Photo by Blake Cheek on Unsplash
My family wants to know when this will be over. My spouse wants to know when our family will be free from the past. I wanna know when all of this will be over. So we can move forward with our lives and stop feeling/being stuck. There are so many people who feel stuck in the past. Due to childhood trauma, family, relationships, hardships, and young adulthood poor financial decisions, death or even extreme disasters. Feeling stuck is probably one of the most common terms that everyone can relate to. There can be times where the past simply will not lift and you might get in a cycle of thinking this is hopeless. I’m always going to think back on the trauma from my childhood or the effects of that natural disaster or the failed relationships with my biological family.Acknowledging the past is great to look back on reflect sort through but then to leave it in the past and learn how to move forward with confidence and an inner pace that with stands the test of time. What does it mean for all of this to be over to be really free from the past? That’s a great question that the answer is different for everyone. Is it a possibility to have total forgiveness for the wrongs that have been done to you. Many times people think oh I forgiven them and I have moved on. I haven’t forgotten, but I’ve moved on. Then yet they come into counseling months years later and say you know this issue is coming back up again for me. I don’t know what’s happening. I can tell you what’s happening. You did not have total forgiveness in the beginning. That is why the issue keeps recycling in your life. You can be set free from your past, you can move forward with your family and friends and job and confidence and have an inner pace that your past does not define you. Will this be an easy process absolutely not it may be one of the most difficult things that you ever go through. However, if what you’re doing is not hard you’re not doing it right. With the help of a trained professional, you can dig through these things. I would caution you though do not go to someone who is unlicensed or who is a life coach anything other than a licensed counselor or therapist. The reason being dealing with past trauma is very powerful and it needs to be recognized as so.
Why Can’t I Move On?
Why can’t I move on? Why am I stuck in the past? These are common questions that we hear from not only clients but also their family members who are also going through these struggles with them. Why can’t my spouse just move on from the past? We have a beautiful family that is healthy. We have a successful business. We get to do anything we want, buy anything we want and yet they’re still unhappy. They still are stuck in a state of deep dark depression that seems like nobody or nothing can reach. Why can’t they move on when my family member is stuck? It’s causing the rest of us to also be stuck. Trauma from the past can be a very complex thing. Our body keeps the score of what our experiences are. Our mind also keeps score. It may not be right in the front and what we think on every morning, but it is deep in there and due to external factors such as the weather, other people, places , those memories can become activated and are brought back to right where we were right, where we don’t wanna be. Many times clients say I’m having such vivid nightmares. It’s like I’m living those things again and I think about them all the next day. When you are having vivid dreams, which are nightmares of the things that were done to you in the past, that is because you have unThat is stored in your brain. You may say well I’ve gone to counseling before I’ve talked about those things. The people who had hurt me are dead and gone. Why am I still worried about this because you never dealt with it because you did not have total forgiveness for those people in your life, whoever wronged you.Again you can have forgiveness and you can even forget, but if you do not have total forgiveness, you will be spinning your well. Some ways that the past can show up in our every day, life are triggers, such as language to of voice, a movie, traveling somewhere being around some people who are having some issues even self-doubt can facilitate destroying what you have built up in your present day, life, and bring you back to that same person who was vulnerable and could not be protected. You may notice the past coming up in your relationships a lot of times. As clinicians we will hearI keep dating the same guy with a different name, same behavior that is because you are picking the same guy a different name because that’s all you know. Your past influences your present and your future influences your relationships. Your jobs, your emotional state, your mental state. That is why it is so critical to figure out how I had past trauma and get with a trained licensed professional in order to resolve it.
I Am Done With The Past
Photo by Anita Jankovic on Unsplash
I don’t wanna go back to the past. It doesn’t affect me. It doesn’t define me. I have fought tooth and nail to get where I am today. Why would I want to go back to the past and dig up all of that memory of that trauma just to give me some relief.Pretending that the past didn’t happen avoiding the consequences and side effects that it’s having on your present. My life is not healing unresolved trauma that is avoidance. Avoidance is a great coping strategy if you walked out into the middle of the street and there was a car coming and you moved avoiding that car is very positive if every time you heard the front door slam your body freezes you begin to break into a cold sweat, if you avoid that that behavior is going to continue avoiding painful experiences, based on our past will only accumulate overtime, and as we know as humans we can only hold so much our mind can only hold so much we have to begin to look at what we are hanging onto. Healing from unresolved trauma is not just one and done. It’s not going to a counselor and saying OK I’m gonna give you two sessions and I better see some results or I’m not gonna come back wrong. Research shows that clients need to attend a minimum of eight weekly sessions in order to begin to meet their treatment goals.Those with unresolved trauma need to go further for weekly appointments nearing 18 to 24. That is when you will truly begin to have that relief that you were looking for dealing with those past traumas and also dealing with the side effects that come with going through your past trauma and how it’s affecting your present day job, emotional state and family. You may feel the pressure from some people in your life that you just need to move on and get over it already. That happened a really long time ago. This type of thinking is dismissive of trauma just because there’s an elephant in the room and nobody wants to recognize it and we all wanna walk around it, don’t touch it, don’t look at it. It doesn’t change the fact that there’s an elephant in the room. The only thing that’s gonna change is looking square in the eyes, meeting your trauma face-to-face, and dealing with it and literally walking out of the room, walking it out of your life.
You Can Do This
You can do this, you can sort through your past and learn how to deal with unresolved trauma so that you can move forward with your job, your family and any other goals you want to accomplish. This is Moore a marathon and not a sprint. I know that doesn’t help a lot of people in order to run a marathon. You have to have an extreme amount of endurance and fortitude. That is similar to the process of healing with working with a licensed professional to go through unresolved trauma.It will not always be rainbows and sunshine going through the process. You will have great days and then you will have bad days you will have days and you will have down days just because you are having the bad in the down does not destroy all of the work that you’ve created. We live in a world where the majority of things are outside of our control. Therefore, the only thing we can’t control is our reaction to them. You are not the same person that was abused as a child or neglected by their biological family because of their last name or even is thought of as the OutKast of the black sheep of the family.Overcoming these thoughts of self-doubt and negativity will take time. They are foundational and moving forward with your new identity of who you are and what you can do. Going through unresolved trauma does not mean that it’ll no longer be part of your life or stored in your mind.It means that it will no longer be your identity. It will no longer be the thing that defines you instead you begin to write your own narrative. You can tell your own story without your unresolved trauma being the headline.
Resources
How do you begin this journey? Well, number one is tap into the resources that are available to you now more than ever mental health is more accessible due to telehealth and virtual options. You can rely on local support groups, your church, your family, friends, even researching online. A book that I would recommend for learning about forgiveness and about total forgiveness is called “Total Forgiveness” by RT Kendall. This book has single-handedly changed the way that I have dealt with situations personally and professionally. If I had not read this book Before I had gone through some things in my adulthood, I can assure you that my outlook would not be the way that it is. I highly recommend this book. Cypress Roots Counseling offers in person counseling at our Palestine or Fairfield locations. We also offer bilingual services for those that may want to have counseling in Spanish. There’s no right time to begin counseling. There’s no wrong time to begin counseling, however there is a best time to begin counseling and that’s time.
Get Help Now
At Cypress Roots Counseling, we understand the struggle that individuals and couples face today and want to come alongside them to help them on the marathon of relationships. By scheduling a consultation you can meet with a therapist to discuss your needs and goals. It is never too late to seek counseling for yourself, your relationship or your family. Trust your instincts and the feeling that something is not right and get help today. Our team would be honored to offer support from our Palestine, TX office or Fairfield, TX office. With multiple locations, Cypress Roots wants to make accessing therapy easier than ever. By offering in person appointments or telehealth, we are removing barriers from receiving counseling. Get started today by giving us a call at (903) 300-2705, emailing us at jaclyn@cypressrootscounseling.com or by clicking the Request appointment below.
Other Services Offered at Cypress Roots Counseling
We understand that you may be dealing with more than one or many mental health, relationship or parenting concerns. Cypress Roots Counseling offers individual and couples counseling, as well as parenting help. Ethical, professional and confidential services are what you will experience at Cypress Roots Counseling. There are many types of counseling, but at Cypress Roots you will encounter CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), Solution-Focused Therapy, Gottman Method (Couples) Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and Emotion Focused Therapy (Couples & Individual). Services are now available to Spanish speaking individuals and families. Los servicios están disponibles con un proveedor que habla español.
