The consequences of avoiding processing trauma:
An ended, potential filled relationship with your love, your child, your friend.
Precious energy spent on what is needed to survive day by day.
Blindness; an inability to see yourself, seeing only your faults and feeling only in the places where you have been hurt; a bleeding chest covered by a hardened case.
Believing that it has to be this way.
Handing burdens down to your children, and them believing it is their fault.
Darkness
Dependency
Compartmentalism
Suffering
The belief that things will never change.
The consequences of being a caregiver to loved one with trauma:
A yearning for the closeness and connection that you once had with your love, your child, your friend; the going to great lengths for fleeting, familiar connection.
The blame that comes along with this losing game, “If I only could love them more then…fill in your blank,” codependency.
Burnout; losing the will to care, hands in the air.
Resentment
Grief
Vicarious Trauma
Isolation
Suffering
The belief that things will never change.
The consequences of processing trauma:
Accountability in one's ability to heal and learn from their experiences, a regaining of agency and clarity that it was NOT your fault.
Being able to see many perspectives
Taking responsibility for just your parts, if you were a child, you were responsible only for being a child.
Softer, kinder, gentler feelings.
Connections, everywhere.
Grief over what was lost
Allowing yourself to feel pain that was previously kept at a safe distance, believing in yourself to tend to that pain.
The knowledge that your body, mind, and soul did what it had to do to survive then and can heal now, gratitude for that.
Post traumatic Wisdom; sharing your lessons with others.
The consequences of caring for self while being a caregiver to a loved one with trauma:
Having energy to be a part of this life, finding connection again with your love, your child, your friend, yourself.
Discovering that you have the capacity to give of yourself and the knowledge to know when to receive.
Taking on only what is yours and compassionately denying what is not yours to keep.
Believing in your love’s, your child’s, your friend’s capacity to heal.
Grief over what was lost.
Allowing yourself to feel pain that was previously kept at a safe distance.
Spaciousness, a self confidence to move in and out of feelings.
Self love and nurturing.
Gratitude
Joy
The understanding that change is possible, that relationships can and do.
A sense of Freedom in taking a step back to watch it all unfold.