5 biggest mistakes people make when healing trauma
By Orit Krug | April 16th, 2019
If you’ve tried ALL the things to on the journey to healing trauma and you still feel horrible inside, you’ve got to hear this.
It breaks my heart to know how many people feel like they’re a failure or BROKEN because they’ve tried all these things when healing trauma and they still feel like sh*t. Even worse, some just assume they’re damaged goods and they give up completely. They are NONE of that, they just haven’t done the right things:
1. They don’t go deep enough
After spending years and YEARS in different therapies, people still have constant issues with their partner, or they’re still single. They wonder when they’re going to ever get into a healthy relationship and IF that happens, how to not screw it up. Or they’re still really reactive with their kids.
They’re still healing traumand and aren’t yet the person that they’re striving to be.
When you go through so much therapy, and then you still feel sh*tty about yourself. It’s horrible because you’re like, oh, why am I still broken?
All those years and all that work are not for nothing. It may have been a longer journey, but you’re actually just a layer away from really finally freeing yourself of this trauma.
So most therapies out there really help you access and release your trauma at a conscious level and even at a subconscious level. But what they don’t do is help you access it at a NON-VERBAL subconscious level.
So basically, if you go to talk therapy, and your therapist asks you, “so has your relationship with your dad?” All of a sudden, you retrieve a memory of a fight when you were 13 years old and can even recall it word for word.
You’re able to make that subconscious memory into a conscious one because that memory happened on a VERBAL level and it was stored in a verbal level. So you can also retrieve it at a verbal level.
However, there’s this whole deep, NON-VERBAL layer where you store trauma and it just goes right into your body. The only the way you can access it is through your body and through movement.
Your body doesn’t speak in words and you can’t access or start healing trauma by talking.
So you need to access your trauma, release it and change yourself at a level of your PRIMAL responses, nervous system AND your physical being through which you interact with the world.
It’s this deep layer that a lot of people don’t really get to, but the good news is you can still get to it. All that work that you’ve done isn’t a waste. Even though it’s taken longer than if you were to go through that nonverbal subconscious straightaway, you’re still MUCH closer now that you have more awareness.
You just need to go that one layer deeper.
2. They wait WAY too long
Unresolved trauma is like having a cavity that turns into an infected root canal that spreads down to your body and to your heart. If you don’t take care of your trauma, it’ll kill you.
I’m not trying to be morbid, but it’s the hard truth people need to hear because many don’t tend to prioritize their trauma that way. Your trauma is like infection that will spread to different parts of your life and will kill off different parts of your life.
Your relationships die and you lose your job and friends because of this unresolved trauma that gets shoved down deeper and deeper.
Then the original trauma gets piled on with more traumatic experiences, more losses, more breakups more loneliness, and then having three glasses of wine just to get to sleep because you’re wondering when you’re going to find a partner, or you’re wondering why your husband is is lying next to you snoring peacefully, while you’re worried that your relationship is over.
Intensify this by 100x if you experienced trauma from your childhood.
You need to START now no matter what. A lot of people say I don’t have the time or I don’t have the money. I’m pregnant, I have two kids, I’m juggling all these things. It’s just not the right time.
You can’t afford NOT to do it any longer. Your infection is spreading.
I have clients who are in their 30’s and I have clients in their 60’s. The ones who have started when they’re 60 has taken them 3x longer than the much younger ones.
It’s not their fault and it’s not your fault. But you actually end up spending more time, emotional energy, and money to solve the problem. It’s like now you have to get heart surgery (or whatever, I’m not a doctor!) and spend more money on a bigger operation and more time in recovery. So start NOW!
3. They try to do it on their own
Doing it on your own sets you up to feel like a real failure. When you’re so passionate about healing your trauma, you desperately want to be a better person and you try to do all these self-help books, meditation, yoga, etc.
And you work SO hard just to feel a shift but you don’t end up feeling much different. Doing these things on your own is like putting Disney band aids on your infection. They look fancy, they cover up the ugly wound, but they don’t actually heal it.
You CANNOT rewire your nervous system or build healthy attachments unless you do it IN relationship. So it’s not your fault that doing it on your own isn’t working, it’s actually a huge part of the PROBLEM.
When were infants, we’re all “crazy” yelling, screaming and crying and we CANNOT calm ourselves down. We need a relaxed, regulated parent to teach us how to calm down. We need their their secure, consistently healthy parenting to build healthy attachments with the rest of the world.
If you never got that, or you did but then you were in a marriage for 30 years with an emotionally abusve narcissist, then that all goes out the window. You go into survival mode and your nervous system is in a totally different place.
Expecting yourself to heal your trauma by yourself is like expecting an infant to be left out on the street and still build all the emotional and developmental tools that allow them to grow into a healthy, normal child.
We see this all the time in disrupted kids. They’re unable to calm themselves down, they can’t regulate their emotions and they constantly have tantrums.
Now we have adult tantrums! It’s really crucial that if you want to actually heal your trauma, you do it in a relationship. And that’s NOT your partner – your partner doesn’t need that burden, and it’s not going to work anyway – you need a SAFE relationship.
You need a professional who can help you rewire your nervous system that’ll help you have the best relationships and life.
4. They’ve tried the wrong things and now it feels too hard
There are way too many misleading modalities out there.
Even as a dance therapist, there are a lot of dance healers who run these retreats and say “unleash your inner beast and release EVERYTHING once and for all!” It’s false advertising.
You’re saying that if I go to your retreat for 4 days, then I’ll access everything inside of me and release it all? That’s leaving people in a really vulnerable place. They’re just opening people up RAW. There’s no possible way you can heal your trauma in FOUR days.
To say that they’re going to just feel ALL your pain and release it ALL – that is so UNSAFE.
Now it’s just an open wound. You’ve taken that band aid off and now you’re going out into the world, so prone to infection and getting worse if you don’t get the ongoing support that you need.
It’s stuff like retreats, meditations, and self-help books that only stirs up trauma and anxiety without real resolution and now it just feels too hard. It’s like you’ve tried ALL the things and NOTHING works. You’ve done the THING that was supposed to open you up and heal you and you just can’t do it again. It’s too scary.
When it feels too hard, you settle on dealing with your pain and suffering because anything’s better than feeling the pain of when you tried to unleash your “inner beast.”
5. They think it’s going to be too much so they avoid it
If your healing has ever felt like too much, then you didn’t work with the right person or you did it on your own (hence, #3).
You need a SAFE container with a professional who can track your micro-movements and micro-body signals that show how your nervous system and primal body are overreacting. That way, they can regulate you and bring you back to your window of tolerance when you’re accessing your trauma.
This NEEDS to happen in the realm of your body and movement. Talking about every detail from every memory you can recall from the past IS painful. And horrible. And not fun.
If you want a sustainable trauma healing, then you need to have a safe place with a safe person who is helping you build that healthy attachment and strong nervous system.
When I see my clients having an ounce of an overreaction, I ask them to pause at the exact right time. I help them become aware of what’s going on and regulate in a way that works for their unique body with the exact movements that THEY need.
As dance/movement therapist, my clients and I co-create an enjoyable, amazing transformational process.
One of the things that I do, that is SO important part for nervous system healing, is PLAY and movement. How fun is that?!
Maybe maybe that sounds silly, but it’s actually proven to strengthen your your nervous system to tone your vagus nerve and help you expand your window of tolerance.
When I help my clients gently, slowly and gradually expand their window of tolerance, they can progressively go into that layer of unresolved trauma without having a panic attack. They don’t feel “too much.”
It’s more like, “Hell yeah! I got this. Look at me, I’ve never gotten to this point, and I feel stronger and more stable than ever.” It’s amazing to witness as their therapist.
Don’t settle for less than somebody who’s going to pay insanely close attention to your physical being, your primal responses, and the way your nervous system is manifesting in your movement.
If you’re really to finally break free of the past in a safe, effective, and powerful way that makes you feel GOOD, that gets through that deeper layer of trauma, without it feeling too threatening…
Get on the right path to healing trauma from your body and nervous system.
Many people spend decades and thousands of dollars in traditional therapies trying to heal their trauma. Unfortunately, even the most popular therapies are scientifically shown to be limited in accessing trauma stored in the non-verbal brain and body.
Even alternative approaches, such as EMDR and Brain Mapping, are often not enough to fully heal from the physical body or the nervous system.
This makes trauma healing a very frustrating journey for so many people. They often blame themselves for being “un-healable” and decide that they’re broken.
This is NOT true!
Every human being is 100% neurophysiologically capable of healing from the past, because we all have wiring and neural pathways that can be rewired from fear and overprotection, to love and openness.
My unique, scientific-backed process via Dance Therapy has helped hundreds of clients finally heal from past trauma and transform their relationship (even after decades of trying in other therapies).
You can heal too, but you need the right methodology.
Sign up for my online course (ranges from free to $20 USD) to begin a unique, body-based learning experience that will teach you:
- Science-backed education about how trauma is stored in your body and nervous system. You’ll gain an understanding why it has NOT been your fault you haven’t healed yet from past trauma.
- Gentle, guided body-based movement that is necessary for integrated healing. This is crucial if you want your mind’s intentions to match your body’s behaviors in relationships.
- An embodied approach to healing that has helped hundreds of clients break unhealthy relationship patterns and let in healthy, lasting love.
