More thoughts on emotional bad habits, and how those bad habits are actually trauma reactions that get stuck.
Emotional bad habits are harmful and sometimes compulsive overreactions to life circumstances and relationships.
Your kid leaves the cap off the toothpaste AGAIN even though you’ve told him 50,000 times, so your thoughts spiral into a black hole: he hates you, you’re a terrible parent, why do you try to do anything, nothing ever works out for you, you’re so tired.
The outer expression of this emotional bad habit is yelling, lecturing, giving up: externalizing your inner pain so others can feel guilty and ashamed for not doing what you told them to do.
Add up the everyday little things for a few years and the emotional bad habits become destructive, leading to symptoms of anxiety or depression, divorce or broken relationships.
If you are a survivor of sexual assault or childhood sexual abuse, or a secondary survivor (someone in a relationship with a survivor), and this sounds familiar, I want you to know that you are normal.
Read that again: You are normal.
You aren’t broken. You are normal.
Unhealed trauma gets stuck in the brain and body. You survived the trauma (lived through it) and whatever your brain and body did to survive is stuck. Remember “fight flight freeze” reactions?
Which trauma reaction is stuck for you? If you aren’t yet living a life of peace and happiness, something is stuck. Let’s talk about it. Together, we can figure out what’s going on and get you on the path to “unstuck.”
See you on the other side!