6 Common Pitfalls In Healing Childhood Trauma

[Music] here are six common pitfalls that I've seen clients get into over the years which makes their healing process either stall out completely or it just makes their process a lot more messy or Mucky than it really has to be you know healing childhood trauma is really already hard enough and incidentally even if just one of these six ideas stick in your mind then it's a totally a win for me whether you're kind of envisioning something happening down the road or just to keep yourself aware and healing is a subjective idea uh it's really different

for everyone but there are some key factors in it that I'll discuss towards later in the video um and I think if you're watching these videos or you're already in a process whether that process is you're already going to therapy or you're doing some self-healing work if therapy doesn't work out for you or if it's not really available or you might actually be getting ready to do something in the future I think a lot of people watch these videos to start off with in kind of revving themselves up to do some work and some way

that works best for you um so watching videos like this is part of a process but it can't be the whole thing eventually we need more um through my own process I fell into many of these pitfalls if not all of them these are actually really common for childhood trauma and the more you know the more you can be kind of prepared to avoid some of these things and I want you to pause here and and hear what I have to say some of these might really challenge you when you're thinking about your own healing

or you might find yourself a little bit defensive in this video especially with this first one so let's just dive into it number one is confusing awareness for healing you might find yourself a little bit called out on this one and I remember my mentor Amanda curtain LCSW My Mentor in my first group with her like 20 some odd years ago 20 plus years ago she would tell us awareness doesn't really change you this is a highly common thing for those starting out and for those who haven't had access to therapy um that the kind

of therapy that turns you into a puddle of grief on the floor which is actually a good thing but confusing awareness for actual healing might look like having major epiphanies about your family or your family life or your parents or your abuse and something gets unlocked it's actually pretty cool reading self-help books that feel like they're telling your story and you finally feel like you've got a name or a grasp on why your family is like that and why you're like that or why you have messy reactions or issues in other words researching and having

a near PhD level in personality disorders for having spent years online in the thick of that world and other is like the awareness thing is social media posts that become really near and dear to you because you finally got the answer for why you might do things you know but now what though after you see those posts sharing ideas is actually just a tiny tiny portion of what therapy actually is so awareness is actually incredible it can clear up confusion it can make you feel like um you're part of a movement of survivors it can

bring immense relief to you but the pitfall here is walking away with all that knowledge thinking it's all you need when we really need a lot more we need someone to witness our grief we need someone to witness our Rage or hear our story out or help us not behave from a place of trauma responses um actually the healing of being able to tell your story in front of a safe person who can take it all in childhood trauma is really relational abuse that requires relational healing I know that that's not going to feel good

for many of you a really tricky part to this Pitfall is as childhood trauma survivors we can be highly independent uh and we grew up in a vacuum where it was all on us so it can feel good to just try to do your own research and get all your answers that way um you're probably a million times better off but the psycho education or ideas probably won't make you trigger free or maybe even a better partner the partner that you want to be or to stop your inner child from running your life from a

place of trauma the pitfall here is that I see people believing that because say for example they fully understand their toxic family or how trauma is stored in the body they're done what about how we still might project onto others our toxic parents or our trauma story or our doing that projecting onto friends partners and bosses or even onto ourselves and even the way we might either make ourselves super reactive we don't make ourselves super reactive or we get super reactive or we might make ourselves really small and people please all the all the memes

in the world about people pleasing might not get you to be able to heal and stop those behaviors so that's what this p pfall is all about and when we think we're all set because we're aware of our issues it's kind of a big setup when the mess comes back into our life and our trauma is again mucking up our present lives I'm not saying that awareness is pointless It's actually an incredible thing but it's just the beginning of healing it's not the whole thing but I also need to address that because there is such

a lack of resources for many people and lack of good therapy and lack of deeply changing experiences in therapy that it's kind of an a common assumption to think that we've got it all figured out because we've read the things um for simply not having those it's like we don't know what we don't know um so I want to be kind of fair about that but this will make more sense when you think about it this way how many self-help books have we read that were amazing but didn't create lasting significant change in you um

many have gotten frustrated even with my social media post and the post of others and other therapist creators um when we offer psycho education and you kind of leave comments are like yeah but now what what do I do how do I fix the thing what's what's going on you're just telling me about stuff social media isn't therapy it's education you know therapy is therapy and while I a th% understand that it's not fully available or affordable or a lack of trained people that unfortunately doesn't negate the need of actual therapy perhaps we all feel

the frustration of like knowing we need to have a surgery and all that's being done is talking about how the wound got there or the effects of the wound or that the wound regardless of how much we talk about it and diagnosis or whatever we still need surgery so I want to kind of leave you with that on that one moving on to number two is this concept that the abuse won't affect me anymore as a pitfall in therapy not every client that I've had had this going on but many of them did one client

I remember um years lovely client years into therapy they joked with me how in a kind of confession that they said the reason why they came into therapy is to see if they can work on themselves in order to better handle their mom better handle their mother their mother was an abusive toxic Nightmare and sometimes our inner child can have strong fantasies about things not affecting them anymore that's not really a new fantasy I think that's old from childhood so when we start healing or working on ourselves we might think we can go back into

the fold with abusive people and not be affected after we do a bunch of work there's a paradox with this one um the more healing that we do it's actually the less we should be able to tolerate abuse because we're now healthier it hits us on a deeper level that weaken with your family if they're toxic or abusive might be intolerable to you after you start to unpack and work on some childhood trauma it's a good thing you're becoming more real and more in your body so it hits harder I think you can be less

affected less triggered after a lot of time in therapy but family toxicity usually doesn't change unless they're working on themselves which is highly unlikely right also I think after a lot of significant healing work has done you're way less interested into like making yourself the sacrificial lamb and spending a week with your family just CZ where I think after a lot of healing we're like you know what I think I'll pop in for an hour for lunch if you're in contact with your family or if that's what where your level of it is with your

family and that is sort of like a healing mindset you're not willing to kind of just make yourself the sacrificial lamb anymore and in short the pitfall here is healing won't make you bulletproof inner children think they have the power to not have things affect them it's an old magical thinking um that's why we often take on say extremely hard jobs or take on extremely difficult messy parts partners and and then we're surprised when it actually affects us you'll know what I mean if if you have that kind of going on moving on to number

three is something that I'm calling discouragement confirmation this one is simply about discouragement as a barrier to your healing please don't take this as criticism or a reflection of who you are again I'm painfully aware of how terrible access to Mental Health Services are and I I really want to be able to change that or the lack of trained clinicians actually working on that or even finding a therapist where the fit is right I'm very much aware of that so it's easy to get discouraged and it's actually a normal part of the process when it

comes to finding the right resources for yourself you can have a good therapist and good treatment and you can still really get discouraged by the process but this Pitfall is really about how your inner child interprets that messy frustrating process and the pitfall here is when you're trying to get an appointment when you're trying to get get into a group signing up for something that doesn't pan out can cause a trauma reaction of wanting to give up it's very understandable however the reaction is a lot like the inner child saying see why do I even

start with this crap nothing ever pans out for me it's always like this for me this is something we can actually reparent ourselves around as it's kind of something that keeps us stuck um in the face of huge adversary how many times have you started to try to do trauma have it not work out and then you don't try again for years um that's I'm not just saying in no way am I saying it's all you on this I'm just saying there is a reaction to it that prevents us for being more persistent I really

believe that there's the right therapist or the right helper out there and there shouldn't be this many barriers but look for the people who are able to say I finally found someone and we're actually doing some work I'm actually getting somewhere look for those statements from people try not your let your inner child go to that place of it's never going to happen for me you can be frustrated you can be annoyed it's annoying you can be mad but try not to look at it like it's confirming something about you that's the rub here that's

when you know your inner child is back in an old place where it wasn't worth keep trying which was definitely true growing up to get your needs met but the present is different when someone asked me about how to find a therapist my first piece of advice is try to be as tenacious and persistent because for every 10 to 15 emails or calls you make maybe one therapist or helper would get back to you because most of them are full it's funny but inner children actually hate that advice I think because it takes them back

to their family system where nothing worked for them or it was all on them um it's sort of like a feeling of you know and it's you're not wrong for feeling this why can't this be easy you know um again you're not wrong but there's a trauma response in this it's only our really our inner adult not the inner child who can say this sucks but f it I'm going to keep plugging away and finding at what I need to get my needs met number four is I've seen the light you should too this Pitfall

is about being so moved motivated jazzed up about your healing gains and you're just wanting more connection and more authenticity that you try to get everyone on board the healing train um and I know that none of that is super bad or super NE negative but we might try to recruit others into healing long before they're ready or long before they want to I don't know about you but I dislike being recruited for anything like even if it's a good thing I think I have a hyper sensitivity to being sold something but I can get

I can get past it if it's the right sort of situation I can get my adult in place about it so if you've heard the term newly sober this applies it refers to someone um I know this in context of being in AA or 12st work being so relieved and inspired about not drinking that they're fullon a th% dedicated it becomes their whole life and they want to tell you about it boy do they want to tell you about it they might be a little intoxicated on a little bit of healing on the program they

might get a little bit preachy about it being the only way that's the cringe park it hearkens back to like this old term like the the person's got religion so when we start therapy and if you're wired to get a lot out of it where you're inspired by it you might want to even become a therapist which is a beautiful thing I'm not trying to take that away from you so but you might be a th% immersed in it and want others around you to be on board too but I find that most people really

don't want that they don't want the juice that you're selling and it might be coming from a place where your wounded inner child finally wants to have like a tribe or a collective or even a surrogate healthy family for the first time and again it's not bad for one in these things but they happen slowly with us being really Discerning about who we want in that Circle for ourselves so we might try to recruit which is a bit of a slippery kind of cringy slope to be honest what isn't good about this Pitfall is that

it usually doesn't work out to try to inspire people to work on their own childhood trauma what it does is it might really rub people the wrong way and leave you more isolated and feeling more of like an odd duck in your recovery and it's like you're back in your family again it's also a trigger to our family system where your efforts to get a party started um are being ignored which is just awful by party I mean let's be happy let's be healthy together as a side note gradually getting through to a partner gently

is different I think than trying to kind of sell them because you're so jazzed up about it um but it's really about your energy on this one it's about our agenda telling your entire circle that they're probably all suffering from childhood trauma because you've gone to therapy and read all the things isn't isn't isn't that great it's actually a pitfall but encouraging say a partner to look at their family system in therapy because they don't really do great conflict or they Fawn or they fight too much that's a different thing so I want to be

clear about that that's more about intimacy and boundaries as opposed to selling something that's more about a direct kind of intimacy problem so this can get a bit dangerous think of all the people who think they have the answer to society's woes um and want everyone to be on the same page that's kind of gets a little bit scary right I don't even like it when someone tells me they discovered hot yoga and I absolutely need to do it every day because it'll change my life they're probably not wrong when I'm like oh chill you

know um I actually believe that childhood trauma is the root issue to society if not the root issue but I'm not going to force that on anyone who doesn't want to hear it or they're not interested or they're not ready there's enough of that going on in the world number five is wrong place wrong therapy wrong time this Pitfall is tricky childhood trauma work and Trauma work in general when it's good is exhausting at times not 247 but cathartic releases and grief work about our family systems takes up a lot of energy a lot of

head space and a lot of rest is needed if you're new to therapy or new to realizing you've gone through childhood trauma you really don't know what to expect you don't know what you don't know no one is at fault for assuming that it's going to help immediately and feel really good immediately but in my experience in the beginning you dip into more depression and anxiety and and stuff before you kind of level out I would say in the first 3 to six months of getting acclimated to weekly therapy I'm generalizing there that's the kind

of like the trauma work model that I do so it might be different for different models so this is a common Pitfall about setting yourself up for Success instead of getting freaked out and having having a number three discouragement experience or a number six is what I'm going to get into next here's what I mean you most likely know that you need to do some work on your childhood trauma if you're watching this video um you've got the right problem in your mind to work on but are you in the right place are you in

the middle of a nasty acute divorce or a legal battle with family that takes up so much of your head space and is triggering and profoundly activating uh a supportive therapist in that situation would be very helpful but that it might not be the right place in your life to delve into the horrific relational emotional attachment abuse from your mother are you in the right place to do childhood trauma work or trauma work if you're still living with or really engaged with an abuser on a daily basis probably not it's hard to tell our inner

child that things are going to be different when they really aren't any different picture getting off a hard therapy session with a good enough trauma therapist and you turn and you walk into your kitchen and there's your toxic mother interrogating you about what you're talking about with that therapist what God what are you talking about I was listening you know all the while you're trying to reparent your inner child that you're not powerless anymore about your mother but then your mother's in the kitchen making you go to the Fawn response it's a mess and that's

what I mean by that so I believe people need to have some head space available and some safety in their life before kind of getting into some deep trauma work it's hard enough but if you have a huge present stress in your life it might be too much of a setup for you and not make it work out more about the right time if you are two weeks away from taking a nursing exam or the bar exam or you're in the middle of a divorce like I mentioned it's not a good time maybe to dive

into hardcore trauma and you'll need some support and as a side note you know like the beginning it's not like you're going to dive into the first couple weeks of with a trauma therapist into some hard really hard nitty-gritty hopefully there's usually a slow windup but I think that these still apply in terms of what's going going on in your life a good therapist would read that you and maybe want to slow things down but I think many survivors are maybe impatient to get things going like they've had a therapist before who didn't want to

go there so the clients are really raring to go but their present life is kind of on fire and I know it's frustrating but having too much going on in the present makes diving into our past Super non-productive I think the right therapy I could go on and on about this you know from a place of frustration with my field and lack of resources like I mentioned the general public is not wrong to assume that any therapist should be able to help them with some level of trauma however most kind of can't and they don't

have an in-depth training in my experience that goes deep and is effective and it's probably their you know it's the therapist isn't bad it's like they're if they're a mindful therapist they're not trained in trauma it's not their wheelhouse they're not bad for that so should every therapist be a trauma therapist that's kind of kind of silly you know but there are some amazing therapists out there of all types there's also some really bad ones out there unfortunately and then there's ones who aren't really that trained but we assume the field is like doctors who

generally can manage or refer out to what you need that's kind of not the case with therapists so the right therapy means if you're seeing someone you like for two years and you're just doing CBT with them but you want to take a deep dive you probably aren't in the right therapy if you're seeing someone you love who has gotten you through some really rough times and they are trauma informed but not trauma trained and have a model you both might be waiting for the trauma epiphanies to come up when they actually don't it's like

a little bit of a staring game sometimes and yes it's crazy but sometimes therapists are waiting for clients to figure it out and I I I totally disagree with that and I I know that that's frustrating on the other side of it many survivors need a type of therapy and maybe a precursor to Del into some childhood trauma work no one really likes that idea but some people need a lot of help with regulating emotions before they open up their childhood you might need some time with CBT or DBT or mindfulness or sematic work to

set you up for more success sometimes people just need to be comfortable with a therapist in the room for a long time because trauma is so relationally damaging um I hope that that makes sense so I know it's frustrating but things do need to be in a line M like the stars are in alignment not perfect but um to be thoughtful if this is the right time for you if you have the right resource the right head space the right calmness in your present life to bring on something like doing that work as a side

note I'm not trying to scare anybody all clients are going to have a hard time in the beginning of of trauma work and they're going to have to act they acclimate they acclimate really well but I've also had clients who have had to leave prematurely because they just have way too much going on on or they need something else or the trauma work is too activating and we've paused and talked about it and they might need some time in CBT or something like that especially if they're totally new to therapy they were Earnest they were

gun ho but it just wasn't at the right time the right resource the right place for them despite the miracle of getting someone like me on the phone to set up an appointment so what's the pitfall here is not being thoughtful about maybe or aware of what you need and getting freaked out and wasting your time and resources can make us go into a shame hole there I go again I can't handle anything I'm never going to try therapy again I don't want anyone to have that kind of experience and you're back to like number

three that's not good for everyone and most importantly number six the biggest one here is stopping once you start feeling better this is really an inner child thing about sabotage I believe so a common pattern for this one is say when a client comes into therapy after hitting some kind of bottom of sorts with their trauma or some horrific situation comes up and their family system that spells everything out like a wedding or whatever and they seek out the resources to get help they want to start doing some therapy they start to do some work

with a therapist they gain some insight the upset from the beginning stressor dies down from the ini the initial mess kind of dies down and they're feeling better um therapy can be like that it can be a place to get support in a crisis but if you want to work on childhood trauma and really do some deeper work deeper changing it takes a while it's got a lot of ups and downs you'll get sick of rehashing uh even when you're with a really good therapist doing good work you're going to feel a lot of deep

messy things so it's understandable to want to feel better but just like with number one clients who now have some awareness but the awareness doesn't change us so the client does a pause in their therapy and they sort of go e maybe later for that bigger stuff down the road this was good for me for now so but the patterns The Experience don't change and while they might feel better in the moment a breakup down the road might tank them again or another abusive family situation might come up again you know there's always the next

family holiday and the next kind of s show to kind of contend with and the client hadn't gotten to a point in their therapy to be able to not lose their truth or not lose their power or not go into a shame hole or depression when these things happen um then there is Shame about then they're criticizing themselves for leaving early like what you know and the inner child p here is going back to an old way of dealing with our feelings as we just like we did as kids um I feel better so the

issue must not be an issue anymore it's a really old thing and there isn't really enough time in therapy to get a solid adult in place to kind of check that thinking it's like when we were seven and there would be like a horrific weekend or a horrific birthday party with a toxic parent but then three or four days down the road by Tuesday things have kind of died down we're back to the status quo maybe even the parent isn't that rare good mood and the child lives from moment to moment and they're just like

oh well now things are great so it's a really an inner child kind of experience I think with this one there's a bit of magical thinking that the huge issues that were so disregulated have now gone away when they're just going to come back later unfortunately um and again there are a million valid reasons for leaving therapy early the wrong therapist wrong treatment money issues not feeling ready job stuff relocating but I'm not talking about those in this one the pitfall here is you've done some footwork you've you've done into some getting into some of

this work you've landed in somebody's office you've bought a course you've started the course you're having some kind of experience and it things are kind of hitting you but then you're leaving with it only partially complete um the pitfall here is really self-sabotage you're already there you know you you're doing the kind of footwork you've done the footwork try not to kind of bomb out of it try to be mindful about what story is in your mind what story does your inner child have about maybe leaving before bigger work is being done is it a

story that's like later for that or I don't really want to feel this bad stuff to be honest you know or I'll come back to it at some point or not wanting to go there about how bad it was or still is these are all things to consider and the more you kind of talk about it you know like Journal about it talk about it with the therapist talk about that resistance rather than the resistance just kind of taking over that's kind of like what I think about it so some final thoughts um again not

trying to disappoint anybody or freak anybody out I'm just trying to challenge our assumptions about what healing might look like so a little bit about healing in the process of therapy healing is really a subjective idea it's like a it's a but it's a process it's different for everybody but I generally think of it as taking action towards reducing pain anxiety depression beliefs stuck places uh examining therapy roles taking action on reclaiming a sense of self sense of identity reclaiming the ability to be intimate with others in various ways and I love this one about

having some Mastery over our triggers or having things not be such a trigger anymore and taking on kind of a kind of like a at least not such a grim outlook on light not saying super positive but like not so dark and it would be nice to have peace to know that your abuser were wrong about you is another part to this in in your deepest self to know that that you were a good kid and it wasn't about you in your deepest self it's really nice really is nice to be living in the present

with those things going on it's a long process and I think it should be long because in terms of childhood trauma the person was usually experiencing the abuse and dysfunction all the way through their our first 20 years of development so it's not going to be a weekend it's not going to be 3 months in therapy it's going to take some time it's not going to be not forever but it's not going to happen in 6 months it's definitely not going to be happen in in a weekend retreat so I voiced this video in context

of really Psychotherapy and for childhood trauma and some of you are doing self-healing work that I want to acknowledge out of either you know financial reasons or lack of a skilled therapist or just out of personal preference but these will still apply if you're in that situation too so I hope that this was helpful I would really love to hear your thoughts if you've experienced these if you've if you're in the middle of experiencing some of these if it's really kind of challenged you and I would love to know how you kind of feel about

that you're certainly welcome to disagree and also you're welcome to check out my monthly healing Community if you're looking for such resources on childhood trauma and if you find these videos helpful you're welcome to support the channel over at my patreon all the links will be in the description of this video and as always may you be filled with loving kindness may you be well may you be peaceful and at ease and may you be joyous and I will see you next time [Music] time [Music]