry, that happened, that should not happen." And you know what your truth, your narrative stands here. So talk to yourself like that. And giving yourself options that you're okay with. So for example, let's say that your parent was a perpetrator, and they're old, and they're sick. You might be in a weird position where you never got parented by now, legitimately. You might have to parent your elderly parents who abused you. What would, is gonna kind of sound confusing, but what are some loving parent voice?

Who will help you navigate these tough choices? I will say kind of things like, well, what are some of the options that you're okay with? What are some things that you're not okay with and giving yourself options. And just choosing the options that you're okay with don't extending yourself past what you're able to give or focus on pay attention to your needs and wants. So for example, you know, I'm going to be making an announcement, but I'm going to be focusing on being a mom. I wanted a gym membership, so that I can get away from kids and work on my health and stuff too. There's plenty of options for gyms, but I wanted to kind of splurge myself to get a nicer gym membership. And I, at this point, in my healing journey I can allow myself to have a little splurge. And I think before me would have been really hard to justify that kind of splurge for myself. So focusing and paying attention to what you want, and what you need; that's very important. And that's what loving parent would do.

So as you heal, parent yourself, and understanding that you deserve the loving parent voice, you'll be amazed at over time. Just like I shared what you allow yourself, to have to feel, to want, you know, to feel like you deserve. And this is the part where creating adequately sets the bar of ideals for every human being on Earth, including yourself, setting boundaries, stops, the trauma stops the deficit that you're feeling. And you were experiencing healing and parenting yourself is that hard work where you're building emotional assets. Where you're no longer in the negative, you're no longer in the debt part, you're building yourself, equity, emotional equity by allowing yourself to be parented by yourself. Now, the important part here, and we'll talk about in the next step is that you're parenting yourself. You did not ask somebody else to parent you. And this is a cycle that continues traumatic cycle. Okay, this is what I mean, when a person is abused. You know, let's say that physical abuse by domestic violence, right? They go relationship to relationship, seeking that healing, protection, and parenting from someone else. And a lot of times, this is very overwhelming responsibility for the new partner to fulfill. And actually, I would even add, that is not his or her responsibility to do that. I think it is your responsibility to parent yourself to heal and to get help. And there's a lot of experts and professional help that you can get. And I think this is very important. They are the experts and professionals to guide you to include this loving parent voice inside your head instead of that critical, self negating voice. So don't expect other people to parent yourself. It is a hard work, but only you can do it for you to be fully independent. So imagine this is that if you're in a debt, you're not gonna get another debt and loans to fill that that because that cycle will continue. That will be kind of foolish cycle of replacing one loans with the other. This is just as foolish, emotionally, when you're trying to heal and parent yourself from other relationships. There has to be a relationship with yourself.

So last step is forgive, forgive to be free. So when I was going through the healing journey, I saw a lot of limitations of secular approach of trauma work. And I'm not saying all secular work does this, but when I kind of listened to that video and videos of no contact, gray walling, gray stoning. You feel better because you're no longer being abused or neglected and voluntarily, but I was just kind of like, "So what this is leave me?" And sometimes re-entering that memories of trauma just made me more mad and upset. It didn't really feel free. So, I think I reached the conclusion where I had to shift the gears a little bit and enter into forgiving. And I just want to clarify on a definition of forgiveness. When people told me, "Oh, you need to forgive." that really used to make me so mad. And I think it makes a lot of people mad when they hear it when they're not ready. Okay, people get defensive, and I got defensive. And things I hear. And I said is, "I did forgive them." And they continue to use me or abused me. I did empathize with what they went through to understand what they did. But where's justice in that, or they will change or they won't even apologize? So how can I forgive them?

And I totally get it. I've been there. But I think what I didn't know was the definition of forgiveness. Forgiving the Bible is not actually continued the abuse or neglect, it's not just to turn the other cheek, and let them abuse you because they don't know better. And I was told, and I by many, many people. Many, many of YouTube videos. That this was the term. But actually, it's not actually. It's a business technical term. It is to forgive or erase the past debt that they owe you. And let's explore that definition. Because I think it'd be very important for us to really forgive. So a few things here. They owed you. So they did you wrong? If you are going by black and white, balance sheet of records of wrongs? They did you wrong. And I'm not saying that they didn't do you wrong, they took away something from you that they shouldn't have, or they couldn't pay back. Right. So let's just be clear, they did wrong. You transaction of forgiveness is not really dependent on the ability for that person to pay the debt. So you're not erasing because they couldn't pay it. Or you're not erasing even though they can pay it. I think the fact that you're is erasing the debt has less on the person who owes you, but more on the person that is erasing the debt. And I'll definitely explore this later. It's a one-sided transaction to erase the past. this is not a jail-free card for all future debt and loans that they're going to take from you. If someone borrowed your money from you, and they didn't pay. And let's say that you forgave them and you are erase their debt. And they asked for money again, if you lend more money to them that's on you, not them. Okay? So again, forgiveness is erasing the past debt. But why would you want to erase a past debt, anways? And this motivation can be very personal. And I would like to say that there could be a lot of personal reasons why you're gonna forgive, but don't let it be manipulation or guilt. Because that is a horrible way to enter into forgiveness. And that's not really forgiveness.

But whatever your motivation to forgive is, you have to be financially. Emotionally financially independent and stable enough to erase the debt. Like you don't need that money to make your living. So that's why you're able to erase the debt. So this is really cool thing about act of forgiveness. A lot of times I was told that is a "to-do" step, right. You have to forgive you have to do the forgiving. But I don't think forgiveness should be just like a checklist to-do thing. It actually is a result of healed heart.

So like I mentioned, you're able to forgive because you don't need that money that they borrow from you. You don't need that apology or writing their wrongs. You could they could think bad of you or never to change, but that doesn't change your balance. Bank balance of emotional stability and quality of life. They could manipulate you again or try to gaslight you to borrow more money from you. But you act out a grounded business wise, sound mind, not your emotions of guilt are being manipulated, okay? And you could even give them more money. You know, if they need the money, you can give them more resources, but it's gonna be charitable. Freely given money with no strings attached, no more "I owe you"'s. No more record keeping. Just you giving your resources, whether as time effort or energy, because you can afford to lose it. So again, act of forgiveness is not an act. It's actually a result of healed, stable heart, you don't need that apology, you don't need that money. You don't need that sense of justice from them, you already got it. Because you're good. Your emotional bank account is full. You're independent. You're making the right decisions out of your executive function, not those weird strings attached emotional state. So see how free the sounds. I know you can get there, and I know that you will. They're not the target to get your money back. You're not going to lend them any more money. But your not going to ask them for money anymore, okay? Because you're going to build your bank account.

Slowly, but surely. It's going to be your emotional bank account. You're going to be sound. You're going to be independent. You're going to be free to share because you're going to have surplus. And it's a hard work of prioritizing yourself and being aware of yourself and doing the hard work with the expert and professionals who have done this work many, many, many times before with other clients. I really want you to prioritize your healing process and get the help that you need.

So in summary, "It's Like This", we talked about the four steps of healing after traumatic events happened. To grieve adequately set boundaries and marking your safe space, heal and parenting yourself, and forgive to be free. So thank you so much for staying until the end of this episode. I really hope that you felt that sense of hope that I have for you. And this is possible. And let me just tell you, in my life, for me to even say this. I could not have imagined me embodying this point, like few years ago, even a few months ago. And I'm embodying it! I'm living it, and I know that it's possible for you. So if you need help, just reach out to restorepsychiatrymd@gmail.com or just reach out to your local therapist or psychiatrists in your area that you will really vibe well with. So don't give up on the hope you deserve that healing, and you can get there. So thank you so much, and have a great day!