Trauma from a relationship can come in many different forms.
Emotional and psychological trauma, betrayal trauma, abandonment trauma, trauma that impacts your confidence, self-esteem, and self-worth; and more.
Part of trying to heal from this type of trauma is giving yourself the space to grieve what you thought you had vs the reality that caused your trauma.
Because what causes trauma catches us off-guard; it's somewhere that we thought was safe but that turned out to be unsafe.
Because of this you emotionally grieve for what you thought your reality was, or who you thought someone was, but that your actual reality showed you wasn't real.
This grief comes from losing something or someone meaningful to you even though it turned out not to be real, because you thought it was real
So part of trying to arrive at a place where you can begin to heal this type of trauma, you have to allow yourself the space to grieve.
You have to feel sad, you have to feel the range of your emotions, you have to cry, you have to sit with your confusion, and sit with the pain.
The pain of grieving for the future you had imagined, but that you now don’t get to have.
The pain of grieving for the love you thought you had.
The pain of grieving for the time you lost by spending it with the wrong person.
The pain of grieving for the way you stopped trusting your own instincts.
The pain of grieving for the way you didn’t listen to others when they tried to warn you.
And the pain of grieving the emotional, physical, spiritual, and sometimes the financial and life costs of all of that.
Grieving hurts a lot, and that’s why most people try to avoid it.
They try to suppress it, they try to deny its existence, and they remove themselves emotionally to become emotionless in an attempt to carry on.
But when the grief from trauma isn’t dealt with; it will eventually turns into a deeper level of grief and trauma in the form of ongoing depression, anxiety, and unhappiness in your life because of your inability to trust again, and to feel safe again.
You can’t heal, what you don’t allow yourself to feel.
Facing the fears of working through your trauma along with acknowledging and accepting what really happened and how you really feel is one of the most difficult things to do.
But when you don’t allow yourself to grieve what you thought was real in order to face those fears, the trauma stays, and it slowly poisons you and your life.
It takes away your spirit, it steals your happiness, and it slowly poisons your mind with anger, bitterness, and resentment.
You end up trapped in a place where you keep reliving the past over and over again like it's a bad reoccurring dream.
No matter how difficult it is, when you make a commitment to heal yourself by facing your trauma; you heal your heart, you heal your soul, you heal your spirit, and you heal your life.
And that healing eventually turns into love, light, laughter, and happiness again.
You can heal your trauma, and you can heal your life.
But you have to understand your trauma by understanding and feeling your emotions.
You have to allow yourself to grieve what you thought was, and face the reality of what it really was.
Because you have to be able to feel safe again.
You have to be able to trust yourself again, so you can then trust others again.
But most of all, because you can't let what someone did to you or what they left you with stop you from enjoying the rest of your life.
It might be hard, but what's harder is not giving yourself the time and healing that you need...
~ Mark Smith