Who decides if we are healing trauma?

I have been thinking about why some heal childhood trauma and some don’t, and I have concluded that the idea of healing in some regard is a mindset. When you think about the power of words and the impact that they have on us, I can’t help but wonder how much our narrative and the definition of “healing” is tied to those around us. Who is to say what healing means any more than some is to define happiness, success, peace, love, or hope?

We hold an immense skill and tool to be leveraged in defining as trauma survivors what it means to recover, overcome, and heal CPTSD. This means that the measure in which we determine if we are, in fact, on the right side of this journey is a measure that we self-define. So what does this mean? I think more so than anything else; I have come to understand in my journey of recovering as an adult survivor of abuse that it is within myself that I make the choice. Am I healed? Yes, by my definition. Does it matter how other people define my journey? No, not really.

Think about the power that words hold over us. So often, we find ourselves being guided by what other people have defined as the way we should think or feel about ourselves. How many times has someone pointed out that you don’t meet their specifications, and thus the way you feel about yourself shifts? We have all been there. Think about the power of negative words…