How to Live a Healthy Life After Experiencing Trauma
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If you've been through any form of trauma before, then you understand how detrimental it is to all aspects of your life. Even the simplest of tasks like personal hygiene and running errands can become a monumental undertaking.
You need to regain control of your life and this requires dedicated effort to achieve. There are several tasks that you'll need to focus on to make this possible. For example, finding someone you trust to confide in can help you feel supported and give you the strength to move forward.
There's no better time to start than right now, so let's take a look at what you should do to live a healthy life following a traumatic event.
Understand That You're Not to Blame
Before you can begin the lengthy process of healing, you need to fully understand that you're not to blame for what happened to you.
Whether your trauma was related to physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, it's never about anything that you did wrong. Instead, whatever happened to you was entirely unfair and is a reflection of your abuser.
It can be easy to blame yourself when you're the target of someone else's abuse. You might think that you were an easy target or you did something to deserve this. Neither of these is true and you must realize this!
No mistakes you make, whether they're major or minor, make you deserving of becoming an abuse victim. Remember this well and understand that your circumstances were incredibly unlucky and had nothing to do with you.
Surround Yourself With Positive Influences
Once you understand that your trauma isn't your fault, the next step is ensuring to surround yourself with the right type of people.
An unfortunate reality is that sometimes the people you associate with can make you feel worse about yourself. They might be negative, dismissive, or perpetuate the idea that what happened to you is your fault.
These types of people are toxic and directly affect your ability to heal. You must remove any negative people from your life and make a point of only having positive people around you.
This means that you should have friends and family members that genuinely care about you. They should be willing to listen to your problems and encourage you to take care of yourself.
Finding a good therapist is also helpful because they can serve as an impartial reference and also as a person who will listen to you. Even if talking about what happened to you seems daunting, letting it out can help you find resolution and understand that you weren't deserving of your trauma.
Take Care of Your Body
Another important focus point should be taking care of your body.
Your mind and body are directly connected and the well-being of one influences the other. This means that an unhealthy mind will impact your body and vice versa.
There are two main components to this; exercise and nutrition. One of the first things that anyone will encourage you to do when in low spirits is to start exercising.
The benefits of exercising are endless, but one huge advantage is a refined mood. When your body begins to improve, you'll feel happy about the progress that you're making. Additionally, exercising releases endorphins, which naturally make you feel good.
Once you're in the rhythm of exercising, it's time to pay attention to your diet. It's easy to want to consume a bunch of junk food, sweets, and generally unhealthy meals. These can temporarily make you feel better, but they negatively affect your mind and body in the long run.
Instead, you should shape your diet into eating exclusively healthy food. This means eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, a good amount of protein, limiting sweets and junk food, and drinking a lot of water.
When you're exercising regularly and eating a healthy diet, your mood will naturally improve as your body does. This makes it easier to get your mind into a good space and gives you something beneficial to focus your energy and attention on.
Manage Your Anxiety
A final consideration to think about is finding a way to manage your anxiety.
Typically, the worst impact of any trauma is mental. This depends on what you've been through, but most physical injuries heal with time.
On the other hand, mental ailments take much longer to heal. You may experience flashbacks, intense dread, depression, and anxiety.
Of these, anxiety can be the most frustrating to deal with because it will make it difficult to do anything. Something as basic as leaving the house will become impossible if you experience anxiety attacks.
Before you can heal, you need to be able to calm your mind. This means learning relaxation techniques like meditation, mindfulness, steady breathing, and other healthy coping mechanisms.
Trauma manifests itself in many ways and you must address all of them. Your mind is just as important as your body, so you can't neglect your thoughts and feelings!
Closing Thoughts
Nobody should ever have to face the horrors of trauma, but sometimes you get dealt a bad hand. If this is the case, you need to focus on the future and be proactive about improving your mindset.
To accomplish this, you should understand that you're not to blame, surround yourself with positive people, take care of your body, and manage your anxiety levels. Doing this will go a long way towards improving the health of your mind and body.
It may take a long time to feel better, but moving past your trauma is possible. Don't let someone else's selfish actions prevent you from living a healthy and happy life!
