Techniques to Self Heal Your Trauma
Here are 9 techniques I use in my coaching practice with my clients that you can also use to self heal your trauma.
If you’d rather watch the short playlist on Youtube all at once, here it is! Otherwise, read on.
Table of Contents:
Reconnect to Your Core Values
When you’ve been through trauma, you’ve likely been disconnected from what you actually value for so long that you’ve forgotten. Or, maybe you’ve never even gotten a chance to develop your own values. it can be powerful to reconnect. Do this by being honest with yourself about what’s important to you and if you’re doing things that are aligned with that. Stop prioritizing values that were put there by someone else.
Here are examples of my core values so you can get an idea of where to start.
Once you have a list of your core values, treat it like a living document that changes with you as you change over the course of your lifetime. Revisit it periodically to make sure you’re still living in alignment with what you value most.
Question and Shift Your Beliefs
It may feel like what you believe is absolute truth, but I guarantee that beliefs are fluid and can change. Question why you believe what you do to enable yourself to focus on what you truly believe, not what somebody else imposed upon you. Once you learn something new that impacts a belief, integrate and apply that new information in your thoughts and through your actions. This changes your life!
In order to do this, you must first be able to identify beliefs. Then, it takes intentional effort to catch your thought processes and change them. With enough practice, your beliefs start to shift.
Here’s an example of a limiting belief I used to have.
Here’s an example of how my belief shifted after I did some work and started to trust and integrate positive experiences that contradicted the original limiting belief.
Build Self Compassion
Self compassion is basically self love combined with being kind to yourself.
Building self compassion means being aware of what’s going on within yourself (and with others) and caring enough about it to take action to alleviate the suffering.
You do this through allowing yourself to dive deep into all kinds of emotions, giving yourself grace when you feel like you make mistakes, and forgiving yourself. These acts of self compassion expand your emotional intelligence and bolster your confidence in that it’s okay to be you, you are safe, and how it’s not selfish to love yourself.
If you extend this to other relationships already, use that as a foundation to extend it into your relationship with yourself.
You deserve to treat yourself the way you would treat others.
Studies have shown that self compassion is extremely important in being able to find happiness and decrease anxiety. Here’s a short clip of the research.
Reframe and Shift Perspectives
Reframing means looking at a thought or circumstance from a different angle. This helps you see the bigger picture, focus on the parts of it that support your healing rather than reinforcing a wound, and helps you focus on what you want over what you don’t want, which is much more productive.
Looking at thoughts and circumstances in new ways and from different angles can help you find meaning in your experiences. Finding meaning is one of the best ways to release the shame and guilt you constantly feel. Plus, it helps build your resilience and hope for a better now and future.
When there’s meaning, your experiences weren’t all for nothing. They had to have a higher purpose.
Plus, when you see things as they are and the many ways in which they could be perceived, you’re able to make new and different choices than before. New choices lead to different outcomes—perhaps the one’s you’d prefer to have.
Here’s an example of reframing.
Explore Timelines
When you explore how you perceive time and the timeline of your life, you set the foundation to reframe different parts of it. The way you see your present and future isn't static. It's a belief. Therefore, it's dynamic and can be shifted and changed into whatever you want it to be.
We can't change the past, but we can use it to fuel our present moment, which informs our future.
By honoring your past for its role in who you are today, you can find the bright spots there and bring them into the now and the future. By staying focused in the present, you can release the past and start informing what a healthier future looks like, knowing that you have the power to change.
Here’s a quick guided meditation to bring you to the present moment.
Visualize and Use Your Imagination
If you can imagine and see what you want for yourself, then you can create it. But also, visualization and imagination play important roles in healing trauma because they can connect you to freedom, peace, and self regulation.
Getting really good at visualization not only helps you manifest what you can see for yourself in life, but it's a huge part of mindfulness, enabling you to self soothe your nervous system through grounding and calm scenery.
Using your imagination can help you visualize. It can also help you think outside of the box and get creative about solutions and goals that are aligned with what's truly important to you. And, you can also use it to reimagine a traumatic situation in your past -- see yourself standing up for yourself, for example—to break free from it.
Here’s a quick exercise for you that prompts you to visualize your perfect day. Remember, if you can see it, you can create it. Notice what’s happening in your body as you sit with this visualization.
Truth Proof
When you've been through emotional abuse such as gaslighting, manipulation, coercion, isolation, constant criticism, and more, it can be disorienting. It can be hard to know left from right or up from down. So truth proofing can be a powerful way to start trusting yourself again. You're not "crazy," even if you have wild thoughts and question your decision making capabilities.
Address worry and head on through truth proofing. That is, measuring progress, celebrating it, checking in on your healing process, looking at the big picture, and relying on evidence around you to help build trust and faith in yourself and others.
Here’s an example of using truth proofing when the anxiety hits.
Build Emotional Tolerance and Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize and understand your emotions and the emotions of others. It helps improve relationships and your ability to succeed at your goals.
Emotional tolerance is your capability to feel your emotions, which allows you to process, observe, and pause before responding to them.
To build emotional tolerance and intelligence, find ways to recognize and tolerate big emotions, whether you perceive them as positive or negative. By being able to observe the emotion while you feel it rather than react immediately, the emotion can more easily pass. And, you can start to balance your emotions, enabling you to act in alignment with the outcomes you want.
Here’s the great news about both emotional intelligence and emotional tolerance: it really can be improved and expanded. You can learn it if you don’t already have it.
Strengthen Mind-Body Connection
A strong mind-body connection is important because you need to be able to know what your body needs in order to meet those needs. When you can meet your body’s needs, your nervous system can begin to regulate and trust that you’re not in a dire situation.
Several ways to do this include grounding, engaging your senses, and noticing sensations in your body and what they’re trying to tell you.
Here’s a quick video that explains even more ways to strengthen that connection.
Work with Me
If you’d like support with these techniques, explore my 1:1 coaching packages and let’s work together. I’d love to support you!
Questions or Comments?
Feel free to let me know if you have any questions in the comments, or you can schedule a free consultation.
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Hey there!
I’m Brandi Fleck, TICC. I’m a private practice, certified trauma-informed life coach and trauma recovery coach. All genders, sexualities, and races are welcome here. I primarily serve clients via one-on-one coaching and self-paced trauma education.
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