Show Notes:

As we kick off this new year, we are also kicking off a new series here on Behind the Line and covering a topic we haven’t tackled before. Back in the fall I put out a question to my followers on social media, and I was so grateful for the thoughtful responses. The question was simply, what would you like to hear about on the podcast? And yes, for those of you who listen but aren’t following me on facebook and Instagram, I do connect there and engage with your questions, feedback and I love getting your thoughts and input as we continue to shape this resource and build a community of amazing helpers together. So please do jump over and follow me @lindsayafaas, and reach out with your feedback. I work really hard to always respond to every comment, question, and DM. Ok, back to our topic for today – one of the fantastic responses I received to my question was this: what do you do when you are “done” the work of trauma therapy? 

Such a great question, and I am so glad someone was brave enough to ask it. And when I sat with it I came up with some other questions, like how do we know when we’re done? What helps us know that we’ve done the work and are out the other side of processing and healing our trauma? And this is what we’re going to be talking about today and next week, in a two part breakdown of how we know we’re done the work; and then we’ll spend the rest of January tackling what we do once we recognize ourselves as done the work. How do we maintain what we’ve accomplished and protect ourselves from finding our way back into old patterns and recreating experiences that hurt us. If you know anyone who has faced trauma, this might be a great series to share with them too.

For some who listen religiously, this will be a recap – but I want to make sure we all have this important background understanding. When trauma is experienced, it is experienced and interpreted through our stress centre. Our brain activates a very specific region that handles the traumatic event or events and does what needs doing to survive it. The upside to this is that your stress center is very good at survival. The downside is that it’s not so great at a lot of other things. When the traumatic event is experienced with high stress activation, the memory of that event can get locked into that same region of the brain, which, by the way, does not have access to a clock or sense of time. This is not the part of your brain meant to hold memories, everyday kinds of memories get stored in other regions that have greater access to context and a sense of time, which is why they will over time fade a bit and start to feel old and distant. Traumatic memories, locked into this region that has no clock, will tend to feel very real and we can remember them in a way that feels like reliving the experience as a result. The goal of trauma processing is to help the brain relocate the memory to its usual memory storage banks by helping the brain to contextualize and make meaning of the events in a way that lets it off the hook for our fundamental survival. 

When I work with clients, there are a number of things I am looking and listening for that let me know we’ve made some really substantial progress and that we have moved through the bulk of their trauma. 

1.      You are not ignoring, avoiding and distracting a substantial amount of the time. This doesn’t mean that you don’t ever scroll your phone, or that you don’t ever delay a decision – but these are done with intention. When we are in our trauma, we will mindlessly engage in these ways of tuning out. We will actively avoid anything that triggers our trauma, we will avoid conflicts that make us feel uncomfortable or reignite our insecurities, we will distract and numb from our discomfort. When we have healed our trauma, we will turn toward the discomfort and be curious about what is making us uncomfortable. We will face it, engage with it, and not let it get in our way or cause more harm. We interact with discomfort, and lean in to our newfound skills and resources to manage through it to see that we can do hard things, we can navigate hard conversations, we can deepen connection through healthful conflict. We don’t let things shut us down. We may make choices to shut ourselves down for short periods of time to reset, reconnect with our needs, consider our intentions and next steps, but then we re-engage. It is done with purpose and mindfulness. 

2.      Coping feels established and stable. We have routines and supports firmly in place. We know about our own needs, we are comfortable getting curious about ourselves, and we are willing to intervene in caring ways to ensure our own ok-ness. We have a hit list of things we know help us feel more steady and secure. We regularly engage in thoughtful actions that gesture caring and meaning to our own selves. We have awareness of when we’re feeling off, and are prepared with tools to become curious about this and engaged in meeting our emerging and evolving needs. We don’t just engage in coping as a response to a bad day or hard experience, we are engaged in it constantly in big and small ways to preventatively support our own stability.

3.      We are aware of our common triggers, the feeling of being triggered, and have a tool kit to support us. We understand that triggering can happen, even when we have done a lot of healing work. Triggering is the bodies way of trying to keep us safe. We value our body’s effort, but recognize that not all triggers mean unsafety, and we have tools to support our body in calming down and finding safety again. We know what things are likely to trigger us and approach these things with gentleness toward ourselves and compassionate understanding for our body’s efforts at self-protecting. We know what our bodies feel like when triggered, how to assess and know what’s happening for us. When we experience this, we use grounding tools to help our brain recalibrate and trust that this process will gradually continue to embed new networks that promote a sense of safety where once we felt unsafe. 

Episode Challenge:

Sit with the three indicators of healing outlined in today’s show. Where are you at in your process of healing? What work is yet to be done? What are areas that may need some attention to continue to move you in the direction of healing and posttraumatic growth??

Additional Resources:

Self-assess indicators for burnout and related concerns by using our free Beating the Breaking Point Indicators Checklist & Triage Guide. 

Register for Beating the Breaking Point, our top-rated self-paced resilience training program tailor made for First Responders and Front Line Workers to protect against (and recover from) Burnout and related concerns (eg. Organizational Stress, Compassion Fatigue and Vicarious Trauma).

Check out some of our related episodes…

-        S1E15-18 about processing (this was specific to the pandemic but has principles that can be applied more broadly) 

-        S2E5-8 covers information on therapy 

-        S2E22-25 talks about trauma triggering and managing reactions to triggers 

-        S3E1-4 on alternative therapeutic approaches to healing when talk therapy hasn’t been enough 

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