Why does it seem like other people bounce back from what you feel like you’re not bouncing back from?
If you’ve been through difficult times and you’re not bouncing back, there’s nothing wrong with you.
This is the nature of trauma.
It’s a bodily response.
It’s how your experiences have affected you emotionally, the meaning that it had (like something’s wrong with you), and how it shows up in your body.
If you’re in the middle of survival mode, you can’t necessarily see what you need to get on the other side.
Here are two reasons why you might not have bounced back from difficult experiences in your life:
1) Where You Loved And Nurtured Through A Difficult or Painful Experience?
One thing that prevents people from bouncing back is that they weren’t loved and nurtured through the painful experience.
For example, one woman I met went through a difficult experience with the birth of her child. Her baby was in the NICU, and she couldn’t take him home. There was a lot of worry about his well being and the whole experience would have been traumatizing. However, she came through it really well.
One of the differences that we talked about, as I didn’t coach her, she was just a woman that I met, was that she was loved through the experience. She was loved and supported through it.
Her friends, her spouse, her church, her community, surrounded her with love and support. That helps so much that she was able to get past that and not carry that survival response into her regular life.
Once she was past that difficult time, she was able to heal.
Another woman I knew years ago had experienced a sexual assault as a young woman. Her parents surrounded her with love. She was loved and nurtured through this painful experience.
Compare that to another woman who experienced a sexual assault, and her experience was devastating. She never talked to anyone. No one.
She carried this alone. What she went through was so painful. And she needed love through this so badly.
If this is your experience, if you haven’t been loved through it, you’re still worthy of that. You can still experience that. It’s going to start with you. You are going to deliver the love and receive the love that you needed to heal.
2) Was Your Sense Of Self Well Established And Nurtured?
Another reason you may not have bounced back from a loss or an intensely stressful time may have to do with your sense of self-worth, and how it was nurtured earlier in your life.
What was your sense of self before this difficult experience?
One woman I know went through a painful divorce and a deep betrayal. Despite this, she’s doing amazing.
What I see in her is that her sense of self was very well established, well developed, and nurtured growing up. She had a strong sense of self.
Now compare that to someone who maybe didn’t receive the same level of support and nurturing growing up.
If you grew up thinking that you weren’t worthy of love, that you were going to be abandoned or betrayed, or something was wrong with you, the outcome is not necessarily the same, because the meaning is different.
If you’re thinking that you haven’t been through anything like what other people have been through, it doesn’t matter.
For me, middle school was horrible. It was awful, it was so lonely, so isolating, and so cruel. I didn’t talk to anybody about it, so I internalized that and carried these wounds forward.
Because of this experience, as an adult woman, it’s gonna be hard to get to know me, it’s going to be hard for me to be vulnerable, and open, and relax my guard.
I had to go through my own healing experience because I wasn’t loved through it. I didn’t have the capacity to see at the time what I needed as a teenager at the time.
If you feel like you haven’t bounced back like you “should”, there’s nothing wrong with you.
Part of the work I do with Gentle Trauma Release is to release whatever’s in your body that’s hanging out and that didn’t get released.
I also help you feel the emotions that you needed to feel that maybe you couldn’t, while you’re in survival mode, and to bring you back to providing that love and receiving that love for you, with you, from you.
And then you can receive it and connect with other people who are safe for you and provide that space for you.
Healing is unique to you. But you are worthy of it, you’re capable of it.
If you haven’t experienced it fully yet, you can for sure.
Reach out to me if you have any questions about the Gentle Trauma Release Method, and how this may help you bounce back from difficult times where you may not have received the love and support you needed at the time.
You can also fill out a brief questionnaire to schedule a Discovery Call with me.