How To Heal Childhood Trauma

Like you, I wear many hats. I’m both curious and impatient. I’m a wife, a mother, a daughter, a friend, a counselor, and more. I’m also someone shaped by trauma. Like many of you reading this, I’ve faced significant challenges.

I recognize that my challenges are my own, but I’m not alone in facing them. Each person has a unique story with highs, lows, and challenges. Although our stories differ, we share common themes and familiar struggles.

Every one of us is as unique and captivating as a natural wonder—like Mount Everest, the Pyrimads, or Niagara Falls—and just as valuable and deserving of care as any endangered species. In reality, that’s what we are. Each of us is a rare and precious individual. Each of us matters.

Trauma easily leads us to forget that ourselves and others are rare and precious. It urges us to ignore suffering, well-being, and joy. Trauma acts like a powerful eraser, robbing us of what’s most precious, like a virus that wipes away our understanding of humanity. It undermines compassion, fractures communities, and makes humanity feel distant. This blog aims to stop that and present a healing plan for the trauma that disconnects us from one another. 

Can You Heal Childhood Trauma?

Childhood trauma can be challenging to overcome, but you can lessen its impact and lead a healthy, fulfilling, and happy life. With some of the tools below, know that the hurt child can transform into a connected, bold, and confident adult!

Methods To Heal Childhood Trauma

1. Start Journaling

Writing allows you to truly see yourself, maybe for the first time. Writing permits you to tell your truth. Even if you write about your secrets and then discard them, it has been proven to positively impact health, especially for those facing serious illnesses.

As you write about the emotional or physical pain you’ve been through, you will find that opening up about your feelings starts a healing process. Below are a few journaling exercises that you can take part in:

Journaling Exercises

• Write about why you love yourself. Write a letter to yourself outlining all the things and reasons that you love yourself in spite of all that you’ve been through.

• Write a detailed history of your life. Write an autobiography telling the good, the bad, and the ugly. Putting everything on paper gets it all out there and creates a starting point!

• Write down your deepest emotions and thoughts about the emotional upheaval influencing your life the most. Pick whatever the tragedy is and write about it; write all the details and leave nothing out.

In your writing, really let go and explore all your feelings and thoughts. Be sure to include things about how it affects your relationships (parents, siblings, friendships, potential spouses), schooling, career, etc. With each of these exercises, you do not have to do it all at once; just 10-15 minutes a day is all that is needed.

2. Mindfulness Meditation

When people who experience childhood adversity get brain scans, they often reveal a lack of connection in crucial areas. These areas are key in forming loving relationships, staying calm during stress, and reducing inflammation.

When these connections are not well-developed, we may not know our feelings or understand how our behavior affects others. We might not realize how our defensive ways of interacting hurt those we care about, and we may not see how it affects us. This lack of insight makes it challenging to improve our relationships.

As a result, we live limited lives. Our happiness, our relationships, our careers, everything is affected.

Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) meditation helps to change our brain—in a recent study, MBSR meditation reduced client’s stress and their levels of inflammatory hormones.

Although clients produced cortisol when stressed, their cortisol levels dropped once what caused stress passed. A fast cortisol recovery means recovering faster from stressful scenarios. The inflammatory chemicals that our bodies produce when stress leads to disease, anxiety, and depression.

Mindfulness meditation, in general, has been proven to assist in regulating emotions, responding flexibly to others, evaluating options, and making appropriate decisions. It also enhances empathy, self-awareness, and self-reflection while alleviating feelings of fearfulness. By tuning into your breath and bodily sensations, you activate a mechanism that aids in regulating and reducing painful feelings.

Meditation Exercise

• Set a regular time and space (you can sit on a chair, cushion, or on the floor, whatever is most comfortable).

• Be aware of posture to remain alert and awake.

• Rest your hands comfortably on your knees or lap.

• Close your eyes and relax.

• Take several full, deep breaths, and with each exhale, let go and relax (shoulders, hands, mouth, face, etc.)

• Focus on your breath as it comes and goes

• When you drift off and start thinking about other things, just return back to concentrating on your breathing.

In meditation, it’s normal to get distracted. When a thought comes up, acknowledge it and let it go. Remember, thoughts are not the enemy. Relax back into the present moment when you realize you’ve been lost in thought. Ten minutes of mindfulness meditation each day can significantly alter your stress response.

3. Tai Chi and Qigong  

Practicing Tai Chi and Qigong, known as moving meditation, can bring a sense of calm and focus. These activities require you to concentrate entirely on the present moment. Over time, this focused practice helps bring clarity that you can use during stressful or trauma-triggering moments.

Discovering clarity within yourself empowers you to handle stress reactions, fears, and insecurities. Effectively managing these aspects provides a healthier perspective on your self-relationship and relationships with others. You’ll observe that the immediate urge to defend diminishes when faced with blame or criticism.

4. Mindsight 

Our brain is a control center; think of trauma as a child that comes into the control center and starts pulling wires at random. Mindsight is the practice of seeking to understand your mind.

By concentrating on the workings of the mind, you can create and enhance the broken connections among neurons in areas of the brain weakened by early adversity, trauma, and insecure attachment.

Gaining Mindsight

• The first part of Mindsight is gaining insight, the ability to sense your own inner mental life and reflect inwardly—basically, being self-aware or self-knowing.

• The second part of Mindsight is empathy, the ability to sense the inner thoughts and feelings of another person—getting to know who they are and understanding their actions and decisions.

• The third part of Mindsight is linking these two aspects and forming an interconnected big picture of yourself and the world around you.

Connecting these two areas helps us approach problems thoughtfully and engage with others in healthy, wise ways. It fosters compassionate connections and communication, allowing us to weave our past, present, and future into a coherent life story that makes sense of who we are.

Mindsight allows us to move beyond just ‘being sad’ or ‘being angry.’ It helps us recognize that these feelings of sadness or anger are not all of who we are. We can accept them, understand them, and let them transform so that they don’t turn into depression or intense anger and rage.

When we can identify our feelings and tune into our inner world, we become aware of when we’re about to react. The awareness includes noticing our heart rate increases, our breathing becomes shallow, and our muscles tense up. As we become aware of these signs, we can pause before we react.

Practicing Mindsight
Close your eyes and ask, “What am I feeling in my body right now?” You might notice muscle tension, feel your heart beating, or sense your lungs breathing.

Pay attention to any physical sensations or images that come to mind. Try this when stressed or in a tough conversation. Exploring your feelings and thoughts creates energy in the brain.