The host reacted to what he called “the urgent desperation” in my voice as I shared the words: “Just get started!”
He said, “The urgent desperation in your voice sounds almost like you are pleading out an invitation.”
Recently, I was on a broadcast speaking about trauma recovery. The host asked me a tough, but very important question: “What do you wish you could tell people to do more quickly in their healing process after working through your own trauma and helping others work through trauma for over 20 years?”
I had so many things going through my mind when he asked the question. But I zeroed in on what I would like to stand on the mountain tops and shout to all:
JUST GET STARTED!
I responded by nodding affirmatively to his comments and confirmed, “Your words are well spoken! I desperately want this for everyone!”
What is it that I am wanting for you if you are contemplating starting your journey? These five things I am sharing this week.
1. GET STARTED!
Second only to people doing weight loss programs, people tend to wait to start their trauma work at “just the right time.” After the holidays, next week, right after my birthday…
As I tell my weight loss clients, there is no time like the present.
As a matter fact, research shows that the longer we postpone starting a goal or a project, the longer it will take us to accomplish it.
At the moment of decision, there is a certain amount of momentum present. Ride the momentum! Get started!
Most people who delay their beginning in trauma recovery work, do so because of the dread of the process.
When people ask me “How bad will this be?”… They are usually a bit surprised at my response.
It is certainly true there is a process that requires work, focus, time, energy and dedication. And certainly, every moment of the process is not easy.
But compare that to the life you are living without recovery, and it’s not nearly as bad as that!
Do you know if you have unresolved trauma that it creates havoc, challenges and less than ideal moments on a daily basis? Sometimes it has just become a “way of life” and we are numb to it.
The work to get to an extraordinary life is hard work … yes! But not nearly as challenging or unfulfilling as the way you are living without recovery.
Get started today!
Mya was a 20-year-old who had been referred to me because of a very brutal date right. We met once, and she admitted that she needed help. However, she wanted to be just like her other friends in college. She wanted to study during the week, party hard on the weekends, and not be distracted.
It was 18 months when I saw her again. Her plan had gone off the rails. She wasn’t able to study as she once had. Light partying became hard drinking, resulting in a DUI.
Her first words to me were: “I wish I had just started on my recovery when I met you a year and a half ago.”
Although she had to redo one one of her semesters, she did the hard work.
She graduated with honors, and now has been admitted into a highly regarded, very exclusive graduate program, to do what she’s always dreamed of doing!
It’s never too late…
You may say well I haven’t found a coach or a counselor yet.
That’s OK.
Start your search today and do what you can do, starting today!:
- Start journaling
- Journal on what you’ve missed out on.
- Journal what you hope for.
- Journal what who hope to become in the process.
Just get started! Nike has given us all a powerful mantra:
“JUST DO IT!”
2. ALTHOUGH YOU WILL FEEL THAT YOU’RE A FRACTION OF THE PERSON YOU ONCE WERE, THE TRUTH IS THAT ALL OF THE GREATNESS IS STILL IN YOU. BUT YOU ARE LIKELY LIVING A FRACTION OF YOUR LIFE’S POTENTIAL WITH A FRACTION OF THE FULFILLMENT THAT YOU WERE MEANT TO HAVE.
We all feel as if we are a fraction of the person we once were after trauma.
And our circumstances and our life situations may even seem to support that thought.
But the real truth is, all the greatness that was ever in you is still there. The sooner you start your trauma work, the sooner it will come alive again.
Not only is it still there, but as it is lying dormant within you, it is multiplying.
So your fear that you “lost it” is simply untrue. All of the greatness and more is still within you, waiting to be unburied from the rubble of the trauma.
Ryan came to me in the first month of COVID after he had lost his position. He admitted that he lost the position due to his use/misuse of alcohol.
He had experienced a traumatic divorce where he had lost all visitation rights with his children. All he knew to do was to numb the pain away. So he drank “liquid numb me out” every day, starting at noon.
He had lost all visitation rights with his children as a result of a third DUI, with his children in the car with him.
He had basically been staying home, drinking his life away for two years.
When he had learned that his wife had had an affair with their pastor, he had begun to drink in insane quantities. And in his crisis of faith, alcohol was all he could fine to soothe him. And the more the better. Resulting in DUIs, and the loss of his children.
Of course, he felt worthless when he arrived in my office. He had lost everything, and basically wasted two years of his life in isolation, drinking.
I assured him that all of the greatness that was ever in him was still there, and waiting to blossom forth.
He began his recovery work, and very soon began to believe in himself again.
As he grew in his sobriety, he secured the best job he had ever had, and returned to court to get visitation with his children, which was granted.
It was only a short time later that his faith was restored, and he reconnected with his high school sweetheart. As he was finishing his trauma recovery, they were married in a sweet ceremony on the beach.
They have found a home on the beach, where he works from home looking out over the ocean. The icing on the cake is a wife who adores him. And his children who are now with him half the time.
The greatness is still in you my friend!
The last time you waste, the better!
Many coaches and therapists leave this piece, reviving the greatness within you, to the very end of the recovery process. I like to begin to uncover it at the very beginning. It is so refreshing, so helpful, and reminds you of who you really are.
Whether you do your process with a coach or therapist, or by working through what books, or attending workshops … begin to look for that greatness in you right away.
It may be overshadowed, it may be tucked away. But I can assure you that it is still there … Multiplied!
3. HELP OTHERS!
I have never once done trauma recovery with anyone who did not emerge from the process wanting to help others. I’m sure you are the same.
Most people believe that they cannot begin to help others until they are perfectly healed, restored and whole!
The truth is, as long as you are one step in front of others in their trauma recovery, you can help them.
If all you do is to encourage them to get started, that is some of the best help that you can give anyone.
The second thing that you can do is to encourage them. One of the greatest needs when we are in trauma recovery is ongoing and sincere support.
As you give that to someone, you will see your own recovery skyrocket, and you will see someone else deeply touched because of your encouragement.
Carolyn had an amazing career in the helping profession. More in the arena of physical health.
She had experienced a traumatic family situation years before when there was a heinous murder in her family.
Like all young professionals and moms, she was horrified but had to “hold things together” for the sake of her kids and her job. She grieved during the short season of the memorial service. Then she tucked it away, hoping it would somehow resolve itself.
It wasn’t until the emotional stress of keeping it buried began taking a physical toll on her body (making it a struggle to continue to work) that she came to me.
In one of our first sessions, she noted that almost all of her clients that she was doing medical massage with, had experienced some kind of trauma. As their memories were released during the cranial sacral massage process, they would sob.
She said that the hardest part was noting how it tapped into her own trauma each time they experienced theirs.
Shortly into her powerful recovery, she commented that she wished there was some way she could help her clients with their trauma.
With great encouragement, she took my recommendation to become a trauma coach, and find a way to combine the cranial sacral massage process with trauma recovery.
She began by just speaking words of encouragement to her patients. Then as she became proficient as a trauma coach, she began combining the two modalities.
I’ve never seen a more powerful place to help others with trauma from.
How can help others? Maybe it will not be as direct as hers … But your words of encouragement can help!
Get started right away helping others. It’s the natural and powerful accelerator for your healing!
4. UNTIL YOU HEAL YOUR TRAUMA, YOU WILL LIKELY HURT PEOPLE THAT LOVE YOU. YOU WILL ALREADY HAVE AMENDS TO MAKE, BUT GET STARTED ASAP TO HAVE LESS AMENDS TO MAKE.
Please understand that you don’t necessarily hurt people because you want to, intend to, or because you’re just a mean person.
Because we were all hurt with trauma, when we hold all that hurt inside, it sneaks out. Or sometimes it explodes out.
None of us is proud of that. None of us mean for it to become the way we live our lives.
And it’s really not who we are … But’s it is what is packed down inside of us.
No matter how hard we try to not allow it to pop out, it simply leaks out.
When Little Big Town released their song, “Better Man” … I knew that the lyrics were written by someone who loved another with unresolved trauma. These lyrics are typical to what I hear:
“I can hear it now
You’re talking down to me
Like I’ll always be around
You push my love away
Like it’s some kind of loaded gun.”
How hard it is to be made to feel that way by someone you love!
Kevin had experienced multiple traumas as a child. Early in his adult life, he found medication for it, and it was called “wine.“
His whole life story became about drinking the next glass of wine. Two divorces, a sabotaged career, and some 40 years later, he looked in the mirror and saw that he had pushed every great opportunity, and every great relationship away.
He was the living proof of Little Big Town song…
- Talking down to women who loved him
- Assuming they would never leave
- Pushing away the love they tried to pour on him like a loaded gun
Although he had failed to see it or recognize it, he had sabotaged and done damage to relationships of all kinds through the years.
Even though he had been a celebrity in the arena of the arts, and everyone considered him a friend, he lived a life of total unaccountability.
Now he is on a path of recovery, in a marriage where he is adored, and looking beyond himself in order to heal the damage left in his wake.
He recently said to me after almost 50 years of denying his addiction: “I am not an addict because I cannot stop and cannot walk away. I am an addict because I never, ever want to.“
Despite not wanting to, he is doing it now! And cleaning up the trail of destruction he left behind.
Making his way to greater things than he ever dreamed of.
Once again, none of us wants to hurt those we love.
But not only do we do it, but we are blind to it. Making it even more difficult on the ones we are hurting.
If they point it out to us, we are likely to deny it, explain it, justify it, or compare out.
(Comparing out is when we can think of someone who does worse things than ourselves, therefore making ours minimal).
The sooner you get recovery onboard, the sooner you will see these patterns. And be able to turn them around.
Sometimes the substances or processes we reach far to numb out the pain of our unresolved trauma also hurt others.
The drinking, the porn, the over eating, the obsession with news and sports… Any of it can leave the people you love feeling empty.
The sooner you get started in your recovery, the sooner you will come to recognize the patterns and all you’ve done, and make the appropriate amends.
A really important reason to get started immediately!
The sooner the start of the recovery, the less trail of devastation there is left behind.
5. REALIZING YOUR BEST DAYS ARE TRULY AHEAD.
Trauma leaves a dark cloud over us, and when we think about best days, we look backwards to moments where we saw the sun shining on us.
But when we look forward, all we can see is the cloud cover continuing above us.
Until we begin our recovery process, we normally have no sense or belief that our sun will shine again.
The truth is, it will. I promise.
Maybe not the first day, or even the first week you start.
But when you begin your recovery process, the clouds began to thin away.
How can I possibly say that your best days are still ahead?
Because although the wonderful parts of our lives go dormant after trauma, they are not dead. In their dormancy, they are cocooned away.
No matter your age, no matter how many mistakes you have made, no matter how much hurt you have caused with your unresolved trauma, there is a chrysalis experience available to you.
Just like the butterfly, as its wings gain strength, and begin to press on the outer circle of the cocoon, the cocoon always gives way. And something more beautiful than you ever dreamed takes flight.
That’s in you. I have seen it again and again with clients. It is so moving. I. too, have experienced it personally.
Your best days are yet ahead, and the sooner you begin your process, the sooner the wings inside the cocoon will begin to gain strength.
Every person I wrote about this week never believed that there were good days in front of them, much less their best days. But they would all tell you that it is true, and that they are grateful beyond words that they had the courage and the strength to enter the healing process and complete it to full restoration.
I don’t share often about my life, but trauma recovery did not come easily to me either. Because no one had developed the techniques and tools that I use regularly at that time. I pretty much had to figure it out on my own.
I had amazing counselors and mentors: Dr. John Bradshaw, Pia Mellody, Dr. Patricia Love, Dr. Larry Lea, Tony Robbins, Dr. Harville Hendrix and Dr. Helen Hunt Hendrix. For all of them, I am ever so grateful. With their help, I began to put together pieces of trauma recovery, and found my own chrysalis experience.
In recent times, as I have realized how many coaches and counselors misunderstand trauma treatment, and how many people are searching for trauma help and coming up short handed, I began to do another layer in my own trauma work.
Although my life has been quite awesome particularly over the past 20 years, I realize that some choices and decisions had cut off some of my beliefs about what I could do in making a contribution to the world in this arena of trauma healing.
I engaged in the work, and began reprogramming some disempowering beliefs, kicking down roadblocks and reigniting my passion.
In the process my amazing counselor and mentor said some words to me that healed a major trauma piece. I was speaking of a relationship where I knew that despite my very best efforts, pouring all of love out, I simply had “not been enough.”
As always, with great compassion and gentleness, she said something powerfully transformational: “It’s not that you were ‘not enough’ for him, it’s that you were “too much“ for him.”
“You live your life at a high level of excellence, integrity, and desire to influence others for good. It was simply more than he could process.”
Just those words blew great winds back into my sails that will launch me forward into a new project of helping people with trauma.
These will truly be the best days of my life!
You too will fly again!
Do these things as soon as possible … accelerating your process, strengthening your wings, and providing power winds for your sails!
You matter! Your recovery matters! You contribution matters!
