Three coping skills for clients who experience Complex PTSD due to childhood trauma
In this post, I am going to give you three coping skills that can help with the symptoms of Complex PTSD in adults. The most prevalent symptoms are difficulty regulating emotions, difficulty maintaining healthy relationships, dissociation, and feeling helpless and worthless. I hope these tools can help your inner child and your inner adult recover. Tip: I recommend using them daily at least once a day.
Mindfulness Practices
First and foremost, self-regulation is the most important part of recovery. When we are activated, our amygdala signals that we are in danger “I am not ok”, and then our nervous system dysregulates, and we lose our temper when angry or freeze when in despair. Taking a few deep breaths can help you get to your center, it’s not going to fix everything, but it will redirect your attention to the present and your calmness so you can listen to your intuition. Meditation is a practice, just sitting with yourself for 5 to 10 minutes before going to bed or when you wake up makes a huge difference. Insight Timer is an app that contains mindfulness practices that you can use every day, and it is free. DBT - Dialectical Behavioral Therapy - groups are also very helpful for self-regulation.
Developing your own Spirituality
Now, I know this one might be triggering and a turn-off for some due to spiritual abuse and I completely understand. This is about developing what is meaningful to you and leaving behind the old concepts that do not make sense anymore. As an adult, you are free to choose your beliefs and what brings meaning to your life. Spirituality is the opposite of religion. Spirituality is developing your internal connection with your soul, a higher power, the universe, or even nature. They all lead to you - a connection with yourself.
A lot of my clients were able to break free from old beliefs about a vengeful God as they immersed themselves in nature, meditation, and spiritual practices that made sense to them. Spiritual practices such as prayer, being in nature, meditation, reiki, chakra cleansing, reading books about spirituality, volunteering, attending 12 steps program, ACA meetings, serving, helping others, and practicing kindness or gratitude are all considered to elevate your vibration and get you in contact with something else inside and outside of yourself. There is no wrong way to tap into your spirituality and seek meaning in life.
Journaling and Writing
There is an exercise that I recommend called “the mind purge” in which you will write down everything that is tormenting your mind, all your thoughts, worries, anxieties, and depression, you will purge all these feelings and thoughts into a paper. You can do this before going to bed when you wake up, or when you feel triggered during the day. After writing, put both of your hands on your heart, connect with your adult self, and validate your inner child by saying “I hear you and I see you; I hear everything you are saying, you have important things to say, is there anything else you want to express? I am here to listen, I am right here, thank you for expressing how you feel” and stay with your inner child for a moment. This exercise helps you connect with that part of you that was not heard growing up, that part that is too much in their head. This is one of the reparenting exercises that I teach my clients.
Conclusion
And the last thing I want to say is that you don’t have to do all this alone, seek professional help, I am here. I love helping adult children heal from childhood trauma and gain emotional freedom. Please be patient with yourself, this is a process.
If you want structured sessions and professional help with healing childhood trauma, feel free to contact me for a 20-minute consultation call or book an appointment to see how I might be able to help you.
