Grounding, grounding, grounding (for trauma recovery)

and a ridonkulous working memory confession...

I hope you found this week’s podcast episode helpful – especially now, when so many people are living in ongoing traumatised states. Watch or listen wherever you get your podcasts or here

This deeper dive for Sole to Soul Circle members includes:

Feel better: Psychoeducation around trauma, grounding, resourcing and some grounding practices you can start experimenting with immediately.

Be better: Includes ways to accept and be present with yourself, even when it feels so challenging.

Do better: Includes ways to encourage yourself to prioritise (without pressure. It takes time and patience) potential post traumatic growth, intergenerational healing and vicarious healing.

Drone photo at Old Head, Co Mayo, Ireland by Patrick Croghan 2023

Healing isn’t linear

I’ve been working on my own trauma recovery for DECADES and was recently doubled over sobbing outside a petrol station in Sligo because I'd read something on a Substack that was horrific.

I'd read a lot about it already, I'd seen interviews around the situation, I was fairly well-informed about it but there was something about this particular paragraph that just broke me. Sobbing. And then, later, with a big dose of self-compassion, I realised it was actually a normal response to reading about such horror.

I think we want to feel better, we want to do the things that help us feel as nourished, as joyful, as energised, as empowered, as all the things, all the wonderful things. Life is here to be enjoyed, we want to be better, we want to allow ourselves to take that pressure off around the constant self-improvement and just be, let yourself be. So it's not about you've got to be better, it's about be, let yourself be and let yourself be for as long as that needs, if that's pulling a duvet over your head you'd be surprised at how it doesn't take long sitting under a duvet before you actually feel genuinely better and able to get back on with your day.

But when we continue to try and endure and survive, remind yourself you're safe now, it's your time to thrive, you've been through the worst of it and allowing yourself to be, allowing yourself to recognise that resting and relaxing and healing might be more challenging with the hypervigilance but it's still worth persevering in a gentle compassionate way with yourself and then thinking about that impact of your recovery on others and what that might look like.