You’ll Never Be Fully Healed From Trauma

20.08.24

Healing isn’t static, it requires movement, and mental health occurs on a spectrum.

In my article How To TRULY Heal From Trauma, I explore how healing isn’t a one-time thing, but a construction. I argue that what truly works isn’t sexy, It’s the compounding effect of our mundane and daily choices that disrupt our coping mechanisms and promote an identity shift.

Every tiny action and seemingly insignificant choice tips the scale in favor of our transformation. In the beginning, we feel like nothing is happening but if we can persist, suddenly, we start experiencing ourselves differently.

We step out of trauma and create momentum for our minds to shift every time we choose to work on our goals instead of giving in to victim mentality, every time we go to the gym instead of indulging in addictive behaviors, and every time we place boundaries instead of engaging in toxic relationship dynamics.

Healing As A Complex System

When I finally started feeling better and most of my CPTSD symptoms were gone, I noticed that I had created a solid system for myself that included the following:

Going to the gym 4x per week and walking at least 8k steps per day.
Proper nutrition – Eating healthy about 80% of the time.
Yoga and meditation.
Time to explore my creativity with music.
Quality time for my relationship.
Massive focus on my projects which gives me purpose and meaning.
Inner Work – Psychotherapy, dream analysis, and active imagination
Btw, I share my whole process and teach you how you can become proficient in Jungian Psychology in 1 year to either become your own analyst or integrate it into your therapeutic/ coaching practice at the Audacity University.

All of these variables combined created not only a powerful antidote to healing my traumas but also propelled me to live a more inspired and creative life. Separated, each one of these components doesn’t have the necessary power to tip the scale. However, when they’re combined, a new synthesis occurs, and a higher order emerges.

The opposite is also true, when we eliminate one of these variables, we might corrupt the system. To illustrate my point, I must tell you that I was really committed to doing yoga last year, but since I returned from my vacation in February I have completely stopped.

Recently, I found myself a bit more agitated and anxious than normal so I decided to review my system. I realized that I hadn’t done any yoga, specifically meditation and focus training, in about 6 months. Now that I finally went back, I feel more calm and at peace again.

The same thing happens when I’m not giving much attention to my inner work time or playing music, I just feel like there’s something missing and start feeling more snappy. All of these experiences made me realize that healing isn’t static and requires constant movement.

A very simple way to understand this is to bring this analogy to fitness. When we want to lose weight we have to watch our diets, change what we eat on a daily basis, and focus on burning more calories.

You have a system in place to reach your goals, however, if you simply stop and go back to your old ways, you’re going to regain all the weight back. Once we lose the weight, we have to keep the habits going, nothing is static.

Psychic Entropy

This leads us to the concept of entropy. Simply put, this is a principle derived from thermodynamics which dictates that systems have the natural tendency to disorder, randomness, and uncertainty. In fact, the whole Universe and human life are subject to this principle and a constant push for disintegration.

Carl Jung, in V8 – Structures and Dynamics of The Psyche, applies this same idea to psychological processes. The psyche also tends to disorder and unless we intervene and actively strive to tip the scale in favor of integration, we’re bound to face psychological hardships.

That’s why it’s imperative to become active and constantly take action to find equilibrium and generate momentum. Again, nothing is static if we don’t take any measures the only certainty we have is that we’re losing our lives.

When a muscle isn’t used it atrophies. However, when we’re constantly engaging our bodies we positively impact the system and our muscles start growing. I’ll stop here because my scientific knowledge is very poor, let’s get back to psychology, haha.

Creating Your Own System

In the beginning, I mentioned that mental health occurs in a spectrum, this is an idea from Aaron Antonovsky who created the salutogenic approach to complement the medical model. Simply put, Antonovsky states that we’re never fully sick or fully healthy, we’re on a spectrum.

Our place in it is dependent on our daily habits as well as internal and external factors. Furthermore, this model was adopted by the Positive Psychology field as they aren’t interested solely in combating diseases, but also in promoting well-being, fostering talents, creativity, and living a more meaningful life.

Before the idea of entropy and our mental health being placed on a spectrum, the systems we build to generate health have to be sustainable and flexible enough to accommodate internal and external changes. We must see the variables as tools to play with and not as a fixed thing.

The system I described I’ve created might seem like a lot at first but let me tell you that it’s actually quite simple. I separate 1hr per day to the gym first thing in the morning and then I usually go on a walk at the end of the day. In between my therapy clients and writing sessions, I usually separate 30 minutes to play music. And 2 or 3 times per week I separate 30 minutes to focus on my inner work.

Depending on what’s going on in my life, I can adjust the time of the day I do these things and the duration of each one of them. I can easily do that because each one of these actions have already become solid habits. But of course, I didn’t start them all at once.

The Pareto Principle

Now, I want to share another concept that completely changed my life, the Pareto Principle, which dictates that 80% of our results come from 20% of our actions. When we apply this to our systems, it means that usually one or two habits will make or break the whole system, making them keystone habits.

To illustrate this, I want to bring an example from a client that happened very recently. She was telling me how difficult it was to find motivation to wake up early and go to the gym despite feeling amazing when she did. Now, one important factor in motivation is to correlate everything that we do to a bigger picture, every tiny action needs to be embedded with purpose.

In this particular case, we discussed how going to the gym brings a lot of confidence, promotes discipline, and focus, and makes her way more productive throughout the day. All of these benefits can be directly applied to her main goal of building her online business, which is THE most important thing for her at the moment.

But we didn’t stop there because there was something missing, a way of generating commitment. When we’re in the process of building intrinsic motivation, it’s smart to play with external factors. She mentioned that every time she had this particular fitness class she’d easily wake up early and then everything would run smoothly during the day.

We explored this and she said that this is something she wanted to do for a long time now but they’re really expensive, so she was only going once a week. Now, when we invest in something we give it more value, and when there’s someone like a teacher to keep us accountable we’re more likely to commit, especially if there’s a time for it, like this class.

She decided to go to these classes more frequently which also helped her to cut her expenses on unnecessary stuff, and this one change made her whole system work. To me, what makes my entire system work is going to the gym first thing in the morning, everything else runs smoothly from there.

This takes us to the last concept, keystone habits. These are habits that once established have the power to organize the entire system. That’s why we don’t have to focus on starting a lot of things at once, we simply have to focus on the 20% that will generate 80% of our results.

Lastly, I teach everything you need to know to master your habits, the mechanisms of motivation, and how to unlock the flow state in my new course Obliterate Procrastination.

Rafael Krüger – Live an Audacious Life

Whenever you’re ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:

Katabasis – The Shadow Integration Manual – My best-selling and accessible course will introduce you to all you need to know to disrupt the unconscious patterns keeping you stuck.
Audacity University – My flagship course contains a 4-year psychology curriculum and gives you access to the Audacity Inner Circle and live meetings.
Obliterate Procrastination – Master your habits, unleash motivation, and unlock the flow state.
Mentorship – Catalyze your personal transformation with 1 on 1 sessions. Master your psychology, relationships, and business.

You’ll Never Be Fully Healed From Trauma