You can never heal from trauma. This is one of the biggest lies anyone can tell you. It’s one of the biggest lies you can tell yourself. It’s not true. You can heal from trauma. You don’t have to suffer your whole life.
Someone recently made a statement to me that implied they believed trauma never leaves us, that it sticks with us our whole lives and comes back to haunt us; we can never heal from it. I’m here to tell you that you can. You don’t have to suffer your whole life. Help is ready and it’s real.
I had trauma from my past, from being raised by a narcissistic mom who lied to me and my siblings about each other, pitted us against each other in order to maintain control over us, manipulated us, used guilt tactics and had a martyr complex. (To learn more about covert narcissism and martyr complex see https://toxicties.com/martyr-complex-covert-narcissism/.) Well into my adulthood, even after I had cut off contact with my mother, I was still being affected by her toxicity and emotional abuse. It affected my sense of self-worth and greatly affected certain behaviors. However, I did ART (Accelerated Resolution Therapy) on this trauma, and I healed from it. I was healed from trauma. It no longer affects me.
Several years ago I was diagnosed with PTSD. My triggers immediately sent me into some of the worst panic attacks I’d ever had in my life. Within 4 session of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) I was healed from my PTSD. It’s not that I learned how to cope with my triggers—it’s that I don’t have triggers anymore. My PTSD is gone.
ART and EMDR didn’t make me forget my trauma. It healed me from it. I can remember the trauma without having any of those old feelings resurfacing and without it affecting my behavior anymore.
If you are dealing with trauma, please know there is hope and there is help. You don’t have to suffer forever. There is a way out. Find a therapist who does ART or EMDR, or discuss other options that are available. I’ll say it again. There is hope. There is help. There is healing.
If you’d like to learn more about EMDR and ART visit the following links:
Breaking the Silence 
I’ve been thinking on this a(n extra) lot the last few weeks. Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s address of “post traumatic growth disorder” early into Antifragile was one of the things that kept me reading; while I did experience the stress disorder part, I also saw tremendous growth and strengths from all I’d weathered. So I’m grateful to read this now, and find someone else–not-Taleb!–who acknowledges that there can, sometimes, be reason to hope.
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I’m so glad it resonated with you! Thanks for your comment!
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