4 Tips to Help Move Past a Traumatic Experience

A traumatic event can cause an almost-unthinkable amount of stress, worry, fear, and sadness. These events can be anything from a bad breakup, abuse, injury, accident or anything in between.

There are no right or wrong ways to respond when faced with a traumatic event, but there are some things you can do to help move past it, and this article will look at a few of them.

Take All the Time You Need

There is no correct amount of time that one should get over or move past a traumatic event, everyone is different. As a result, don’t feel the need to rush yourself in any way, shape or form. While some people might feel better in a week, others might need a year or longer.

Work with yourself, your friends and family and maybe even a professional to take the steps you need to move forward. You shouldn’t have a particular timeline in your head about when you want to feel better, you just need to take it slow and give yourself enough time to truly move on, without rushing.

Avoid Obsessing About the Event or Events

When you are fresh off of dealing with a traumatic event, it can be all you think about. It can be hard to work, sleep and do anything else, as you cannot get the vision of the event out of your head.

However, as best you can, you need to stop obsessing about the event. The more you think about it, the harder it will be to eventually move past.

This can be difficult, but you cannot let the event control your life and twist your vision of reality. In particular, abusers who use tactics like gaslighting can make it very difficult to move on, but you have to try.

This is because when someone gaslights you, they are manipulating you and it can cause you to obsess over everything including how you let this happen to you, questioning if they were right about certain things and more.

You can read more about what gaslighting is and just how horrific it is at https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-arabi/2017/11/50-shades-of-gaslighting-the-disturbing-signs-an-abuser-is-twisting-your-reality/

Establish a Routine and Stick to it

When dealing with a lot of trauma, there is a good chance that your routine has gotten destroyed as a result. Instead of spiraling even further out of control, you should try to establish a routine or get yours back on track. See, there is comfort in doing things that are familiar to us.

By getting back to your normal routine as soon as possible, it will help eliminate some of the stress and worry you might be feeling. Also, being busy with other things will make it harder for you to obsess or have negative thoughts, which can also help move past a traumatic event more quickly.

Get Moving and Take Up New Hobbies

The last thing you should do when you are feeling down after a traumatic event is wallow in your misery like a bump on a log. Of course, it is perfectly fine to give yourself some time to mourn or whatever you need to do, but the quicker you try and return to normality, the better.

While it may be the last thing you feel like doing when you are feeling so down, you should get up off the couch and get moving. Exercise can help reduce stress, and mindful exercises can help to move past that “stuck” feeling that most of us get when dealing with trauma.

If working out is not your forte, you should be sure to take up some other types of hobbies to expand your horizons and challenge yourself.

In conclusion, dealing with trauma is never fun, but we hope that this article is able to help you move past it.