10 Signs That You’re Healing From Trauma

10 Signs That You’re Healing From Trauma

Are trauma symptoms running your life? Healing from trauma can feel like you’re aiming for a moving target because you don’t know what “healed” feels like. If you’re frustrated with triggers, flashbacks, nightmares, overwhelming emotions, hypervigilance, grief, or despair, then this post is for you. This article will cover ten signs that you’re healing from trauma.

Introducing the Trauma Recovery Scale

In the mid-90’s, Dr. Eric Gentry, a Master Traumatologist, established a way to measure clients’ progress in trauma treatment. He took the diagnostic criteria for PTSD and changed them around to create the Trauma Recovery Scale. This scale reveals ten signs to watch for when recovering from trauma.

Here they are…

First, You make it through most days without distressing memories.

When living with trauma, smells, objects, and locations can take you back to the time of the trauma. It can feel like you’re reliving the memory in the present. One of the signs that you’re healing from trauma is that you can make it through most days in the present without reliving those memories. The memories feel like something that happened in the past rather than something that you’re reliving every day.

2. You Rarely Have Nightmares

One of the ways that our bodies process information is through dreams. Many trauma survivors experience nightmares. So, as you heal from trauma, those nightmares fade away and you have more peaceful nights of sleep.

3. You Feel in Control of Your Emotions Even When Thinking About Difficult Memories

When you have survived trauma, difficult memories can feel threatening. Your body can go into fight-or-flight. In this state it can feel like your emotions are out of control. Part of the work of trauma recovery is to help your body to remain calm even when thinking about difficult memories. You can think about what happened and talk about what happened and still feel in control of your body and emotions.

4. You Can Do Things That You Used to Avoid

One of the great tragedies of trauma is that it can limit your life. You avoid certain activities because you become afraid of overwhelming emotions. When you heal from trauma, you start to be able to engage in activities that you used to avoid. If you find yourself getting out there and enjoying the things that you used to avoid, then this is one of the signs that you are healing from trauma.

5. You are Safe and you Feel Safe

If you are in active danger your body cannot heal from trauma. Your body recovers when you are physically safe. However, even when you know logically that you are safe, your body, can trigger the sense that you are not safe. If you are safe and you also feel safe, then you are recovering from trauma.

6. You Have Supportive Relationships in Your LIfe

We are wounded in relationships and we heal in relationships. Trauma occurs when we are threatened by other people. This can lead to feeling unsafe around otherwise safe people. One signs of trauma recovery is that you have supportive people in your life.

7. You Can Safely Feel a Full Range of Emotions

People who have been traumatized have difficulty feeling emotions. As a result, they often avoid them. Even happiness can feel agitating. Recently, I learned how to catch the early signs of my body going into a threat response and I started to train my body to stay calm. I started learning new information about myself in the process. I started to realize that I became anxious whenever I felt happy. It was as though I was always waiting for something bad to happen. I started feeling happy without getting anxious. Some people find it difficult to feeling vulnerable feelings like sadness or grief. Once person told me that they trained themselves not to feel sadness because it made them too vulnerable when they were growing up. They did not want to be weak–they had to be strong. When you are recovering from trauma, you are able to feel a full range of emotions and the experience feels safe.

8. You Can Allow Things to Happen In Your Surroundings Without Needing to Control Them.

Trauma survivors often feel the need to control things in their environment. They need outcomes to go a certain way or they don’t feel safe. When you are recovering from trauma, you are able to allow things to happen around you without feeling so much distress.

9. You Can Concentrate on Thoughts of Your Choice

Trauma can cause a lot of intrusive thoughts. This is your body’s way of trying to heal and make sense of what happened. It can feel as though you have no control over your thoughts. When you have been recovering from trauma, you will feel as though you can concentrate on the thoughts of your choice most of the time.

10. You Have a Sense of Hope about the Future.

Trauma can feel confusing and can create a sense of hopelessness. When you are healing, you begin to have hope about the future.

Conclusion

I hope that this gives you a sense of what’s possible as you heal from trauma. You may be surprised to find that you have already made progress in some of these areas. Perhaps this also gives some ideas of what else is possible.

If you want to go even deeper into your self-healing journey, check out Emotions Made Simple. It’s designed to help you make sense of overwhelming emotions and take massive action toward your goals.

Thank you for trusting me with this part of your healing journey.