Going Home for the Holidays After Spiritual Trauma: A Therapist’s Guide
After spiritual trauma, you may feel like every aspect of your faith has been tainted by the trauma. Holidays bring added pressure to practice your faith in a way that aligns with your family and maybe with the church that hurt you. Perhaps your family understands and empathizes with your experience, but they may also not grasp why you are hurt. They may even insist that you continue to practice your religious tradition over the holidays, and maybe in the same religious setting in which the trauma occurred. You may not be able to avoid these conversations with family, but you can have a strategy for how to deal with them. In this post, we’re going to talk about a strategy you can use to cope with going home for the holidays.
Why You Get Stuck in Negative Thought Spirals—and How to Break Free
Negative thought spirals, or ruminations, are the repetitive and obsessive focus on negative thoughts, feelings, or past events, without reaching a solution. This can become unproductive quickly, leading to increased feelings of anxiety, depression, helplessness, and more.In this post, I’ll share about what causes negative thought spirals and offer alternatives to help you better manage emotional problems (without the spiraling).
You’re Not Coping - You’re Avoiding
Coping can be a difficult problem for trauma survivors. A major aspect of post-traumatic stress is avoiding people, places, or even thoughts/ feelings that could remind you of the traumatic event. For the complex trauma survivor, this poses an even more difficult problem.