How To Improve Your Mental Health Even When You’ve Experienced Trauma

When this happens, solutions can seem far away and problems seem to be front and center. Though it may be hard, you can still improve your mental health even when you have experienced a trauma.

Empowering yourself to learn more can be the first step.

You do not need to have a mental health diagnosis to seek support for improving your mental health. A traumatic event may be the reason for your trauma or you may have experienced traumatic stress or experiences over a period of time.

There are strategies you can use no matter what, and mental health professionals can help when life gets overwhelming.

You don’t have to start at the beginning to start your journey.

You can start right now and honor that healing takes time.

Improving your mental health starts with you.

Here are 5 ways to help yourself even when you have experienced trauma:

1. Identify your values and beliefs. 

If you have experienced trauma, you may feel lost or disconnected from the world. You may feel like you are wandering through life without a guide or even aimless. It’s okay.

To center yourself again, identify your values and beliefs. What you value most may shift at any time. Figuring out your core values can help you to navigate your priorities in any situation.

If you know that your core value is integrity, you can better act with integrity in every situation to keep promises to yourself. You may have several core values to help guide your life decisions.

Think and reflect on what values you want in your life. If they don’t exist now, you have time to start fresh. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is one where identifying values is at the core of this approach. ACT is a great first therapeutic approach to working with values and trauma.

2. Build a community.

When you have experienced trauma, it is likely that your trust may have been impaired.

If you are struggling with identifying a community, you can start your community with a trusted therapist so that you can learn how to be loved by someone else before you love yourself.

Read More: “You Aren’t Perfect – Have Compassion For Yourself Anyways”

It is a myth that you have to love yourself first. Trusted loved ones in your life can love you until you are ready to love yourself.

You can learn to love yourself through relationships with others when they are healthy, supportive, loving relationships whether that’s friends, family or other supports from support groups.

A community that supports your core values and beliefs can be beneficial. When the people around you affirm who are, you can better affirm yourself.

Building a community can be a resource when you are feeling anxious or depressed. Recovery, support, and trauma groups can be especially helpful when you are building a trusted community.

Community can also be built through shared interests with others who honor and respect who you are as a person and have a common hobby or interest.

The premise of these communities is to reach out and rely on someone else once in a while.

3. Improve Self-discipline.

Self-discipline can help you to build trust within yourself and set boundaries. If you make a promise to yourself, carry out the promise. This can be a way to improve mental health, reduce stress, and alleviate symptoms. It can also be hard to be consistent with if you are struggling.

Be kind to yourself as you decide what is best for you and your mental health. If you break a promise to yourself, or do something that is not aligned with your values, it’s okay. You can do it differently next time. And that’s also okay.

Not flaking out on yourself can be important so that you can begin to build a relationship with yourself.

Internal Family Systems therapy is one of many approaches that can be helpful when you are discovering the reality of keeping promises to yourself. It is another therapeutic approach that can help you heal from childhood trauma, emotional trauma, and post traumatic stress disorder.

Setting and maintaining boundaries is critical after trauma. Listening to your limits can help you to heal.

Sometimes, you need to do hard things. There won’t be a way to avoid them. However, you can build up a reserve of love when you set boundaries with others and yourself.

Don’t expect every person in your life to follow your boundaries right away. You may have to restate your boundaries. If you have a repeated offender even if it is a family member, you have the option to stop the relationship or press pause.

4. Take care of your financial security.

When you don’t feel secure financially, it can lead to more stress in your life. This can result in mental stress and overwhelm. Sometimes, there is trauma surrounding finances and scarcity mindsets can be common.

Read More: “Financial Care Is Self Care: Tips To Help You Manage Financial Stress And Take Care of You”

You will make mistakes with money, and one of the best steps to take is the first one toward having a different relationship with your money and financial struggles. Most financial mistakes take time to recover from, and that is okay.

Instead of letting your depression or anxiety lead the way, make a new choice.

If you have credit card debt, start with $1 toward the debt. Often, childhood trauma with money can play a role in how you handle your money as an adult.

Small steady steps lead to solutions. Your mental health depends on how secure you feel, which is often tied to finances. Take one small step toward security.

Working with a financial therapist can be helpful. Yes, it is a cost, and it may worth the investment to learn how to better manage your money and relationship with money.

5. Seek professional help.

Somatic therapy can be incredibly beneficial when it comes to traumatic experiences. Therapies like EMDR can help improve your mental health and resolve trauma responses.

Read More: “What To Know About Therapy And If Therapy Is Right For You”

According to EMDR International Association (EMDRIA), EMDR therapy is extensively researched and widely recognized as effective trauma therapy. EMDR therapy is recognized as evidenced-based treatment for PTSD and other trauma and stressor disorders in treatment guidelines published by the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, the World Health Organization, and a growing number of national and international organizations.

Find a therapist who has training in trauma and therapies that can be helpful in treating trauma.

A trauma-informed therapist knows how to balance guiding you through feeling emotions, telling parts or all of your story, regulating your emotions and building trust in the therapeutic relationship so you feel safe working through your trauma.

Trauma is difficult to navigate alone, and when you isolate due to the trauma, it can be a lonely experience. It can be helpful to have at least one person who understands, and therapists want to do just that.

Improving mental health after a traumatic experience is not easy and there are healthy ways to cope.

Knowing that support systems are in place can be useful. Whether you seek therapy, join a recovery group, or start with identifying your values, a small step helps to build inertia in the healing process.

The best way to get started is with one small step. Our trauma informed approach at Denver Metro Counseling can be a gentle way to try therapy in Colorado and improve your mental health.