Recovery Tip of the Week: Organize Your Recovery Process

Overcoming trauma is a HUGE job, isn’t it? There are so many moving parts, so many things to be addressed, faced, changed, eradicated, installed… Whew, it can be exhausting just thinking about it!

And that’s the problem. Sometimes, you can think so much about what has to be done that you exhaust yourself before you even begin. You look ahead and see the whole entire mountain of recovery and before even taking one step you feel like you have to just sit down and take a rest. Then what happens? You rest and rest and rest and no progress gets made. Which means you continue to suffer for no real reason except you haven’t yet moved toward feeling better.

How do I know about all of this? I, er, did it myself! Overwhelm is a normal part of post-trauma recovery — it’s also an easily wrangled issue. Getting organized in your recovery is as simple as 1,2,3, 4:

1. sit down and write out all of the areas of your life that you know need to be addressed. For example, health, job, relationships, etc.

2. in each category, write out what needs to be done – write as much as you can think of.

3. take a look at all you’ve written – which area seems the most important right now? Which actions would help you get to a place where you felt more stable?

When you identify the area that seems most critical, put away your notes about everything else! (But put them where you can find them later.) Right now, all you’re going to do is focus on the one area you’ve identified as most important. Then:

4. choose the one thing on that list that is more critical than everything else. THIS is where you will focus. This is the one step you will take. What do you need to do to begin making change around this? Who can help you?

This Week on YOUR LIFE AFTER TRAUMA

Tags: emotions, organize, ptsd, recovery process, recovery tip, trauma