Everyone is different - and please know that there is no cookie cutter approach to healing and everyone's time frame will be different as well. Here are some things that happened on my recovery journey:
* I stumbled upon narcissistic abuse information. I couldn't get enough of it. I binge watched information in shock at how well the information described my romantic relationships.
* After learning about narcissistic abuse and realizing that none of the people I felt were high on the scale were interested in self reflecting.... I began to break out of enmeshment, the trauma bond. I learned the tactics that narcissists use to cause you to react, to over explain, to feel as if you have to prove yourself.... and I began taking my power back, I learned how to establish and enforce boundaries. I learned while THEY did not want to learn healthier behaviors.... I certainly wanted to break any unhealthy ones that I had developed due to my upbringing and past unhealthy relationships.
* At some point I detoxed my life from anyone that was emotionally and/or psychologically abusive. And so the abuse stopped... BUT the damage done did not go away with time.
Time heals many wounds but it does not heal trauma wounds.
I waited, expecting to spring back to who I truly was.... but it didn't happen. Thus began a long journey of trying modality after modality. I desperately longed to be the real me.... without all of the coping skills, the over active trauma responses and the cptsd symptoms that had become my personality.
It was NOT easy.... it took time! There was no easy fix, there was no ... learn this and bam you're healed. My body could not be pushed or shoved towards healing - I had to learn how to work WITH it instead of trying to dominate, force and rush it.
All I can really say - is the recovery journey starts off from a place of hopelessness, learned helplessness and trauma loops... and slowly you begin unraveling the trauma.
Healing emotional trauma is not linear. We do NOT get better and better and better..... it's a spiral - so sometimes you have to endure those low swings.... remembering that it does spiral back up!!
It's hard work for sure, but it is so worth it. Having to endure trauma and not be allowed to live as who you truly are is bad enough - staying stuck that way even after the abuser is gone is something that NO ONE should ever have to experience.
Am I 100% healed? Are any of us?? I have shed most of the coping skills and trauma responses that had stolen my life and made me feel like a prisoner in my own body. There are some remnants left... when in social situations but I'm confident this will be a whisper of a memory very soon.
I've learned to have compassion for my body, even when it acts in ways that are so not me! I've learned to exercise patience and love to the pieces of me that are still healing.....
Early on my recovery journey I wrote a PDF Entitled I Miss Me & I Want Me Back.
Did I ever get me back???
Well, I realized that the me that I was missing was not whole..... Now - I may not be 100% healed but I do feel 100% whole!
Kintsukuroi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold with the thought the piece is more beautiful because of having been broken, Instead of the break "…diminishing [the bowl's] appeal, a new sense of its vitality and resilience raised appreciation to even greater heights." The bowl has become more beautiful for having been broken. The true life of the bowl "…began the moment it was dropped…"
That is how I feel on this recovery journey and it is my goal to help as many as possible to break free of the crippling effects of emotional trauma.