You cannot fully heal if you’re in a disempowered state of mind.

Healing involves discomfort but so does refusing to heal. Over time, refusing to heal is always more painful.”
Resmaa Menakem, psychotherapist and author

Trauma is a conscious component of injury and is an obstacle to healing. My days in Intensive Care being unable to breath because of Covid-19 taught me something about trauma.

Healing is something you do yourself. When it happens naturally, we suffer, struggle, and prevail and this becomes the foundation of our experience. Our body and our mind learns this is the healing process. The suffering motivates our struggle and our struggle appears to us to be a definitive part of healing. We take credit for our recovery even if we normally take little credit for anything else in our lives.

The fifth step in Peter Levine’s nine step prescription for remediating Post Traumatic Stress is replacing the mental construct of defeat and helplessness with one of balance and engagement. If you cannot do this in any situation, you’re screwed. This is something you must do Post Trauma but also Pre Healing. You cannot heal if your mind remains in terror, powerless, and disengaged from your body.

Action

Inaction

Recognition

Reaction

Recovery

Untraumatizing


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