Healing Trauma Isn't about Coping with it - It's About Becoming Who God Intended You To Be

One of the things that REALLY bothers me in the mental health field is this idea of "coping" with trauma.

When I was trying to heal the layers and layers of trauma surrounding my heart and nervous system...

this was what was being taught.

It wasn't the therapist's fault..

they were there to help.

But I didn't want to know how to "cope" with my trauma...

I wanted to know how to heal it!

So that's what I set out to do...

and with God's help...

that's exactly what I did!

In today's episode, I share the difference between coping and healing...

and what it really takes to heal for good.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the other side of the struggle. Okay, we are getting into one of the biggest pet peeves I have. When people talk about healing from trauma, yeah, we're gonna talk about this in just a second, but before we do, let me remind you, my loves, if you love the show, if you think that I've got some good things that can help you heal from your trauma and get into better boundaries and create the life and living that you want, that you would love, feel free to book a call. The link is in the description below, but just in case, here's the link again, Callanly.com forward slash Aaron Anderson dash coaching forward slash creating dash your dash unbreakable dash boundaries. Okay. Again, like I said, the link is in the description below. If you would like to book a free coaching call where we dive into your boundaries and we dive into your situation specifically and see how we can tailor what I talk about to you specifically, okay, and actually help you heal from your trauma so that way you can go and do the things that you want to do, that way you're not being held back in any way from the goals and the life that you want to live. So if that is something you would like, my loves, this is absolutely free, no sales call whatsoever. Schedule that call. Let's see what I can do to help you in 30 minutes. Okay, with that said, let's dive into today's episode and let's talk about the idea of coping. Let me tell you, that is a word that I hate in the trauma field because I don't know about you, but when I was looking for relief from my trauma, I was not thinking, oh, I just need to cope with it better. I was thinking I wanted to heal the sucker.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

I wanted freedom from it, from the pain, from the unsightliness of it.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

And I felt like no matter what I did, no matter where I went, it followed me. See, here's the deal. If you had a gaping wound on your body, you wouldn't just say, Well, I guess I just need to cope with this. No, I really don't think so. We would take a look at that, we would clean it, we would tend to it, we would suture it, we would rest it, ice it, nourish ourselves, make sure we got enough rest, protect it, and allow it to regenerate. Because what ends up happening, we don't like it, doesn't just grow back together, it actually is something completely new. If you have a great big huge gash in your arm and you get it to heal, it might leave a scar, but it's basically something completely new. Something that wasn't there before whatever happened traumatized you. But we tend to treat our emotional, mental, and spiritual trauma like it's just something we're supposed to live with and look at. And you're not the only ones, like if that's something if that's your mindset, you're not the only ones. This is something that is pushed in the mental health community. When I went to therapy, and I'm not saying anything against therapists, guys, I think there's some really incredible therapists out there, and I'm also gonna go back and get my degree just because I think it would really lend a lot to what I do. But here's the deal: this is something that is toted in the mental health community, too, where okay, let's teach you how to cope with your trauma. There ain't no doctor out there that's gonna tell you, let's tell you show you how to cope with a ginormous wound on your body. No, our job is to heal it, and trauma is something that absolutely can be healed. Will it leave a scar? Most likely. But scars are not often painful, they are simply a reminder of what we are now. That's it. Okay. Trauma was never meant to be where you live. It was never meant to be your permanent home. But so many people are taught, well, we just need to manage it. We just need to or manage it better, we need to cope with it, function around it, survive with it. We're also taught that oftentimes it's it's ours to well, like I said, manage it. Like if somebody's traumatizing you, then we just have to manage them better. That is often toted in mental health, it's in social media now. Like it's it's ah no to all of that. It's like living with a shoulder devil when you literally can just absolutely knock that daggone shoulder devil off of your shoulder. Trauma healing trauma is a process of learning how to not listen to the lies that come from it anymore. There are certain things that we have to nourish ourselves with on a mental, emotional, and spiritual level, in order so that trauma does not consistently live with us anymore. Coping, however, still means being emotionally tied to it, mentally controlled by it, and spiritually burdened by it. It's just learning how to live your life with the ginormous wound still in you, and a lot of people wonder why they feel like they don't have the energy to keep going in their lives, and it's because we haven't actually done the work to heal what is there, it is still a burden, you're still carrying it, and it's still gonna suck energy from you. The whole point of healing is to stop that. It's not saying that it never happened, it's a whole lot like the big wound, and saying, ah, it's not there. When everybody's looking at that and like, yeah, no, actually, it is very much, it's oozing, and I think you need to go to the hospital, right? But yet we treat our ginormous mental, emotional, and spiritual wounds as though they're not that big of a deal.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Coping might be a very temporary bridge to being able to do life, but it's not the destination that we actually want.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

We want complete and utter freedom from whatever is traumatizing us. God did not design you to permanently live emotionally attached to what broke you or what is breaking you. So why is it that we treat emotional trauma like it's just something we are supposed to live with? Mental trauma, spiritual trauma. Why do we treat it like it's just something that we're supposed to live with? And a lot of it is because this is what we're told. This is what we're told to do. This is why men and women alike are being told that their emotions are too much.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

But without that emotional work the best we can do is cope.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

This is why emotional work is so important and why truth is the nourisher of it. Is because once we start to actually understand truth, real raw truth, the truth that makes the universe work. The truth that God Himself lives by. Once we start understanding those types of truths, then healing becomes possible. And the reason being is because trauma is something, it's it's it's like a knife in a sense that gets lodged in your emotions, your nervous system, your brain, your mentality, your spirituality gets lodged in there. And it takes someone who understands truth to be able to get in there and dig it out and allow healing to happen, but we cannot heal if we are constantly taking the hit. So, what does healing then require of us? And let me tell you, it can still be kind of painful. You know, I look at you know, going back to my husband and healing from his pornography addiction, or healing from the emotional trauma that I received in childhood from my mom and my grandma and or whoever else, right? Going back, one of the it was some of the most painful work I've done because healing made me swallow my pride a lot, because I never wanted to admit how I could do better because I was so focused on how they could do better, and that was the honest to gosh truth, and turning it and saying, Okay, this is how I can do better, was really freaking hard because it felt like now I was betraying myself too, but in reality, I finally was starting to have my own back. You know, in my book, The Seven Pillars of the Unashamed Life, which is coming out soon, guys, so be watching for it. I talk about the difference between blame and ownership. And see, before when I'm sitting here focusing on what my husband was doing wrong, what my mom was doing wrong, what my grandma was doing wrong, what my my coworkers were doing wrong, these relationships that I deemed painful, which was pretty much almost all of them, guys. Okay, and I'm the center con I'm the center of my life. I'm I was the only constant in all of these relationships. That was a painful realization, but also realizing that actually I had been lying to myself by telling myself that I had to wait to heal until they start showing up differently, and I started saying, no, I need to be the one to start showing up differently, I need to be the one to start it.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Guys, that was hard because it literally felt at first like I was giving them a pass.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

Like I was letting them walk all over me even more because I wasn't making them take responsibility for their actions.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

But here's the truth Even now I can't make people re take responsibility for their actions. I can't make people be good. I can't make people care enough. I can't make people do anything. But the one person I have control over is me. And that's a powerful thing. Because that means I can also take powerful and precisional action now.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

And see, at first that was really hard because I really had to remember, like, I didn't want like I wanted to be someone who was respectful, so getting snarky when somebody got snarky with me was so natural for me, but it only exacerbated the problem. Me holding my tongue and only saying what was true was insanely powerful, guys. But it was really hard because it took some serious emotional ninja jujatsu, whatever it is. It took some hard work. Because I really, really just wanted them to see what they were doing to me. But in reality, at least that's what I was thinking, but in reality, what I really wanted was peace, emotional freedom, no matter what anybody did to me, or said to me, or thought about me, or threw in my direction.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

I wanted the freedom to still be me, no matter what.

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And this is what I talk about with boundaries is that freedom to be ourselves no matter what. And what's crazy is it does make you untouchable to someone who wants to hurt you on an emotional, mental, and spiritual basis. It kind of does, it makes you untouchable. Because you won't change who you are just to please them. See, healing requires mental regeneration, which is new thoughts, new beliefs, new interpretations. That one's key. Because if we say that we want freedom, we have to define what freedom is, then. If we say that we want peace, we must also define what peace is. Your peace and my piece might look a little different. My peace looks a lot like quiet time, sitting somewhere with nature and just enjoying the solitude and the quiet. But somebody else's peace might look like a bunch of a bunch of their friends sitting together and chatting. That might be peace to them. I actually have a good friend and client who that's what peace looks like. We have to interpret and define what these things mean to us, so that way we can actually step into it, try it on for size, and see how we like it. How does it feel? How does it feel to have that freedom? How do we act inside of freedom? Because this is like the key of boundaries, my loves. Living inside of your values. But you have to interpret what that value is, what does it feel like, and how do you behave inside of it? Healing also requires emotional regeneration. That means safety, emotional safety, emotional capacity, and a completely different way of responding. If we keep doing what we've always done, we will keep getting the same result we already we've always had. And this is why I said it was so hard to respond differently. Because I wanted to get snarky, I wanted to put them in their place, I wanted them to understand like how they were wrong, and I wanted them to stop putting their stuff on me. But once I stopped creating space for their stuff to be thrown at me and to be put on me, things changed. See, for me, creating space looked a whole lot like creating space for truth. And when all I have is space for truth, lies don't stick. They don't, they never will, because there's no space for it. Spiritual regeneration also is what is something that is required when we are healing. That requires new type of relationship with God. Okay, and what I mean by that is we need to really actually understand who He is. You know, I have seen Christians, some Christians, not all Christians, who tote God as this all creator, but we are nothing more than ants to him, that he can do with us however he feels. And that's not really the God that I believe in. I believe that God is a loving heavenly father, and that he really wants what's best for us, and that he is very aware of us, and that he knows every hair on our head, every eyelash on our eyes, every pimple that hasn't erupted yet. Like he knows us down to every last detail, and he loves us down to every last detail. And if we are doing something that is hurting ourselves or someone else, he hurts with us, he wants to see us heal, he wants to see us do better because he's happier when we're happier. For me, a new relationship with God meant I had to know God, I had to know who he was and how he thought and how he operated, because that was the defining direction of my relationship with him and therefore my relationship with self. See, I needed to know why I could trust God. Like, why can't I trust him? Why can't I consistently trust him? Because if there's always a place I can trust, there's always a safe place for me. And it also helped me learn how to trust myself as his creation. We have to have true. Replacing lies. Now let me tell you the difference here, guys. I think I've talked about this actually not too long ago, how truth and lies are not just facts and not facts. Truth and lies can start both with the exact same fact. But a lie will lead you to destruction and hopelessness, whereas truth will lead you to light, better understanding, clarity, and creation. You can take the exact same fact and use that fact to create one of the one of the two. The adversary wants to destroy you, so he's going to take the facts about you and make you ashamed of them, whereas God is going to take those facts and show you how they're your strengths. For example, you know, when my kids were little, I was a bit of a yeller. And granted, it was it was a large part of what I had seen and what I had known. And that's the way I had I had it was what I had seen in in the ways of like knowing how to raise kids. Okay. But my kids did not respond well to that. Right? And I could say, well, I'm I'm a yeller, and therefore I'm a bad mom. Or I could say I'm a yeller, therefore I know my voice is powerful, and it has some weight, and it has some meaning. I just need to do better in the way that I am communicating. Both things could possibly be true. But both things start with a fact, but one leads you to destruction and a lack of self-belief, while the other one leads you to creation and truth and confidence. And when we're in confidence, we're in creation. Healing also requires physical nervous system regeneration. See, we do have to have a new type of embodied safety, new patterns in the body, and peace replacing a chronic threat. We need to have those things. We need to feel safe in order to heal. If we don't feel safe, we don't heal because the trauma is constantly cutting us. We need to be able to get away from that trauma or the perceived threat. Okay, that might mean having to leave a relationship behind. That might mean that I have a very good friend who ended up having to actually move so that way she could finally heal. She was having issues with her next door neighbor. And the next door neighbor was causing a lot of her problems. I know that there are women and men out there that need to leave relationships with their spouses. And hopefully, like I do hope that marriages last, but unfortunately, I what I see more often than not is one or both partners being very, very emotionally unhealthy, making it almost impossible to have a type of relationship with someone. But when we become embodied in ourselves, and we embodied meaning we need to be aware of what's happening inside of our body and how our body is feeling, where we're feeling tension, etc. Because when that happens, we're able to start paying attention to how we're actually feeling. Trusting ourselves to be able to create safety. Healing trauma means growing something new where something was really broken before. But we have to figure out where the brokenness is in order to heal it because it makes no, it does no good to cast your leg when your arm is looking like kind of jagged, right? You're not going to heal your arm by casting your leg. You actually need to pinpoint where the problem is and give that area what it needs to be able to heal. See, you cannot heal by staying the same. The thing is, is you aren't the same person that you were before the trauma. Matter of fact, you're not even before even without trauma, you're not the same person you are today than what you were yesterday. You're constantly growing, constantly regenerating, constantly doing something different. And it's anchoring into that, okay, we're always going to do something different that causes growth. See, healing asks of you. This is this is the price. Sinking into truth, really diving into truth, being honest with yourself and everyone else, even the difficult people. Here's a really good boundary for you if you are dealing with someone difficult and you know that you made an error, and they come back at you, and they're like, See, I told you. All you do, all you do is simply say, thanks so much, or actually don't even thank them. Just sorry, my my family's in the background. I don't I hope you guys can't hear them today, guys, but they are kind of loud. I'm recording this podcast today while I've got my family home, and so I'm trying really hard to kind of keep the the the noise down, but you might hear my family in the background a little bit today. But back to like what it looks like to be honest with somebody who's difficult. Hey, I just I realized that I maybe shouldn't have said what I said. That was really out of a line alignment for me, and I I do apologize. And they might come back and be like, see, it's all your fault. I told you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? They might try to throw it in your face. I didn't come here for your opinion. I came here for mine.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

I am simply here to apologize because apologizing is good for me. And leave it at that. Let them know that it's not about them. Healing is about you for you.

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And all you're doing is just taking ownership. You're taking ownership back.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

They don't get to own any pieces of you, but they get to own their pieces. But you don't have to.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

Growth is also going to ask us to take more responsibility, to soften, to take more courage. And a lot of the reasons why a lot of people stay stuck is because this type of growth feels unfamiliar. And unfamiliar can also lead to feeling unsafe. And I get it. I truly get it. A lot of like truth, honesty, responsibility, softness, courage, all of those things are a type or a result of actually growing boundaries. And remember, boundaries are how we choose to show up in our values, how we choose to be, regardless of how anybody else shows up. It's how we choose to show up. Because we're going to show up in power, we're going to show up in love, we're going to show up in truth and honesty and responsibility. We're going to show up in softness. We're going to show up in courage. Because we like who we are when we show up that way.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

When we live inside of our values.

SPEAKER_00 31:22

It takes back our life. And it leaves responsibility, like somebody else's responsibility with them. They have to deal with it. And they don't like it. They want you to be responsible for it. But when you're responsible for yourself and only yourself, there's no room for their responsibility. That's that. See let's talk about a type of mental, emotional, and spiritual diet. To regenerate, you need a constant diet of truth, not the trauma stories, not somebody else's stories, not what they want you to believe, not a distorted reha reality or identity. What the adversary wants you to believe about yourself, what somebody else wants you to believe, and not fear.

SPEAKER_01 32:25

We actually have to anchor into truth and what God thinks about us. We have to we have to plug into that highest form of love.

SPEAKER_00 32:43

Truth all like healing and regeneration also requires a diet of love. Every cell that regenerates inside of your body, whether it be emotionally, mentally, spiritually, or physically, it is being regenerated by love.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

Love is what heals. Love requires self-compassion.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

Checking in with yourself and really knowing your intentions. Maybe the action didn't quite meet the intention, but then we get to look at it and say, how can I make this work better next time? It's checking in with God's love for us and seeing how we actually are worthy of that love.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

That's a big deal, guys.

SPEAKER_00 33:47

If you believe you're his child, but you don't believe you're worthy of his love, then you don't believe you are his child.

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Any child looks at their parent and desires that parent's love because they know they're worth it. It's gonna take humility.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

And humility is a willingness to see what is true. A lot of times people will say that humility is putting yourself last, and that's not true. You can't do that and have humility, actually, because you have to live your life, nobody else can. If you are putting yourself last and putting everyone else before yourself and calling that humility, you are doing everyone else a giant disservice around you, including you, because you're not giving yourself what you need to be the giver you say you are. You have to have a willingness to see what is true and live it. You have to have a willingness to change and a willingness to actually receive help. That one's so hard. Even for me, sometimes it's hard to say, hey, I need help. And we also need a diet of pre of confidence, practicing new decisions, giving ourselves the space to make new decisions and make mistakes, trusting our growth and honoring what God is building inside of us. You cannot heal on a steady diet of lies, my loves, self-abandonment, fear, and emotional starvation. Same similar with you can't heal a big wound without the tools needed to actually get it to heal. If you're gonna starve yourself of those tools, that wound is gonna take a long time to heal, and eventually it's gonna start to stink. You are not meant to just manage your past, you're not meant to manage someone else's past or someone else's emotions or someone else's results.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

You're meant to become someone freer because of how you healed.

SPEAKER_00 36:25

You are meant to have a voice because of your healing. Your healing, like I said, might create a scar, but the scar has a really, really powerful story and lesson in it that many people need nowadays. My loves, the wound does not get the final word. God does. Healing trauma isn't about learning how to live with pain, it's about becoming the version of you that pain could never destroy in the first place. Because that is what God created, and that is the healing power of God. The reason why God and Christ can heal is because they bring truth to the situation and love. Two things that are necessary for healing. My loves, I hope this episode was powerful for you to help you understand that we don't need coping. Coping is something that I I I don't want I don't want to he I don't want to live with my trauma. And I don't want to believe that it's something that will always have to stay with me.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

I might have a scar from it. But scars are simply just battle wins with excellent stories all about 'em.

SPEAKER_00 38:07

That have deep wisdom in them.

SPEAKER_01 38:12

I'm okay with my scars, but I am not, will not, and will never be someone who simply copes with trauma.

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I am very happy with who I am, and that person does not have to cope with trauma. She heals it. Alright, my loves. Again, if you guys would like that free call, go click on the link below. Calendly.com forward slash Aaron Dash Anderson dash coaching forward slash creating dash your dash unbreakable dash boundaries. Go check out the link. Get a call with me today. Let me help you create your boundaries and actually heal your trauma as well. So that way you can go and do the things that you were meant to do in your life as well. Okay, my loves, until next time, I'll see you on the other side. Bye.