Experiencing Setbacks in our Healing from Complex Trauma

EP 145 | Experiencing Setbacks in our Healing from Complex Trauma

[00:00:00] Introduction and Context

Hello everyone. So today I want to talk about setbacks in the healing journey and I'm deciding to talk about it today because I am actually in the midst of one or it feels like one. It feels like a setback, and it's really hard. It's really hard to go through. And it's been a couple of very interesting weeks where I've experienced very different dynamics within myself in response to very different kinds of environments or situations and conversations that I have been participating in.

And then just a few days ago, while still in this relatively maybe more sensitized state, I received a text, from someone that I don't hear from very often, but who is also a spiritual companion on the journey. And she had sent me a screenshot of a social media post, pretty short one, actually, by someone that we both know, someone who has spiritual authority.

And, um, she had sent me that text to share with me how it made that, you know, that post had made her feel. So she'd been processing it for a couple of days before even texting me because it unsettled her. It didn't sit well with her but she didn't quite know why. She tried to name it but I think she still couldn't quite name why and she wanted to just share it with me.

We do this, you know, I do this with a few companions, closer companions, to help one another name what we feel is maybe triggering us, you know, and we still can't quite get a hold around it. So anyway, this kind of exchange is quite normal and it is also quite normal usually when people send me this kind of text or share certain social media posts with me that I will get activated because usually if something's unsettling them, uh, whatever that is will probably also activate me, right?

But this time, what was different was. I think the severity of my dysregulation, uh, which really was unexpected and threw me for a loop there. And I just want to try and paint this experience because I know that I'm not alone in this and I know that a lot of people when they go through something like this, it really, not just frustrates them, I think it can make them very anxious because they may think, have I even been healing at all?

So I just want to preface this sharing by saying it is part and parcel of this interior integration journey. I think if you zoom out and you look at the full journey, there'll be many times that we will go through this kind of pattern. 

[00:02:55] Patterns in the Interior Integration Journey

So what is this pattern that I'm seeing? First, we go through some real healing, okay?

And I had experienced that earlier this year, or actually, late last year and early this year, a couple of very significant incidents where I really felt God was showing me that, wow, I'm in a different place than I was before. You know, I'm more grounded in his love for me. I'm more confident of my belonging to him.

And I could even be in environments or be with people that usually would trigger me or trigger anxiety, you know, or the trauma response in me and be okay. So really objectively I was getting feedback through those experiences, right? That I'm getting more healed. Okay. So there's progress there.

And then just after I've had a few weeks of consolidating what it feels like to be at this new, new place, you know, where it feels so good to, to have the sense of solidity. If you're a complex trauma survivor, you know what I mean. Because complex trauma survivors, often we feel very empty and hollow inside. It's like we're always striving and trying really hard. Almost frantically sometimes to find something stable to hold us together, and very often we end up looking for things outside of ourselves for that sense of stability, right? 

So, as someone who's always been feeling that hollowness inside of me, that growing sense of integration, of solidity, of something, you know, being very grounded inside me is really very precious. 

[00:04:46] Personal Sharing of Dysregulation Experience

So I didn't expect to feel the way I did when that text came in and I read this post and I felt sick to my stomach. And I mean that in a literal sense. I actually felt nauseated. I felt so angry and so, um, disgusted. Disgust is the word. Right? 

And everything inside me was, it feels like it's screaming out, like, I am done. Like this is why I am done. You know, like, I don't want any of this. I don't, I don't want to hear any of this kind of thing. I don't want to meet people who talk like this. 

And yet at the same time, there's also a part of me, you know, um, that's trying to rationalize it. Okay. So it's not, it, I used to think this was the voice of reason. Because it sounds really reasonable. But what I have learned in trauma recovery that this is also a Manager part of me.

I'm using Internal Family Systems language here. That is a Manager part of me that's trying to play devil's advocate to try and get me to, in a sense, calm down, don't overreact, be mature, be compassionate. So that, that's a, that's a Manager part of me. 

That's part of the good, mature Christian, Manager part, right, that's always telling me: "Well, look this person who wrote this post probably was unaware. Yeah, you know, of what he would that what he was writing was so bad. That is actually so harmful. He probably didn't intend to harm anybody, you know, so..” At the same time, this voice was kind of saying, “so is your reaction maybe a little too much and like why are you so angry and disgusted?" 

So that just threw me for a loop and being stuck between those voices or between those responses, the organic somatic, like bodily response to something that I read, right? I, in that moment, I couldn't attune to myself to just allow myself to, myself to feel what I feel because there was this other voice, this Manager part of me that was meaning well, but at the same time making it impossible for me to attune to myself because it is saying, you know, like, don't overreact, like maybe you're overreacting.

And then there's, there's also another voice that was kind of like saying, oh crap, like I thought we were past this. I thought we were more healed than this. Why are we reacting this way? Like, oh no. You know, um, you know, that sense of dismay that are we backsliding or are we not as healed as we thought we were?

So even as I'm saying all this, I know, I know that there are those of you who will understand exactly what I'm talking about because this is, as I said earlier, part and parcel of the healing journey, right? This is the internal experience. The internal experience of what it's like to be someone healing from complex trauma, but living in a world that's open where we can't, um, we really cannot control what enters into our orbit, right, and what might set something off unexpectedly.

So in that moment when I read this text and I saw that post that my friend shared, you know, it bumped up against something in me and I took, it's been, it's only been a few days. And I've already made, I would say like, I think in the past, I would take even longer to be where I am today. 

[00:08:41] Setbacks Happen and It's Normal

So where I am today and why I am actually recording this video is I'm at the point of the process where I feel that it would also be helpful for me to articulate, and express, right, what this process is like because it is a reminder for myself as well. So even as I'm reminding you, I'm reminding myself that this is normal, right? It's normal.

So let me share with you how I manage this setback or this experience of setback, all right? Um, I'm not, I just want to say is I'm not claiming that I've managed it like super well. I'm, you know, because the whole point of when we are knocked off our feet, we are usually not in our, you know, at our best.

So the whole process of finding our feet again, finding the ground again, that's, that's what this is about. Okay. And there are some things that maybe I wish I had handled a little better, but then at the same time, I'm also okay with it because like I said, this is part and parcel of what it's like to try and recover from a setback.

[00:09:53] Navigating Recovery from Setbacks and Seeking Support

So first, what I needed was some space and some distance, right, from the thing that had triggered me. I couldn't really respond very much to the friend who messaged me. I gave her just kind of like a sad kind of response. I did acknowledge that reading that really made me feel very sick. And I needed maybe a bit more time to figure out what was going on, right? So I gave a short reply and then I needed some space. 

Next I actually shared this with a couple of other closer companions or closer friends whom I share about my interior journey with. When I do this, it's, you know, it's always about, okay, so I read this and then I'm feeling, you know, the way that I feel, I just need to have an experience of someone attuning to me and it really helps if someone gets it, right?

So in this particular case, I just wanna say the fact that it was so dysregulating for me meant, okay, so I took it to mean that this is touching on a very core wound for me, right? So different things can activate me to different degrees when something activates me or dysregulates me to this degree. And it's a lot, like I'm actually physically feeling sick. I know, you see that's a sign that there's something, something that's very deep, part of one of my coral wounds have been touched. But in that dysregulated condition, I can't think, right? I'm not able to just name, what happened or even what was the wound that is being activated, right?

So turning to someone who's safe, someone who I've experienced in the past as safe, and can journey with me, often helps, right? But it's always a bit of a trial and error because precisely, because everything is different for everyone. So like this particular trigger was huge for me, but for someone else, like even for my spiritual companions, it may not hit them in the same way, right? 

Which is, which is both, which is a good thing. The good thing in the sense that because they may not be as dysregulated. They may actually have greater clarity and being able to name what is it that was in that post, for example, that I've got so upset about. The downside, subjectively speaking, let's say for me is sometimes if it, if it doesn't hit them in the same way, you know, I, there's always this thing in us that we wish that somebody else would really understand from the inside, what that experience is like, right? 

So the hope, I think for me, at least the hope often, or what hits or what attunes the most effectively to me, or the greatest, yeah, you know, what attunes most, most effectively to me is when someone who has really deeply experienced this trigger in the same way, right, so it really touches on a really core wound for them as well, but has already worked on it, or has healed from it, maybe sufficiently that it doesn't gut them the way that it is gutting me.

I often find that those responses are the most, well, how should I put it? Make me feel the most attuned to, because it feels like you get exactly what I'm going through. And yet you are regulated enough and in a sense distant enough from this thing that is really upsetting me so you can help name what is hurting me, with empathy and compassion and knowing it from the inside out. 

And also at the same time it gives me hope because I see that you know, you're okay, right? That you are just, that you've moved on, you know, from this thing being such a huge trigger. So I did get that, I could say from a combination of you know, just, I asked two or three different people, what they maybe saw in that post and it was one, there was one particular person that I asked who specializes in this area, I could say maybe of spiritual abuse and trauma and all that. And so he was able to really give language and very clear. Like he gave me like four points, right? Um, said what, what gives him a sense of concern from reading that post and he named them.

And I'm not, I'm not going to go into the details of this because it's not relevant for this sharing. But I just want to say that the fact that he could name things so clearly, including using language that shows how there really is very insidious and harmful and toxic and even spiritually abusive dynamics actually happening in the wording of that post, which in my own circles, I think the vast majority of people would not be able to name. Okay. 

Um, many, I think many people can, I wouldn't say many, but let's say those of us who are healing from spiritual trauma and complex trauma, religious trauma, all that kind of stuff will most likely feel something is wrong with this post, or we could feel like, yeah, there's something off of this post, but we may not be able to really say exactly what's going on. Because on the surface, you know, on the surface you feel like it doesn't seem so wrong, but yet it feels so wrong, right? Yeah, so this one person that was able to give me the language helped me to do that. 

And then another friend, another companion, reminded me that it's okay to have a setback. That there is no, there's no deadline to like reaching a particular milestone by a certain amount of time, you know. And that my body's reaction was just reminding me that I probably still need a lot more space and distance from um, just that environment, okay? And this environment is not even just a physical environment. It could be, um, it could be a virtual environment. So stay away from, you know, um, from communities or online communities or literature or, or communications and social media, all that kind of thing that is part of this kind of environment that is toxic and spiritually abusive, whether they know it or not. Right. 

[00:16:45] God's Presence and Grace in the Healing Journey

And, uh, and I'm right now still letting it sink in, like letting that reminder sink in, into my heart, into my body. Coming back to the experience of God, holding me exactly where I am. Uh, and that it is also grace that I am able to recognize harm now, because let's say 10 years ago, I wouldn't have thought there was anything wrong with that post because I would have been so, not just, not even just used to it. I would have been thinking in that same way too because I was still part of that same system inflicting, you could say, that kind of harm to others because it was done to me and I hadn't awakened to how harmful it was, right? Even though I had been beginning to realize that I was wounded. So, it's grace. 

So sometimes when we experience these setbacks in healing - I know it doesn't feel like it, it really, really sucks - but one way of reframing it, not to invalidate what we experience, okay, but just reframing it is being able to see that this, this pain that we have now is because we are more aware and more sensitive to where harm is. And that's a good thing. 

You know, it's a good thing when we are regaining our ability to feel. And when we are regaining our sensitivity in our gut to know when something is. And when we are regaining and growing in our ability to trust our gut, even if certain parts of us, like the Manager parts of us are still trying to, you know, help us by, in a sense, gaslighting us by trying to tell us like, you know, it's not as big a deal as you think it is.

It is so important to hear those voices that validate our experience, that do not minimize our pain, that remind us that, you know, God sees all of this and He's attuning to us in our pain. And it's also a reminder that this, this deeper process of really following Christ, and allowing Him to shine light and truth, which is Him really.

I think when, as we let Christ enter more and more into ourselves, there's greater light to see what's going on. That we need to be so patient in recognizing our human limitation and that it's okay to be reminded that we're not healed yet. That it's a process, you know. 

So yeah, I think I just wanted to share this with you today while it is still close enough that I'm remembering, really remembering how it feels in my body. This in between state of , recovering from being really triggered and, and the disappointment of experiencing a setback in healing and at the same time starting to feel again that hope. That very real hope that God is in this entire process and just for that it is worth it and it is enough.

[00:20:31] Conclusion and Encouragement

So I just want to also conclude by saying:

I know for a fact that most of us feel like we're the only one experiencing what we experience and in some way that is true. For those of us who are specifically awakening to the realities of how religion is part of our complex trauma, I think there's even a smaller group of us there, and it is a very painful experience when you seek out maybe friends and community members or even leaders, spiritual leaders in the hope that they can guide us through this experience and then we find that they don't get it because maybe they, they don't understand spiritual trauma yet. Maybe they haven't awakened to it themselves because very few actually have really.

I just want to say out loud and acknowledge that this is hard to experience. I know that I'm not the only one who experiences that, and to remember it's okay to trust our instincts as to who we can share this with and who we can't. 

I personally have found that the resources, the people that have made me feel seen and heard in these experiences are often not people that I know personally, but, uh, you know, they could be people who have written books or someone I've come across in a podcast or, you know, somebody who is teaching recovery from trauma, somebody else who is, who is teaching about spiritual abuse or spiritual trauma. 

In a way there is no one person or one resource that meets all my needs, but there is a way of connecting and putting together and curating. I think different resources to help ourselves find the support that we need.

And I want to say that if it still feels like it's not enough, it's also okay to be in that feeling of not enough, that there's not enough support that is also part of the journey.

And I, and I just hope that this sharing finds its way to someone who needed to hear this today, who maybe is also feeling really, you know, resigned or frustrated and sad about setbacks in the healing journey. Hey, it's part and parcel of the journey. It's okay. It's normal. We can get through this. We will get through this.

And God, who is always with us.. He never gives up on us and He is with us every step of the way. So take care until the next time. Bye!