Raphael

Let's Get Practical #4: Healing The Traumatized Kid

40 posts in this topic

Quote

What basically a trauma is when we experience something that causes us to feel a very intense emotion to the point where it causes us to shutdown because we can't process that emotion properly.

Emerald, Trauma Explained - How Trauma Works in the Body, Sep 17, 2018

It's time to dive deep into myself and heal my childhood traumas and young adult traumas.

I'm already practicing forgiveness, breathwork and I have some calls here and there with Nahm. I'm adding journaling here as another healing method on this journey.

Most of the traumas that I have are low to moderate traumas, I have very few intense traumatic episodes. Many of them are what I consider psychological abuse. So... I wasn't tortured, I wasn't raped, I wasn't repeatedly beaten by my parents (even if it happened a few times and I'll share about it). I actually feel a bit of shame for not having such huge traumas and sharing an incredibly dramatic story where I would fix myself, but this is how it is. I think that in ~ 2 years, I will be able heal most of my childhood traumas.

I'm not sure about how comfortable I will be here because I'm usually quite reserved. It is possible that I'll journal about the most uncomfortable things in private or talk about it with Nahm.

Objectives

  • Exploring my shadows
  • Understanding myself
  • Becoming more authentic
  • Reducing bitterness
  • Reducing fear, anxiety, sadness, etc.
  • Improving positivity
  • Improving happiness
  • Improving mental clarity
  • Improving emotional mastery
  • Improving my functionality in life
  • Deepening the connection with the feminine
  • Solidifying Green values (love, empathy, compassion, showing vulnerabilities, etc.)

I will use this document to have more formatting options and model connections between my psychology and my experiences. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1E-vT1JqTxMAdvVkcBxsOiXhNpgzt5LqWJ5Vwpz50H58/edit#gid=0

This journal will be ongoing as long as necessary.

Edited by Raphael

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⚠️ Warning

If I learned any valuable lesson in recent years is that emotions need to be expressed rather than repressed. And the way that they are going to be expressed here may happen as very strong language. There's nothing personal in that, this is just me expressing myself and expressing repressed emotions like anger, rage, pain, frustration, sadness, depression, despair, etc. Keep this in mind if you choose to read.

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Previous Practical Journals

 

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Trauma Healing Techniques

Psychotherapy

Quote

Psychotherapy, or talk therapy, is a way to help people with a broad variety of mental illnesses and emotional difficulties. Psychotherapy can help eliminate or control troubling symptoms so a person can function better and can increase well-being and healing.

https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/psychotherapy

 

Journaling

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Journaling is one method of helping people cope with any type of traumatic event. Expressive writing has been found to improve physical and psychological health for people with a number of physical and mental health conditions. Some of the general health benefits of journaling include improved cognitive function, counteracting many of the negative effects of stress, and strengthened immune function.

https://www.verywellmind.com/how-to-use-journaling-to-cope-with-ptsd-2797594

 

Gratitude

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Developing an attitude of gratitude toward the people, things, and events in your life is a life-affirming and effective way to strengthen your emotional resilience and reduce stress, among other things.

https://www.verywellmind.com/writing-in-a-gratitude-journal-for-stress-relief-3144887

 

Forgiveness

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Voluntary internal process of letting go of feelings and thoughts of resentment, bitterness, anger, and the need for vengeance and retribution toward someone who we believe has wronged us, including ourselves.

https://positivepsychology.com/forgiveness-benefits/

 

EFT Tapping

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EFT tapping is an alternative acupressure therapy treatment used to restore balance to your disrupted energy. It’s been an authorized treatment for war veterans with PTSD, and it’s demonstrated some benefits as a treatment for anxiety, depression, physical pain, and insomnia.

https://www.healthline.com/health/eft-tapping

 

Breathwork

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Holotropic breathwork is a therapeutic breathing practice that is intended to help with emotional healing and personal growth. It’s said to produce an altered state of consciousness. The process involves breathing at a fast rate for minutes to hours. This changes the balance between carbon dioxide and oxygen in the body.

https://www.healthline.com/health/holotropic-breathwork

 

Yoga Nidra

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Yoga Nidra can be practiced by anyone. It holds immense benefits for all those who struggle to let go, those who suffer from lack of sleep, trauma, burn-out, and anxiety. It is also highly beneficial and holds great healing power for anyone who wants to experience a deeper sense of peace and re-connect more profoundly with themselves. The practice of Yoga Nidra leads us into a state of harmonious, restful being. From here, we can heal, restore and awaken to our true, blissful and eternal Self.

https://www.arhantayoga.org/blog/what-is-yoga-nidra/

 

Other Techniques

  • Shadow Work
  • Acupuncture
  • Chiropractic
  • Rewind technique
  • Eye movement desensitization reprocessing
  • Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
  • Fasting

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Are shamanic breathing and holotropic one different? But in general, are similar?

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@rnd I don't know. I have simply practiced the technique presented by Leo so far.

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Issues Evaluation

→ Document: Issues Evaluation

These are just a few definitions for this journal.

Personal vs. External Perception

  • Personal Perception: How big I consider the problem to be.
  • External Perception: How big people consider the problem to be.

Notation

  • 0/10: Non-Existent
  • 1/10: Very Low
  • 2/10: Very Low
  • 3/10: Low
  • 4/10: Low
  • 5/10: Medium
  • 6/10: Medium
  • 7/10: A Bit Strong
  • 8/10: Strong
  • 9/10: Very Strong
  • 10/10: Impossible to Cope

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Issues

→ Document: Issues

These are all the issues that I noticed. This is as honest and vulnerable that I can be in public. A few things will be kept private.

  • Fear of my dad
    • I just don't like my dad. I see him as dumb and aggressive. I don't talk to him, at best I only share a few words. However, he made a lot of progress in recent years and I think I'm wrong to still perceive him the same way. I think I have progress to do here.
    • Personal Perception: 8/10
    • External Perception: 8/10
    • Average Perception: 8/10
  • Lack of genuineness
    • I'm very rarely genuinely interested in people. Most of the time, I'm interested in me. People interest me only when they have something uncommon, in common with me, or bring novelty.
    • Personal Perception: 8/10
    • External Perception: 8/10
    • Average Perception: 8/10
  • Difficulties being grateful
    • I have difficulties being grateful to people. I often feel like I'm the only who do everything by himself and that I need no-one to help me.
    • Personal Perception: 8/10
    • External Perception: 8/10
    • Average Perception: 8/10
  • Too private / Not wanting people to know me / Not wanting to share about me
    • I just see people as intrusive and don't want to share with them. I feel like they might want to humiliate me based on my interests.
    • Personal Perception: 8/10
    • External Perception: 8/10
    • Average Perception: 8/10
  • Annoyed by basic social interactions (small questions, playful remarks)
    • I can be annoyed with basic social interactions like jokes on me, remarks on basic things, a bit of playfulness towards me. It happened to me to respond with statements such as: "And? And what? So what? Yeah, this is very interesting. etc.".
    • Personal Perception: 8/10
    • External Perception: 8/10
    • Average Perception: 8/10
  • Negative Self-Image
    • I have a negative view of myself. I often have the feeling that I am a bad person
    • Personal Perception: 8/10
    • External Perception: 6/10
    • Average Perception: 7/10
  • Social anxiety
    • I have a general distrust of people. I'm very suspicious of people and careful of what people say. I have a tendency to let people talk so that I can analyze their psychological development to handle them. There's a feeling of unsafety with people. Also, this is very context dependant: my social anxiety can be low in some environments and high in other environments.
    • Personal Perception: 7/10
    • External Perception: 7/10
    • Average Perception: 7/10
  • Fear of vulnerability / showing my pain / failures / insecurities
    • I noticed that I'm a bit afraid of sharing how I really feel. It happened to me in the past when I would hurt myself accidentally and a close relative would look at me and I would respond: "What? What are you looking at? What is your problem?"
    • Personal Perception: 7/10
    • External Perception: 7/10
    • Average Perception: 7/10
  • Very sensitive to noises
    • I am a naturally very sensitive person as I experience things very strongly. However, regarding noises, there might also be other contributing factors, but I'm not sure.
    • Personal Perception: 8/10
    • External Perception: 6/10
    • Average Perception: 7/10
  • Annoyed by incompetency
    • I noticed that when I'm very good at something, I expect others to be as good as I am. I can therefore by annoyed by incompetent people.
    • Personal Perception: 7/10
    • External Perception: 4/10
    • Average Perception: 5.5/10
  • Difficulties regarding dating
    • This goes in hand with social anxiety. I always had a lot of difficulties relating to people and this issue made dating even more difficult for me. My fear of failure and fear of rejection is very strong in this area. I have the problem of not resonating with 99% of people and the feeling of not being good enough for a relationship. There's also an environmental factor that makes things more or less difficult. Overall, I see the experiences that had contributed to this feeling, but I haven't dig into that yet. I have shadows and limiting beliefs in this area and I'm going to take all of them down in this journal.
    • Personal Perception: 8/10
    • External Perception: 5/10
    • Average Perception: 6.5/10
  • Difficult being authentic / Shame of self-expression
    • There's a feeling that I should not express myself authentically and that I should always be careful of what people think of me.
    • Personal Perception: 8/10
    • External Perception: 4/10
    • Average Perception: 6/10
  • Dislike of encouragements
    • This doesn't feel genuine to me.
    • Personal Perception: 8/10
    • External Perception: 4/10
    • Average Perception: 6/10
  • Dislike being taken care of
    • Feel like people are always dishonest. Feels inauthentic, not genuine. I feel like I'm waiting for someone to be kind with me, then put a knife in my back. I told to my mom several times is the past: "Please, don't care about me. Act as if I was dead, let me die."
    • Personal Perception: 8/10
    • External Perception: 4/10
    • Average Perception: 6/10
  • Dislike of masculine compassion
    • I think that masculine compassion doesn't work in 99% of cases. However, I see some traumas related to that as it has been wrongly used on me.
    • Personal Perception: 6/10
    • External Perception: 6/10
    • Average Perception: 6/10
  • Fakeness
    • There's a part of me that wants to prove itself, a part of me that wants to show how great he is. This part feels very fake/inauthentic.
    • Personal Perception: 8/10
    • External Perception: 4/10
    • Average Perception: 6/10
  • Fear of failure
    • My fear of failure has always been very high in my life. I'm not sure why, I think that this is related to my dad.
    • Personal Perception: 8/10
    • External Perception: 4/10
    • Average Perception: 6/10
  • Tendency to overcatastrophize / overstress
    • I noticed that I have a tendency to over catastrophize situations. In consequence, it backfires and my ability to deal with the situation is lower than it could be.
    • Personal Perception: 7/10
    • External Perception: 4/10
    • Average Perception: 5.5/10
  • Annoyed by people who wants to help me
    • I noticed that I often time dislike getting some help, especially for small things in life. When I'm trying to learn something, I want to experience the pleasure of discovering things by myself. I see people who want to help me as intrusive and disrupting of my enjoyment of the process. There might be something behind this feeling rather than just a personality trait.
    • Personal Perception: 8/10
    • External Perception: 2/10
    • Average Perception: 5/10
  • Shame of being performant / doing great
    • I noticed that when I'm doing great some people can get easily jealous and attack me. In consequence, I feel that I shouldn't be great. I also see bad family conditioning.
    • Personal Perception: 8/10
    • External Perception: 2/10
    • Average Perception: 5/10
  • Discouragement after making good progress when facing difficulties
    • I noticed that I can be very easily discouraged in the face of difficulties and want to switch to something else.
    • Personal Perception: 6/10
    • External Perception: 4/10
    • Average Perception: 5/10
  • Sense of urgency / Wanting to go fast
    • I noticed that I feel a sense of urgency in my life, that I need to go as quickly as possible because otherwise, I'll waste my life. This feeling of urgency can sometimes happen when I'm working on projects with strict deadlines. Often time this feeling backfires on me.
    • Personal Perception: 8/10
    • External Perception: 2/10
    • Average Perception: 5/10
  • Uncomfortable with touch
    • This always felt weird for me because I'm not very people-oriented and don't understand why I should touch people and don't see a need to touch people. However, I do see some experiences that contributed to that.
    • Personal Perception: 6/10
    • External Perception: 4/10
    • Average Perception: 5/10
  • Dislike of people being interested in me
    • This doesn't feel genuine to me.
    • Personal Perception: 7/10
    • External Perception: 2/10
    • Average Perception: 4.5/10
  • Shame of not being able to connect and communicate properly with the people from my country
    • I'm part of a minority in my country and while growing up my parents didn't teach me the language that is mostly used. I understand what people say and can I communicate but I have an accent which create some shame.
    • Personal Perception: 8/10
    • External Perception: 0/10
    • Average Perception: 4/10
  • Pessimism
    • I can often have a bit a of pessimism / negativity in me.
    • Personal Perception: 6/10
    • External Perception: 2/10
    • Average Perception: 4/10
  • Regular sadness
    • I often experience some sadness. I think that this is mostly related to processing traumas from a few years ago, but there might be something else here.
    • Personal Perception: 6/10
    • External Perception: 2/10
    • Average Perception: 4/10
  • Ashamed of racism that I got
    • I got some racism that I'm ashamed of because of my atypical situation. The fact I'm mixed-race and the misunderstanding that I often receive from people also causes me difficulties to sort things out.
    • Personal Perception: 7/10
    • External Perception: 0/10
    • Average Perception: 2.5/10
  • Jealous of successful friends
    • I noticed some jealousy in the past, but overall this is pretty low.
    • Personal Perception: 4/10
    • External Perception: 0/10
    • Average Perception: 2/10
  • Racism
    • I can still feel a bit of resentment towards some people and have some small intrusive thoughts, but overall this is very low.
    • Personal Perception: 2/10
    • External Perception: 0/10
    • Average Perception: 1/10
Edited by Raphael

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To Explore

→ Document: To Explore

These are experiences that I consider worth exploring.

Very Important

  • My relationship with my dad
  • My relationship with my body
  • My relationship with women
  • My relationship with men
  • My relationship with my country
  • Internship experience from october 2017 to december 2017
  • Work experience from april 2018 to september 2019
  • Being exploited as a freelancer
  • Being bullied by V in the school bus when I was a kid
  • Any significant or moderate bullying experience when I was at school
  • Social anxiety and feeling of being different from a very young age

Important

  • Actualized.org traumas
  • My experience of being a mixed-race individual
  • My relationship with culture
  • My relationship with my mom
  • My relationship with my sister

Moderate

  • My relationship with my extended family

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This journal is going to be my most painful journal.

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11 minutes ago, sda said:

This journal was helpful.

This is just the beginning. Stay tuned for more lol.

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This journal will be as dirty as it'll have to be. Don't read if you're too sensitive.

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There's a feeling of hate inside me. Why do I hate myself so much? And why do I hate the world so much?

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11 hours ago, Raphael said:

This journal will be as dirty as it'll have to be. Don't read if you're too sensitive.

Yeah, man! Bring it on!

Let it all out. Make all the demons burn.


Foolish until proven other-wise ;)

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Shame + Hypersensitivity

I'm noticing some shame in me. Shame because when I look back at my life it wasn't that bad most of the time. Sure, I experienced pain and suffering to various degrees but compared to what some people experienced, most of them feel insignificant. Sometimes I read horror stories on this forum of people who have been hardly psychologically and physically abused in their life. I did experience abuses in my life but never to that degree, at worst it was moderate with very few intense traumas. So... if I never experienced such horrible conditions and I'm suffering, then how much do people with severe life traumas suffer? I can imagine how hard it can be, but my imagination will always be incomplete and never match the reality of someone who experienced severe traumas.

I also have a hypersensitivity to life, which means that I experience things very strongly. I experience people's emotions strongly so that might contribute to amplifying the traumas. I'm very sensitive to noises, I have been able to hear people voice's coming out of phones in the past. This hypersensitivity can be overwhelming, but I'm handling it better than before. If I master it, I can get to a point of perceiving an incredible amount of nuances and mastering them to sort out the toughest life challenges without me being too much emotionally affected.

Edited by Raphael

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Shame + Hypersensitivity

I'm noticing some shame in me. Shame because when I look back at my life it wasn't that bad most of the time. Sure, I experienced pain and suffering to various degrees but compared to what some people experienced, most of them feel insignificant. Sometimes I read horror stories on this forum of people who have been hardly psychologically and physically abused in their life. I did experience abuses in my life but never to that degree, at worst it was moderate with very few intense traumas. So... if I never experienced such horrible conditions and I'm suffering, then how much do people with severe life traumas suffer? I can imagine how hard it can be, but my imagination will always be incomplete and never match the reality of someone who experienced severe traumas.

I also have a hypersensitivity to life, which means that I experience things very strongly. I experience people's emotions strongly so that might contribute to amplifying the traumas. I'm very sensitive to noises, I have been able to hear people voice's coming out of phones in the past. This hypersensitivity can be overwhelming, but I'm handling it better than before. If I master it, I can get to a point of perceiving an incredible amount of nuances and mastering them to sort out the toughest life challenges without me being too much emotionally affected.

Edited by Raphael

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