I grew up in a home filled with trauma, abuse, addiction and pain. Recovery has been a long road, and I am still learning. When I first decided it was time for a change, I quickly became terrified. Maybe you can relate.
Maybe you come from a similar background and the thought of changing your life is too much to consider. I encourage you to challenge your thinking in this.
It’s not too much, you do deserve to heal.
You might just need help understanding why it is so overwhelming. Read on, I’m breaking it down in this post.
Why Am I Scared to Heal from Trauma?
When you make the decision to heal from your trauma, you will feel all sorts of different emotions. I was prepared for this, but I did not expect one of them to be guilt.
Survivor’s guilt is the discomfort we feel in creating a better life for ourselves. This creates a variety of complex emotions:
- We feel bad that others are still stuck and don’t understand what we are doing.
- We get trapped in the thought cycles that we don’t deserve a better life and so it feels “wrong” to pursue these healthy changes at first.
- The guilt sets in because those we are leaving in our former life don’t take lightly to us walking away.
- Taking care of ourselves is a new behavior because we were always taught to please other people or pacify them, especially in abusive or addiction situations.
In order to change and create a better life for ourselves, we have to leave some things and some people behind.
In order to change and create a better life for ourselves, we have to leave some things and some people behind. Share on XThis guilt has actually led me to go back to unhealthy relationships I used to be a part of. Then, of course, the cycle of getting sick again would start all over. These setbacks in my healing process taught me so much.
Coping With Change
I got to the point where I knew something had to change. Everything had to change. Which meant, I had to push through the fear of change.
As we go through life, change is going to be happening all around us all the time. Working through healing from trauma helps us to better cope with changes as they come, and not let our world fall apart each time.
With the supernatural power of Jesus and the natural power of practical steps and learning, a new life can be reached.
To hear more on this topic, you can listen to my podcast here.
If you or someone you know is on the journey to recovery from childhood trauma, I encourage you to check out my resources.
