Back in January, I talked about something at the Diamonds conference that I’d never spoken about publicly before. Medical trauma and PTSD, sharing truth, encouragement, and practical advice.
It was one of the hardest talks I’ve ever given. But I’m glad I did it. Because I’m not the only one. In all my time working in and engaging with the chronic illness community, I feel like this is the thing I’ve heard talked about least — yet so many experience this.
Chronic illness is not easy and not what our minds or bodies were designed to handle.
Every individual is going to handle the experiences differently, and each person’s set of experiences will be unique. This topic is huge, and there is a reason I devoted an entire conference session to it. But today, I want to share just a few tools to help you process medical trauma.
1. Using tangible conduits
I have a sword hanging on my wall. Like, an actual heavy metal sword. And it has been one of the tools I have used the most as I’ve worked through the traumatic experiences I went through. Holding it, cold metal, makes me feel powerful and safe. Not so helpless.
It helped that we had a free German longsword fighting club at our local community college, and I learned that fighting with swords was one of the things that helped me work through my memories and emotions. I began to use my sword in so many different ways. Sparring with my instructor, I used it to get out the fear and anger and stress. Sitting in my room, I held it in my lap to help me feel safe. Reentering the location of a trauma, I imagined the things paralyzing me and swung my sword at the memory. Not to destroy it, but to tangibly help me let go of it.
Weird? Maybe. But tangible things can be so helpful. Writing things down and flushing them down the toilet. Building something good in a place where there was something bad.
2. Professional help processing trauma
It took me a while to find a professional therapist. I was scared at first, and then had no idea where to start when I realized I needed help. I share my whole story in finding professional help here. But you don’t have to figure this all out on your own, warrior!
That professional can give you ideas. They can help you recognize what tangible things might be helpful — and what might not. They can help you understand the way the human brain works, which can help you have grace for yourself.
And they can give you so many personalized tools to help you cope and navigate out of things like fight or flight. Breathing exercises, body scans, boundaries. I cannot emphasize enough the benefit of competent, kind counselors for chronic illness warriors.
We seek out professional help for the physical stuff, yet so often we try to handle all the mental and emotional stuff all on our own. (We do this with spiritual stuff, too, which is also so sad! The Body of Christ is there for a reason.)
3. Write to process trauma
I hadn’t publicly shared about medical trauma before January, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t writing about it. I wrote 40k+ words about my experiences. I just didn’t publish them.
Writing (and reading) help me to process life. Writing about my negative experiences is . . . hard. It means engaging with the pain. But recording it somewhere allows me to stop obsessively revisiting the memories over and over again. It gives space to feel and to be quiet and to be honest. To lament and worship and connect dots.
So try your hand at writing your story, journaling, or poetry writing. Even if you’re not a writer.
The goal of this list is not to be exhaustive, but to give you a starting place for ideas. Maybe these will be helpful for you. Maybe they are simply a chance for you to realize it’s okay to be creative and adapt to your individual needs. And maybe none of them are helpful for you — if so, don’t force yourself. But you’re not the only one, and there are others who want to walk with you through this.
And friend? If you need encouragement in this area, I suggest checking out the virtual conference where I spoke about this more extensively.
You don’t have to do this alone.