How to Stop Letting Your Traumas Control You

I had already written three blog posts for this week—Monday, Wednesday, and Friday—but the idea of discussing how to stop trauma from controlling your life has been at the forefront of my mind for the past 24 hours.

I’ve already written about losing the victim mindset and stopping the habit of treating yourself with pity, but even I sometimes fall into the all-too-familiar pattern of feeling bad for myself. While it’s incredibly important to treat yourself with compassion and love, holding onto that "poor me" mindset doesn’t benefit you.

You are in complete control of your life, so don’t give your thoughts away to people or experiences that don’t serve you. You have the ability to control what you think about, so why relive that trauma over and over again? Because that’s exactly what you’re doing—putting yourself back in the same position as when you experienced that trauma. It may have only lasted for a certain period of time, but you’re prolonging it by reliving it. Why would you do that to yourself?

For example, I grew up with an abusive father. When he and I lost contact, I felt sorry for myself for years, wishing I could have a home with two parents who loved each other. I compared myself to the people around me, noticing that most of them had a healthy relationship with their parents, and I felt like an outsider. As I grew older, I realized that by spending years wishing I had a healthy father figure, I was only extending that trauma and pain into the present. The abuse had already happened, and he was no longer part of my life. I had cried over it for a long time, so why was I still pitying myself?

Like you, I am fully responsible for my thoughts and perspectives, so I made a conscious decision to live in the present. Why let that past experience dictate my future? Why let it have any control over me? I don’t owe the people who hurt me any more of my time or energy. Since realizing this, I have focused, to the best of my ability, on the life I am living now. I give myself permission to think about the traumas I experienced growing up, but I don’t attach any emotions to them because I am safe now, and I am ready to accomplish whatever I desire. That can’t happen if I keep feeling like the world is against me.

So remember, you are an empowered being. Don’t let the people who hurt you control your life more than they already have. Your thoughts are your own, so make them a safe, healthy, and empowering space. It may seem hard at first, but remind yourself, "I am in control of my thoughts. Thinking about this isn’t benefiting me, so I need to let it go. I only hold on to thoughts that empower and support me."