We hear the word healing, and we picture nice music, smiles, relief and the sense that our soul has been fixed from something or someone terrible.
There. You’re all better now. Congratulations.
Well… except it’s not like that at all, is it?
Healing takes time. It’s messy. It’s painful. It’s certainly not linear.
More importantly, it can be a really lonely place to be.
I know that may surprise some, but maybe there are also a number of you nodding furiously as you read this.
Here’s why it’s lonely, and how knowing can help you.
Healing is Never Straightforward
The promise of a deep and meaningful, straightforward healing process just isn’t come to fruition.
You wake up and start your journey, and in around three weeks, you will be all better! Every day will see you getting stronger and happier until the trauma just disappears…
…Poof!
No healing journey is like this.
Especially when you are dealing with something as serious as trauma.
Being Patient With Yourself
Underestimating how difficult healing is, is to do your trauma a disservice in my eyes. Your trauma deserves more than that.
It needs the days where you cry and feel completely alone.
It needs those moments you have no idea what you will do.
Why?
Because healing aims to find yourself again.
You can’t do that until you admit you’re lost.
7 Reasons Why You Feel Lonely During Trauma Healing
1. Trauma is Personal
I think people mistake trauma so often. It’s an all-encapsulating word, isn’t it? It covers everything terrible that all of us in the world have been and gone through.
Yet, it really tells us nothing other than what that terrible experience was, was traumatic.
Trauma is personal. Even when you split it and split it to just narcissistic abuse, it’s still frightfully personal. Things like:
- Your circumstances
- Your jobs
- Where you live
- Your race
- Your religion
- Your gender
- Your family and friends circle
- Your childhood
- Your personality traits
- Your hobbies
- The way you react
- The way the narcissist reacts
- What is said and done
It’s your experience, and it’s your trauma. Yes, you can compare certain aspects with others and relate somehow, but you can’t live it fully together.
I even know of people raised under the same roof as a narcissistic parent, and all had completely different experiences of that parent.
One was absolutely affected by it and suffers from anxiety like you wouldn’t believe. One sibling is just like the parent, and the middle child is indifferent and fairly distanced.
No trauma is the same, and no way we heal from it is either.
2. Belongingness
When we start healing, all we want to do is belong in that place where we have successfully done so.
We want to arrive at the destination before boarding the train for our journey.
This isn’t about being impatient at all. It’s more, “I just want to feel as though I belong somewhere that isn’t where I’ve been.”
That thought alone can be a lonely place to reside because it’s impossible. You do have to go through all the processes before you get a chance to feel lighter and that you belong.
3. Shame Leads to Isolation
Trauma happens to you, and that takes away the idea that you caused it.
Nobody goes out looking for terrible things to cross their paths. Nobody wants the memories of times that you’d rather forget. The memories that cause:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Sleepless nights
- Low self-worth
- No confidence
- Palpitations
- Loss of self
- Inability to make choices
It’s common to feel lonely through your own healing journey because you’ve placed a heap of shame onto yourself that needn’t be there. The shame is not yours to carry, yet there you are, making sure the real person responsible doesn’t have to deal with it.
The time comes where you have to put that bag of burdens down, and realize that you were dealt a rough card.
That’s not your fault. It never was, and it never will be.
Your trauma is yours to work on and heal from, but it is not because of you that it exists.
4. Struggling For Direction
When you’re at a crossroads, sometimes the only thing you want is to know somebody is beside you ,going through exactly what you’re going through simultaneously.
If that isn’t possible, you want someone who has done it before.
Direction is hard when you’re healing because where do you go? What’s right? You feel like you no longer know the answers to those questions because you had so much of your thoughts and feelings stolen from you.
All you really need to know is that you don’t want what you’ve experienced anymore. The trauma from knowing and being close with a narcissist is not what you ever want to have to be put through again, and that’s enough for now.
It’s enough to just know one thing today and have the next thing come to you tomorrow.
The struggle is wanting all the answers right now, and healing just isn’t possible right now. It takes time.
5. Not Wanting to Engage: Fear of Hurt
Getting back out there and creating any kind of relationship is going to be difficult after a personal trauma.
Being hurt and put through so much by somebody you initially thought was kind will not allow you to see genuine kindness when it does come your way.
So now you’re fearing.
You retreat, you fear somebody coming along and doing the same to you as what happened before.
Retreating will only make you feel worse. The loneliness you feel when you pull away from opportunities to make friends or date in the future will reinforce your feelings that you aren’t worthy of love or friendship.
And healing will never happen when those thoughts are still alive.
6. Boiling Down to Self-Esteem
You were made to feel that you are worthless for a very long time.
As mentioned above, when meeting new people, you cannot allow your low self-esteem to drive you into a new chapter.
Low self-esteem will keep you feeling alone, and the cycle will remain alive.
You don’t think you’re good enough for that job. You don’t apply. You don’t apply, you don’t get the job. You then have to stay in a job you hate, making you feel even lower.
You see how easy it is to just fall into that?
7. Remember – You’re Grieving
Grief has no rules and no time limit.
It is a part of life, and not all grieving refers to the death of somebody.
You can grieve if a relationship ends.
You can grieve if you move far away and you miss your life back where you came from.
You can grieve if you lose a job you loved.
And yes – because grief is so personal, we feel so alone when we’re going through it.
The relationship you thought was perfect, turned out to be far from it.
Trauma lives in all of that, and part of your trauma is the grief of something terrible happening to you.
Moving on from that can feel lonely.
