Why you cannot heal trauma on your own
By Orit Krug | July 17th, 2019
Have you been working hard to but in the end you’ve realised you cannot heal trauma on your own?
Unfortunatly, it is true: you cannot heal trauma on your own.
Don’t get me wrong, you are amazing and courageous for trying to heal your trauma, but when you try so hard and don’t see results, it’s hopeless and frustrating, like “I’ve tried everything and I can’t be fixed. I’m broken.”
You’re not. You just need support.
It is NOT your fault that you can’t heal trauma, but doing it on your own is a huge part of the problem.
You cannot rewire your nervous system and build healthy attachments unless you do it IN relationship.
Imagine a newborn who is crying and screaming and kicking and ahhh! They just can’t control their emotions or regulate themselves. They need a parent to help them learn how to calm themselves down until they internalize that skill and can do it themselves.
If we left this infant alone instead, without a caregiver, they would probably grow up to be a serial killer, ha!
No, seriously, though. We can only build healthy nervous systems and gain control over our primal responses THROUGH relationship.
I saw this all the time in my work with preschool children who had serious emotional disturbances and oppositional behaviors as a result of emotional neglect and trauma. They would sometimes have tantrums for 3 hours, unable to calm down no matter what we tried.
They didn’t have the neurological capacity to become calm because they had so much damage to their nervous system wiring at only 3-5 years old.
To expect yourself to heal trauma on your own is like expecting a child to grow into a normal healthy adult without parents. It’s an inevitable fail and it doesn’t turn out pretty.
Play and spontaneous connection are VITAL for trauma healing.
One of the most effective pillars of my work with clients is play and spontaneous movement. Play helps tone your Vagus nerve which strengthens your nervous system and expands your window of tolerance.
So you begin to tolerate more triggers to the point where it doesn’t bother you anymore and you feel SO proud of yourself for feeling so relaxed.
Play happens IN relationship and therefore we can only fully heal in relationship.
Sure, we can play on our own to a limited extent, but it’s absolutely not the same as socially engaging with another, which is a biological necessity to survive and thrive as humans.
Most people who try to heal their trauma are approaching it way too seriously.
Your trauma is serious and your feelings should always be taken seriously, but pushing play and fun aside until you feel better actually prevents you from healing.
Instead of dedicating hours to DIY videos and reading self-help books, imagine a therapeutic relationship where you burst into laughter together after you try on a silly movement.
You might even feel like, “That’s silly (or dumb)” or “No! We need to be serious about this.”
But when you teach your body how to gracefully shift between neurological states of fear and play, then you learn how to stay connected and engaged with your partner, even when they upset you.
You naturally go from feeling CRUSHED when your partner forgets to bring you flowers for your birthday, to feeling disappointed and still able to engage in a connected, productive conversation…. Maybe even make-up sex shortly after!
One of the biggest things that has helped a recent client heal from her PTSD is us laughing and moving together. Before our work together, she couldn’t even look at herself in the mirror because she thought, “I’m too ugly, too stupid, too old.” She learned to loosen up and love herself, especially while being silly.
When you take shortcuts to trauma healing, you end up wasting more time and money.
Yoga classes, meditation, self-help books, and online courses are NOT the same as the process described above.
Even if you’re taking a yoga class with other people, you’re only going through your own individual process alongside other people.
Nothing else holds the same power and effect of moving and playing within a safe container of a safe relationship, working intentionally to strengthen and empower yourself at the level of your physical body, the ENTITY that you use to interact with the world.
It’s hard to trust someone else after what you’ve been through.
It feels dangerous to trust someone else to help us because the worst instances and trauma in our lives happened when we trusted other people to be there and protect us. Turns out they didn’t and we were horribly hurt instead.
I completely understand. I avoided getting help for a really long time. It took me over 20 years to see a therapist.
But honestly, if you find the right person and a safe therapeutic relationship to heal your trauma, you can quickly create amazing relationships in your life. Trust me, it’s worth it.
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.
