Rest and Recovery

20 May Rest and Recovery

For some reason I can never understand, it is often considered lazy or unproductive to rest. This is unhelpful and old school thinking, especially when you consider that as survivors our whole complex post-traumatic stress disorder, creates an exhausted flatness in the body.

I want to encourage you to listen to your body and rest as you need to.
The body has a great way of telling you when it needs to recover from something.
How will you know this?
Because you will feel the need to rest.

As a child you did not have the option of resting or being able to relax around the predator that abused you. You would have naturally developed hypervigilance, high anxiety and consequently, no ability to relax. You weren’t safe to.
Is it any surprise then, that as an adult when you revisit this trauma, you can’t seem to relax, you subconsciously won’t give yourself permission to, even though the signs are there showing you, very strongly, that this is exactly what you need to do.

You will be aware, that rest is considered a healing experience, not just for good overall health, but also in cases where trauma to the body was involved. Think of those who were involved in a car accident or some type of sporting injury; They are always told that to gain full recovery, they need to go home and rest.
Why is it then that when it comes to CSA trauma, resting is not mentioned as part of the solution for recovery?
I think we need to change this up.

It is crucial to review how we manage the impact of this childhood trauma so that gentle rest and relaxation is included. One of the simplest ways to begin integrating this into our psyches is to self soothe, nurture ourselves, and be gentle and kind to our inner abused child that was in some cases abandoned. Please know this will feel extremely challenging and unsafe to begin with, understandably so, but over time it will feel less daunting.

As an adult now, you are safe, you are free from harm, and you understand the importance of healing from this trauma.
You did not have that capacity as child, because you were just that, a child.
But the gift of being an adult, means you certainly have it now.

Try to give to yourself what was not available to you back then, Peace, gentleness, and self-compassion. If you can also mix that up with being in nature, you stand a good chance of progressing further. By relaxing, and releasing what still needs to be dealt with, you can heal the last remaining parts of yourself, that are needing that focus.

You are incredible to have survived what you did but in the here and now, allowing yourself recovery time through rest, is not just smart but essential.

It has probably taken years for you to acknowledge and integrate fully what was done to you, so expecting yourself to ‘be fine’ in a short time span is unlikely. Take the pressure off yourself to rush through this, as is both counterproductive and unhelpful.

Rather, gently and with grace, allow yourself what you need to express, don’t second guess it as whatever this is will surface within you. For most of us grief and anger are usually present, a note to self though: these are healthy emotions and often suppressed because they feel uncomfortable. Time to air them out and give them space.

With openness and transparency, you stand more of a chance of freeing the part of you that has been trapped for too long. Through rest and acceptance of this, you become more likely and able to transcend all of it.