Post 8: Being Free from Trauma

All trauma victims only wants was being free from the painful memories that they've experience. All of us, wants to become worry less, fearless, be happy, and live like a normal person. We want to live the way normal people lived. But how trauma victims can turn their lives into a normal life agian. Yes, they can forget all their painful memories but they can still remember and it can happen in any time. This bad memories can hit you in any time. How Trauma victims can be free from this hardships? How can we help them? And how long to heal this painful experience. 

I have read an article entitled Ten Steps to Healing from Trauma written by Martin V Cohen from the website of martinvcohen, he stated: (1) Recognize that your symptoms are normal reactions to abnormal circumstances. Although you feel your like out of control or going crazy, in reality, you are experiencing what are called Post Traumatic Stress symptoms. (2) Talk about your thoughts, feelings, and reactions to the events with the people you trust. Keep talking about it until you have no need to talk it any more.(3) Do whatever it takes to create a feeling of safety and tranquillity in your immediate environment. Do you need to sleep with a night light on for awhile? Can you develop a discipline of meditation or listening to soothing music. (4) As much as possible, resume your normal activities and routines, the sooner you resume this routines, the more normal your life will feel.(5) After trauma of-course your in the state of recovery process. Give yourself the proper rest, nutrition, and exercise.(6) Take an affirmative action. Like striking out the perpetrator with words and you can write it down on your journal. (7) Be aware of your emotional triggers and learn to cope with them creatively. Talk to yourself positively or calming yourself. (8) Try to find some deeper meaning in what happened to you on what have you learned from your traumatic experience then record these insight on your journal or voice them in a support group that is sympathetic to your situation. (9) If you are always feeling anxious and can't stop thinking about your bad experience, try to ask help to the professionals who specializes trauma. (10)  And last be patient to yourself. Healing takes time. 

For me the most helpful steps in being a victim of trauma is talk to yourself because you are the one who will start the healing process. You will be the one who will help yourself in this situation. It's true that talking to yourself can give you calmness and confidence to start a new life and forget all bad memories. 

 I read a poem story from a little girl named Leah who experience a traumatic event entitled "The Princess who became Real" from the website of Making Moves . If you read her poem it was very simple but if you look at the back of the poem, it has meaning. The meaning is being a lost little girl. Let me show some lines of her poem: 

"But one morning she woke up and saw she had left herself in body. She saw herself outside cold and pinched and stiff in the snow."

"She ran and ran across the whole world."

"When the princess was born she was taken and left at the entrance to a great maze."

This poem story was a part of her healing process. It is already said that voice out what you feel or write it down on your journal. Leah expressed her feelings through writing a poem or story of her experience which help her to overcome it. And through her group,they was helping Leah and other trauma victims to write a story or poem to express their feelings. Through this activities, trauma victims finds another thing to focus their mind on the positive side not on their painful memories. 

According to the second article that I've read, entitled Approaches to Trauma Healing studied by University of Colorado at the website of Beyond Intractability states that the first thing must people who care provide is must feel to trauma victim that he/ she in the safe place. A feeling of safety can help a victims to open up and reveal her/ his experience.  Retelling of one's story can be therapeutic and allow those memories to be incorporated into the victim's life story. When the story is told in the presence of the other, it can lead to acknowledgement, apology, forgiveness, and reconnection. And they also stated that the person or the group must listen to the trauma victim with attentiveness, respect, and compassionately to feel the trauma victim the trust in that group.


Conquering your fear is one of your dreams. Am I right? All we want is to be fearless. No one wants to be scared, of-course. How much more to this people who have deep fear which we called trauma. They can't help themselves because they, themselves are their enemy. They can't fight to painful memories because these memories are making flashback to their minds.  Not just conquering fear is what they want but the most thing they want is to return their normal life and being free from those painful memories. Yes, the steps to overcome trauma that I've read in article are easy to do but to those trauma victim, it's not easy to them. They need our help. Let we, the person who will voice them. And if we meet this kind of people, let we feel them that we are the trust worthy persons and they are in the safe place.

"Fear is a mind Killer" sated by Frank Herbert