Coming Down from Stress

I've had a very traumatic last few years. Thankfully my state has medicaid so I've been able to get the care I need to recover, including therapy.

But I realized, after watching a video on youtube about something called the "freeze response", that I haven't been able to calm down from the trauma. I already knew I was hypervigilant, and I managed to come down from that, but the video reminded me that I had never told my brain that "we're safe now, we don't need to be on high alert anymore".

All this to say: if you're still in a dangerous situation, of course you'll still be on high alert, and that's just how it is.

But if you've had a traumatic childhood, or even just a traumatic event that happened a long time ago, but you still haven't been able to function normally, it could be that your brain still assumes you're in danger. You have to assure and remind yourself that whatever happened to you won't happen again. If you try that, and your first instinct is to be defensive of that and say "yes it will" or just feel like that's a lie, then that could be why you haven't been able to recover. You can't let go of the fear that this "danger" won't happen again.

I've been able to recover by leaps and bounds since I realized that lol I was able to let go of a LOT of stress, and even a lot of my anxiety has managed to calm down. I share this in the hopes that it will help someone else.