Believing that you can stop being affected by Trauma can be challenging. This is one of Trauma’s 12 Common lies it wants you to believe if you have experienced Trauma. You may be replaying the bullying you received as a child and expecting it from people in your life now. You may be questioning if others will accept you for you if you’ve been told there was something inherently wrong about you in the past. You may have difficulty expressing what is going on within yourself. You may be afraid others will criticize you for being yourself. You might wonder if your past pain will always define you.
One way Trauma stays in your life is by having you believe your past is how your future will be. You may be hearing the words replayed in your mind that things will never get better. You may be questioning whether you can stop being pulled back from what you’ve already experienced. You may have reached out for help and gotten no results. All of these can make this lie feel true if you expect the past to reflect what the future will hold for you.
Trauma wants to keep you questioning whether you can change your life. It wants you to wonder if you will be able to move on. It does this so it can stay in your life. It’s pervasive. The more influence it has, the more power it has. By keeping you questioning if things can change for the better, it keeps a presence in your life.
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One of the fastest things you can do to change this voice is to recognize it. If you find it swirling around in your thoughts, you certainly aren’t alone. There are many people who have these same thoughts. Interestingly, this could possibly just be a thought that arises when you feel a certain way. If you can think of a time that you weren’t so low, did you have the voice then? If you can remember a time when things went well for you, even for a day, did you have the thought then?
These thoughts do not have to be a fact about how life is always going to be. This inner voice may be related to a feeling of what you are currently experiencing. When you are feeling low it’s easy for Trauma to sneak its lies into your life.
However, feelings are not permanent. How you are feeling within can and will change. If you can consider this might be a feeling rather than a fact about how life is going to be, it can help deflate the power of Trauma’s Common Lie #1.
What Trauma doesn’t want you to know is as you change your life will change. You must do things differently to get different results. That means you have the power to change your life and this belief. If you can notice how things have changed for you in the past, it can be a massive help with silencing this voice.
Part of breaking free of Trauma is recognizing what it is telling you might not be factually true. As you understand your feelings might not be all that life is and notice how you are behaving differently now, this lie can stop dominating your feelings and thoughts. You can trust that you can define your life, not Trauma. It just takes consistent small changes to break free of Trauma’s first common lie.
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This is part of a series on trauma and the LGBTQ community.
About the Author
Amelia Harshfield eradicates the effects of Trauma’s lies. She teaches driven and ambitious people how to release themselves from the effects of Trauma’s 12 Common Lies. Amelia works with clients to help them move from living a life of scarcity and unhappiness into the life they want so that they can lose the chains of Trauma and be free from their past experiences. After working with Amelia, her clients can trust themselves and others, believe in themselves and their worth, and know how to love themselves. Connect with Amelia Harshfield here: Email: amelia@ameliaharshfield.com
Follow Amelia on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/confronttraumaslies or visit www.ameliaharshfield.com