One night on Instagram, a beautiful soul from my Complex-PTSD community asked, How do I heal from this? It was a humbling moment because the answer can’t be summed up in a single comment. It was also a reminder that I asked the same question when I began my healing journey. We all ask this when starting out and the painful past is overwhelming our present. We want immediate relief. But more importantly, we want to know what we can do to ensure that what happened to us won’t control our future. And then we listen to the internet.
Others with similar trauma tend to lead with what has helped them most. But they don’t share the journey that led them into reaping the maximum benefits of certain therapies and tools. Believe it or not, the journey is just as important as discovering the most helpful tool or therapy for you. The journey is what prepares us for being open to it. For example, there is a definite link between EMDR success stories and those who had a strong foothold in their trauma before doing EMDR. As someone who began my healing with EMDR because I listened to the internet, I can confirm this much. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to healing.
And so, instead of asking How do I heal from this, we should ask, How do I begin healing? Because while no two healing journeys are ever the same, there are similar patterns in what we need to build that foundation so that we can embark on our journey. So, consider this article your healing journey “starter pack”.
How Do I (Begin) to Heal?
In the perfect world, we would all come from loving families and there would be no such thing as Complex-PTSD. But in the almost perfect world, we would all get a visit from Morpheus from The Matrix the moment our joke of a legal system says that we are legally old enough to move out of our abusive homes. Morpheus would offer us the red pill and we would immediately see clearly. All the abuses we have suffered, the types of disordered parents we have, and all the faulty programming we have received as a result, from our mental health to our biological science. Alas! We don’t even live in an almost perfect world. But we have the next best thing.
Start Here
If you only ever read one book on trauma, read Complex-PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker. Here is the link. It’s the Holy Bible of Complex-PTSD. Even the False Advocates for Complex-PTSD agree that this is the must-have resource for anyone with Complex-PTSD. It has helped so many understand what happened to them and what sort of problems they may have as a result. It’s both enlightening and validating. But do expect to hit a few mental brick walls as you read it, especially on your first read-through. It’s perfectly normal. In fact, it took me a couple of re-reads before I could start digesting everything. Pete Walker challenges our childhood programming with lots of truth. And that’s why it takes a while to break through. His book is like Morpheus’s red pill that, instead of instantaneous results, it takes a long time to digest in the system.
The one drawback of Pete Walker’s book is that while we learn lots of new terms we have never heard of before, there’s no glossary of terms to help us keep up with our new learning. This is also what inspired me to create the three Trauma Glossaries we have on this site. So, if you need help keeping up with the ongoing problems we may have, Trauma Glossary 2 may help.
Educating Ourselves on Our Disordered Parents
First, please use caution on where you get your information. There are far more gaslighting articles and videos on the internet that encourage enabling than there are those that validate the victims. (Both underline terms are in Trauma Glossary 1, which is who the abusers are and what they do. In other words, the many abuses that were likely done to you – and no wonder you have complex trauma today.)
And unfortunately, the same goes for support groups. Between the Internet gaslighters and the enablist run “support groups”, they have been empowering Cluster B disorders (also in Trauma Glossary 1) and breeding apologists more than they have been helping the victims. Here is an article that will educate you on the type of support group you should avoid. You will not heal in this type of group. You will only be gaslit repeatedly. Using the Morpheus analogy, this is how you stay “plugged” in your trauma matrix instead of seeing clearly.
How do I heal should begin with clarity and validation. Making sense out of the senselessness of being raised by an emotionally immature parent who is also self-centered should take precedence over excusing it all with the “mental illness” label. If you want validation for what you endured, I recommend Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson (here) or Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get On with Life by Margalis Fjelstad (here).
Should I Go No Contact?
Far from saying that no contact is your only option, it is important to create some distance from anyone who has traumatized you. Fewer phone calls, visits, that sort of thing, is strongly recommended. The more distance we establish, the more we begin to see things clearly. So, how ever much distance you can achieve will better prepare you for your healing journey. You don’t need my or anyone else’s permission to go no contact with an abuser, even if that abuser happens to be your parent. Do beware of flying monkeys, however.
If you need tips on how to go no contact, here is an article I wrote.
What About Flying Monkeys?
It seems that when it’s the abused child who chooses to cut their abusive parent out of their life, the victim-shamers come out in spades. Anyone who shames or judges you on how you choose to handle your relationship with your abuser is a flying monkey. Anyone who spies on or harasses you on behalf of your abuser is also a flying monkey. And regardless of who those flying monkeys are, they too must be cut from your life. If they have the audacity to say, “You can’t cut all of us out of your life” please respond with, “Like hell I can’t!” You may also show them this, seeing how flying monkeys aren’t very bright.
How do I heal in therapy?
If you can afford therapy or if your health insurance also covers mental health, go for it! A good therapist will help your healing take off to new heights. However, we must beware that not all therapists are good and there are no mandatory psych exams on licensed therapists. And not all therapists are well educated on Cluster B abuse. In other words, we must know what our expectations should be when looking for a good therapist. We must also know how to spot the red flags in a bad therapist. Believe me, a bad therapist will inflict even more trauma than your original abuse. And unfortunately, those who are most vulnerable are those who have never had therapy before.
If you’re looking for therapy, this article has you covered. You need trauma-informed therapy, and this type of therapy reads like a series of green flags for great therapy. Understand your “bill of rights” as a trauma survivor in the therapist’s office. If your therapist checks all the boxes listed in that article, you’re in good hands.
This article will help you spot the 9 red flags of a bad therapist. Many therapists claim to be trauma-informed but they do not practice any of the trauma-informed principles. If your therapist checks any of these boxes, stop and find a new therapist immediately.
How do I heal without a therapist?
Unfortunately, not all health insurance covers mental health. Without the coverage, therapy is expensive. But that doesn’t mean you can’t heal without a therapist. I created this site targeting the audience of those who want to heal from their trauma but either they can’t afford therapy or they were re-traumatized by a bad one. Most articles on the web talk about our various problems and then conclude with go to therapy as the solution. And so, I saw a “hole” in the internet that needed to be filled. While I will never slam therapy, I will also offer up ways we can work through these problems without a therapist.
This site has been running since August of 2021. To date, 116 articles have been written. Each fully defines a core problem and then concludes with what we can do about it. So, have a look around. We have two master toolboxes (see the main menu), heal-alongs (most are my personal stories with healing), science articles addressing trauma’s impact on the brain and body, and visual aids and “how-to” articles. I can assure you, friend there is plenty we can do to heal ourselves.
Now, after over two years of writing these long and thorough (maybe a little too thorough) articles, I am changing direction a bit. We are now returning to the basics of healing. So, this is the first article in our brand-new series, addressing everything we all should know when our healing journey has just begun.
So much goodness packed into this article! I love all the resources you listed!