Trauma Support Community Check-in: 23 May 2021

Hey everyone ❤️

Today's check-in is about unpacking your emotions. Feel free to answer a couple of the questions, tell us about your day, or just check in to say that you've been doing okay so far ❤️

A very common coping mechanism for dealing with difficult feelings is to ignore them. Deny, forget, push away, pretend, distract - all of these are useful when you want to just survive the intensity of the moment. But these emotions never really go away, do they? Somehow, they can keep coming back, even after you stop feeling them

So what do we do about these feelings then?

Well, let me start by telling you about what happened to me this morning. I woke up feeling particularly lonely, and kept mulling over this memory that had popped up. Honestly, I didn't even know how upset it made me until I started having an imaginary conversation with the person involved about what happened:

Them: But how did you feel about it?

Me: It just felt...like a betrayal. You guys went behind my back to talk about all of this. I didn't know what was happening until the accusations started

Them: I did feel bad about it, but we didn't want to hurt your feelings by talking about it in front of you

Me: I know you didn't, but that doesn't mean it hurts any less. I trusted you to tell me if something was wrong. I was in the wrong, you're right, but things didn't have to happen the way they did

Them: okay, I'm sorry

Me: I'm sorry too

Granted, this conversation never actually happened. But then I realised that I had been letting my mind assume the worst about them. I thought it would protect me from people who would hurt me that way again. All I did was stop myself from trusting people who really wanted to help me. I shut them out when I needed a listening ear most, and it's taken me several months to fully process all the emotions that I buried that day so I wouldn't say anything I'd regret

The truth is, sometimes you need to allow yourselves to feel the full scale of the pain in order to figure out where the thorn is. No matter how long it's been, no matter how painful the emotions are, we'll have to face them sooner or later. If there's something knocking on your heart right now, maybe now is a good time to sit down, and have an honest conversation with yourself ❤️

Questions:

1. What are some things you buried that still bug you to this day?

2. How did you really feel? (there's no right or wrong way to feel)

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