Stages of Healing from Trauma. How Trauma can Change Your Sense of Time.

The trip to heal from trauma is intense and a lot like the heroes in myth and folklore.

Just like heroes are sent on adventures and have to face hardships before coming back changed, trauma patients have to find their own way to heal.

And now that you travel on the “road to recovery”, it feels overwhelming. What are you supposed to do? What do I expect when I’m healing? You can keep reading to find:

How do we Understand Healing from Trauma?
Stages of Healing from Trauma.
How Trauma can Change Your Sense of Time.
And much more!

How do we Understand Healing from Trauma?

Trauma recovery will look different for everyone. But there are some main stages that everyone experiences. A scientific article helps us understand trauma through a hero’s journey. Because healing from trauma is just as heroic.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces – Joseph Campbell

In this article, the idea of trauma recovery is adapts a wonderful book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell in 1949 (pretty old but still so relevant!).

He wrote about a process that starts when a normal person is pulled from a safe and familiar world and sent on a trip along a road they don’t know or that could be dangerous.

As soon as the tourist enters the adventure, he or she faces a series of challenges, tests, ordeals, and wins that change him into a great person.

At the end of the trip, the hero goes back to the world he came from, but this time he is different: he is heroic!

Stages of Healing from Trauma.

Stage 0: Undertreated Pain

When someone goes through a stressful event, their central nervous system may use coping mechanisms like emotional numbing or forgetfulness to help them stay alive.

After a traumatic event, these ways of coping can help survivors get away from crippling pain and move on with their lives.

However, over time, these very ways of coping may start to make it harder for them to function in relationships, at work, and in other areas of their lives.

Stage 1: The Departure

A survivor starts to see how difficult and overwhelming it is to keep using avoidant coping strategies. They are thinking about whether to get over their deepest fears and start the hard, and dangerous path of recovery.

That’s when they hear the hero’s call to adventure.

At this stage, you have come to recognize and acknowledge that you have experienced trauma. And yes, it has impacted you.

At this point, a mental health professional or another survivor who has come back from their own journey could be a key mentor who gives the would-be hero the tools, support, or motivation to step into their healing journey.

So you deep-dive into the world of understanding trauma and how it evolves. You understand the journey you are about to face and gain knowledge about the tools needed.

Related: What is Emotional Trauma?

Stage 2: Initiation

Survivors leave the familiar world and enter a new, unknown one. This happens when they choose to intentionally walk back into the experience of terrible memories through therapy.

The therapeutic process deals with the shame, fear, and pain that so often surround us.

When someone has been through trauma, they have to deal with terrible emotions and unbearable pain. They start to understand how to control their bodies, thoughts, and feelings with the counselor’s help.

Post-Traumatic Growth – Through the Eyes of a Hero
Some people feel like their old life is gone forever and a new one starts. Post-traumatic growth is a lot like the idea of change that is part of the hero’s journey:
Trauma sufferers must have the courage and strength to give up their avoidant and controlled coping mechanisms and create new mental models that include the painful events. They change into a new way of being in the end.
Old ways of coping, like avoiding things and ignoring yourself with addictive behaviors, are given up, and new skills are learned, like how to control strong feelings through healthy coping behaviors. This is the brave journey of recovery work.

Stage 3: Return

As a trauma survivor rebuilds their life, they can slowly get back into their normal life and activities.

But this time, things are different. They walk back into life with a better understanding of the world and themselves.

They are now a “master of two worlds,” just like the hero on the journey. They know the way to deep grief and pain as well as the way to new joy and peace. The hero knows how important it is to face their fears and pain.

How Trauma can Change Your Sense of Time.

Researchers have found that our feelings often affect how fast or slow we think time is moving. And stressful events, which make people feel very sad, can make time seem to move more slowly.

Yes, time moves more slowly for trauma survivors.

Dr. Robert D Stolorow brilliantly painted the picture for better understanding:

Traumatic emotional experiences freeze-frame a person in the present where they feel like they are stuck forever. When someone goes through trauma, time stops, the painful past becomes present, and the future loses all meaning except for repeating itself over and over again.

Because trauma changes the structure of time in such a deep way, the person who has been traumatized actually lives in a different reality. It is one that they don’t think is comparable to the realities of others.

Conclusion

In the end, getting better after a traumatic event is a complex process that takes time, bravery, and support.

Understanding the steps of healing and how trauma can change how we see time will help us get through this journey. It will also help those who are trying to get better.

Trauma changes more than just how someone feels; it changes how they see time as well. Survivors may feel like time stops for them, stuck in a never-ending loop of pain and repeat.

Just like heroes change after going through hard times, trauma survivors can get stronger and more resilient as they heal.