Healing from child abuse or chronic trauma doesn’t happen step-by-step, as if you were climbing a staircase. The healing process is more like peeling an onion.
Child abuse is sustained trauma that happens day after day. It forces you to disconnect from your mind, body, and heart. This helps you survive the abuse, but it also hides your authentic self.
Every day for years you disconnected from reality and from your true identity, while enduring the abuse. Every year added a new layer of repression, inner tension, and toxic beliefs.
Your brain helped you do this when you were a child in order to protect you. But now you’re an adult, and this repressed trauma is manifesting as toxic relationships, addiction, codependency, destructive behavior patterns, illness, or chronic pain. You’d love to fix this, and you’ve tried. But nothing seems to work. Instead, you’re stuck, reliving the same problems over and over again. Ugh!
To move forward in a meaningful way, change your focus. Begin to see yourself as an onion. Then ask yourself these deep questions:
- What negative themes are repeated in your life?
- What are your challenges?
- What do your relationships look like?
- Do your friends treat you with respect and kindness?
- Do you schedule daily self-care?
- What are your healing goals?
- What gives you joy?
- What makes you feel fulfilled?
Each question you answer brings awareness with it. And this awareness peels away another layer of repressed trauma, just like you were peeling an onion.
However, peeling an onion always makes you cry, right? Awareness does the same thing. When awareness appears, it immediately peels away a layer of repressed trauma. That releases a flood of emotion, like sadness, grief, anger, or rage.
You have to grab a tissue to blot your eyes when peeling an onion, right? Do the same with awareness. Use kindness and compassion, like a soothing tissue, until those emotions flow through you and out.
Keep answering these deep questions, gaining awareness, and peeling away each layer of repressed trauma. Now you’re no longer stuck, and your life has become brighter, more joyous, and filled with gratitude for how far you’ve come. This is the healing journey!
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