Can I Actually Heal From Childhood Trauma?

Can I Actually Heal From Childhood Trauma?

Hey friends, I’m really glad that you joined us for this topic, and I want to say first of all that if you stick around to the end, we’re going to be sharing resources that are applicable to children and teenagers. But the first thing that I really want to say is that if I didn’t believe that it was possible to heal from childhood trauma, I would not be doing this. But I personally have experienced so much healing from my own childhood trauma. I have seen it happen in my family, in my close-knit family, in my distant relatives. I’ve seen it in people that I’ve worked with for years and years. It is possible, and I absolutely believe it.

No Quick Fix

But I will say this, I’m not going to be sharing anything magical today. There is no quick fix, and the healing process from childhood trauma takes years. I don’t say that as a discouragement. I actually want you to hear it as encouraging, because if you’re dealing with this and it’s taking a long time, I would say welcome. The water’s warm. This is how it works. It takes a long time for us to get to the other side of it. And that doesn’t mean that it’s all gone and everything’s perfect, but there are ways to get to a point of healing where we are much more functional than we were before. So, welcome. We’re glad you’re here.

Read Everything You Can Get Your Hands On

The first thing that I would say is we want to read everything that we can get our hands on. Read everything. I have a couple of recommendations to start us off. One is The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. This is basic information, but so good for any of us that have childhood trauma and want to understand how it’s sitting in our bodies and how it affects our health ongoing. So that’s number one.

The second one is What Happened to You? by Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey. I actually listened to that on audio, so I don’t have a physical copy, but I would recommend that. We’ll have the links to all of these that you can purchase or check out on audio in the description.

The next one, and this may be my favorite, is The Soul of Shame by Curt Thompson. This is a lovely man. He is so great at what he does, and if you’ve ever seen him in person, you know what I’m talking about. His content is amazing. There is a faith element to it, and that’s part of why I love it, but this is based in scientific research, and it’s just a beautiful book.

There are literally so many authors out there — Paul Conti, Peter Levine, Gabor Maté — so many great authors. We’re actually going to do another video with specific recommendations on books and resources, so stay tuned for that, or maybe it’s already out when you’re viewing this, and you can check that out from us as well.

The other piece of resource I can offer you is that I’m a part of James Trail. It’s a nonprofit. We serve to offer trauma-informed resources globally, and on our website we have a whole resources page, so feel free to check that out. The link is below for that.

Finding a Good Therapist

The next thing I would say is therapy — any therapy. It needs to be a good therapist, and that is its own challenge in and of itself, another video that we are working on. When you’re watching this video, it may already be out, so take a look for that, because there is a process in understanding how to find a good therapist.

This is where I’m going to advocate that it not be an AI therapist, an AI agent kind of therapist. Here’s why. There’s so much that computers and the digital world and internet can do for us. AI has its pros and its cons, and it can be used as different tools, but just like we would not want an AI physician, because it requires a provider — either nurse practitioner, PA, or physician — it requires someone who’s a person, a human, to interpret all of the information that’s gathered to give you a diagnosis. The same is true in the mental health world. We need to speak with an actual person, and there’s so much interpretation to what we share with a therapist and where to head with all of that that’s not just something that can be discovered in an AI agent.

The other issue is an AI agent is not going to help us if we are literally struggling with self-harm or suicidal ideations. That is not going to be a helpful tool if those are the struggles that we are having, and if that is certainly a struggle for you, I would encourage you to dial 911 and find the resources locally that can come alongside you.

The other thing about AI is that a good therapist is going to challenge us. A good therapist is going to push us into the directions that we need to go in our mental health, and that sometimes is challenging and difficult, and an AI agent is not going to do that for us in the same way. So, finding a good therapist, very important. Stay tuned for more content on that, or you can check it out if we’ve already put it out by now.

Faith

The next one, which is really important to me, is faith. Sometimes when we’re going through hard times, other people will say to us, “Well, you just need to trust God,” or, “You need more faith,” or, “Go read a Bible verse and that’ll fix it, that’ll solve it.” And here’s my response: Of course I need more faith. Of course I don’t trust God fully in the ways that I need to trust. Of course, of course scripture, of course to all of those things. But God also gave us bodies, and he gave us community around us, and I feel like if I am not remembering how my body works and how I can help myself to regulate, and understanding more about how my body responds to stress, anxiety, depression, all the things, and then how to reach out to community — when I realize those and remember those aspects, it actually strengthens my faith, because it reminds me that I’m not alone, and that God is in this with me, and that there’s this thing called free will out there, and that God grieves with us when the free will of others and catastrophes are going on around us. He actually grieves with us. There’s so much scripture to prove this and to back this up. So, faith is an important element for me as well.

Community

The last one I would say is community, which I just mentioned. I know that when we’ve been hurt it’s really hard to trust people and it’s really hard to put yourself out there. So many of us are so busy with work or immediate family or kids or whatever, and we don’t actually have time for community. It’s hard to pursue people in community, but I’m telling you it is such a valuable resource in the ways that we are trying to heal from childhood trauma.

I don’t mean everyone in your circle needs to hear every single detail about your childhood trauma. There are ways that we can ask for help from our community — like, “Hey, I’m struggling today, would you just tell me I’m not a bad person,” or if you’re a person of faith, you can say, “Hey, would you pray for me?” Or you can reach out to people and give more of those details that you feel comfortable doing, if they are emotionally safe for you, and unpack some things with them. That can be so healing and so vital.

Community can come from your house of worship, it can come from friends, it can come from neighbors or soccer moms or whatever. This community doesn’t always have to know every detail about you, but they do need to know you deeply. And what I mean by deeply is they know your highs and your lows.

Now, family can be community as well. I think sometimes family can be the hardest community, because they know all of our stuff and we know all of theirs, or a lot of it, and the baggage that goes with all of that. So sometimes community with family can be super rich and wonderful, and sometimes community with family can honestly be really hard.

So those are all the sources, and there’s so many more that we didn’t even mention, but community is absolutely vital. Thanks for sticking around.

Resources for Children and Teens

Now we’re going to be closing out with these two resources for children and for teens. As a teacher, as a parent, as a coach, anyone that’s working with children or teens, both of these resources are great. It’s called The Whole-Brain Child by Dan Siegel. Dan Siegel is an amazing author and speaker, so check out any of his stuff, but this is super helpful when working with children. And then his book on teens is called Brainstorm. Highly recommended for both.

Some of these resources you may pick up — and for our global communities, I think most of these are available digitally online, by the way — but you may pick them up and start reading them and be like, “Meredith, this is so technical, I don’t know if I can follow.” And that’s okay. Some of these resources are maybe aimed more at people in the mental health field or therapists or whatever, and that’s okay. Glean what you can from it, but I still recommend trying out some of these things and staying tuned to our videos, because we really want to come alongside those of us that struggle in this area.

Closing

So, thank you so much for joining us today, and please let us know other topics that are interesting to you in the comments. And the main thing to remember, that we always close out with, is on this journey trauma does not get the last word.