Recovering from childhood sexual abuse, narcissistic above, emotional neglect, bullying, or any type of childhood trauma is not something you can rush through. It's a long process, full of ups and downs, struggles and triumphs, and virtually every emotion you can imagine.
One of the things I struggled with during intense times of healing was the concern of doing too much, too fast, and overextending myself without doing proper self-care. I was all in on my healing, which is not a bad thing at all, but at the same time, I often neglected the signs that I was approaching burn out or at the very least the signs that I just needed to ease off the throttle a bit.
The more I healed, the more I learned, and the more I wanted to keep going. That's not to say there weren't times when I just wanted to quit, because believe me those were quite plentiful as well. Still though, I was inspired and driven to learn about trauma recovery and how it affected me and what I could do to help myself. My therapist warned on more than a few occasions to take breaks and not "live, eat, and breath" this stuff so much. Hindsight is 20-20, and if only I knew then what I know now...
This episode is a look back at a previous podcast episode, #27, released back in 2017, and is one where I'm reflecting on this very topic of burnout in trauma recovery.
It's a good reminder for myself, and perhaps something to consider for you too, that the risk of burnout in healing from childhood trauma, or any type of trauma, is real but there are ways to help ourselves avoid this while still moving forward. After wall, we don't want to quit and undo all the hard work that we've put in.
With my co-host, Joanne Cipressi doing some traveling right now, this was a great time to launch this little project of re-releasing some previous episodes. Many of these older episodes are during the early stages of the podcast, and consist of me just sitting down and talking through my survivor journey.
I hope you'll enjoy this look back at my thoughts on how I dealt with this, by working through it in my head and with my therapist at the time. And remember, there is no time table in healing except the one you place on yourself. Give yourself the opportunity to heal at a safe pace and embrace the process, because the destination of healing truly is the journey itself.
If you'd like to be a guest for an upcoming episode of the podcast, we'd love to hear from you.
-Matthew Pappas, CLC, MPNLP
All conversation and information exchanged during participation on the Beyond Your Past Podcast, on BeyondYourPast.com, and BeyondYourPastRadio.com is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing on these podcasts or posted on the above-mentioned websites are supplements for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers.