A Beginner’s Guide to Healing Trauma: Stages of Recovery & Things You Should Know
Disclaimer: This blog post is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your healing journey. I am not a psychologist, therapist, or medical doctor. I do not offer any medical or professional advice. If you are suffering from mental illness, please seek help from a qualified health professional.
Table of Contents
I’m so glad this post found you. I hope that the person reading this can feel supported and guided through some of my tips when trying to heal from trauma.
Whether you’re recovering from big “T” or little “t” trauma, it can be a lonely, painful, and difficult path to healing from traumatic experiences.
You might be recovering from childhood trauma, betrayal trauma, narcissistic trauma, or relationship trauma. You might be recovering from neglect or abandonment, too. Whatever your story, please know that healing is completely possible.
Personally, I’ve been in and out of therapy for the last 12 years, but I’ve done much more intentional healing work in the last 4 years.
Healing trauma is no cake walk, to say the least.
I’ve learned a lot about what is helpful, and what is not. I also have realized that there are stages of recovery and each one is important.
I hope by reading this post, you can avoid some of the mistakes I made along the way.
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What does healing trauma actually mean?
Healing work is all about restoring truth and connection within yourself. I believe we are all born a clean slate, and our environment and circumstances disrupt our natural state of love, compassion, and wholeness.
Trauma disconnects you from yourself and causes all kinds of emotional and physical symptoms that can make life feel hell-ish.
Some of my symptoms were extreme shyness, social anxiety, isolation, feeling insecure all the time, shutting down, feeling numb, being highly sensitive, over-apologizing, people pleasing, feeling chronically lonely, being too other-focused, plus a long list of physical symptoms like GI issues, panic attacks, and migraines.
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The things that will actually heal you:
Finding safety in your body
Releasing survival energy and stuck emotions
Knowing yourself
Trusting yourself
Allowing your pain to be seen, heard, and honored
Embodying what is true
Setting boundaries and making hard decisions in your life
Connection and compassion
Can a coach or therapist help you do these things? Absolutely! But please know that the inner work is up to you.
My journey in therapy, coaching and healing.
2013: Tried talk therapy for the first time, only went to maybe 3 sessions.
2014: Did talk therapy for 1 year.
2018: Went back to talk therapy for 4 months.
2020: Went back to talk therapy for 2.5 years, did EMDR.
2021: Did Hypnotherapy. Learned EFT Tapping.
2022: Did acupuncture. Did a nervous system regulation program.
2023: Worked with a coach for 10 months. Did Marma therapy, frequency therapy, and reiki.
2024: Did plant medicine, started doing breathwork, and IFS therapy.
2025: Focusing on breathwork and healing physical symptoms!
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Stages of Trauma Recovery (from my experience)
These are not scientific, this is mostly how my recovery went and how I imagine it might go for you, too.
Please note that these don’t always go in order. And some stages take years and some take days.
As always, see if you can be even more kind and gentle to yourself.
1. Your life falls apart.
Shit hits the fan and you are desperate for help. You’ll do anything to get better. Some people call this the dark night of the soul. It’s an awakening to old patterns that are harming you and you’ve reached a breaking point.
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2. You learn all about emotional health.
You realize how normal you are. Your trauma, your symptoms, your coping mechanisms…it all adds up. You notice toxic patterns in other people. You begin to make small lifestyle changes.
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3. More resistance comes up.
You realize that people in your life don’t want you to change! They were probably benefiting from your low self worth to make themselves feel better. You might come to realize how poorly you’ve been treated. Anger, sadness, and grief might come to the surface. You realize the immense impact that trauma has had on your life.
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4. Self isolation mode.
Everyone and everything has to go. You become over-boudnaried and focus only on you. You begin saying no to social events, your old friends, and maybe want to change jobs.
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5. You realize how much you’ve been bottling up.
The lid comes off the pot and it’s ugly. Emotions are overwhelming and intense. You may want to lash out at this time. You realize how much grief you have for what life you could’ve had without the trauma.
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6. You begin to settle and process the emotions.
You understand that you can’t rewrite the past, but you can rewrite the future. Each emotion needs to be honored, seen, and fully expressed. You begin to feel lighter and more optimistic through this process. While painful, you accept the past.
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7. You start reaping what you’ve sowed.
Maybe you’ve made healthier friendships, are in a happy relationship, and have a better job. You have more capacity to do the things you love. You’ve learned healthier communication styles. You know what is acceptable and what isn’t in personal relationships. You feel more and more like yourself.
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8. You want to uplevel your life.
You have a deep level of self trust now. You’re ready to grow more and dive even deeper into yourself. You have deep self love and embody kindness toward yourself. You continue to release any lingering survival energy and invite in more feelings of love, joy, peace, and freedom.
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These are not hard, fast rules. Trauma healing is never linear.
While you heal, please learn from my mistakes. I have 8 things that I want you to know when you’re on your healing journey.
Things you should know when recovering from trauma:
1. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars.
First and foremost, you do not need to spend thousands of dollars to work with someone to help you heal your symptoms from trauma.
Pleaseeee don’t buy into anyone that is selling a coaching package or program that is promising to heal everything you’ve ever been through for the last 20, 30, or 40 years…
Healing is not always black and white.
This is scammy marketing. And highly unethical, in my opinion.
If you are looking for therapy, you can hopefully be able to get coverage through your insurance with an affordable co-pay.
If you are seeking therapy or coaching via out-of-pocket, depending on where you live, I would say $100-$250 is the max that you should pay. If someone is charging you more than that, I would highly recommend continuing your search and looking elsewhere.
Unfortunately, I bought way too many scammy coaching programs and courses who convinced me that they were the only person who could help me. They promised they had all the magical formulas, and secret tricks to get me to feel better.
Wrong.
A greater percentage of coaching is the coach encouraging the client to look inward. You are always the one doing the work.
Hear me when I say…you don’t need to pay a lot of money for that.
This is why I offer coaching at a very low-cost and am committed to sharing as much free content online as possible.
I had to purge a lot of people I followed on instagram because of this reason. They overcharge and underdeliver. No thanks!
2. Doing more doesn’t mean you’ll heal faster.
I get it–symptoms feel like hell and you want to speed up to the finish line and get your life feeling normal and okay again.
I wish there was a way to do that. What I’ve learned through my own healing journey is this: more ≠ healing faster.
I was trying to journal, do EFT tapping, say my affirmations, go on a nature walk, and listen to 2 meditations all in one day at a point in my healing journey.
Unfortunately, that did nothing but create unrealistic expectations for myself and dysregulate my nervous system more.
Looking back, sometimes I really just needed to sit and BE with myself. Not journal them, not tap them away, but sit and notice what exactly is happening inside of my body.
Healing is an intuitive process. Certain times it will make sense to focus more on inner work, and sometimes you’ll need to take a hiatus.
And either one is totally okay!
3. Healing can’t be forced or rushed.
Healing happens in gentleness and empathy. No one has ever hustled away their trauma symptoms!
Especially later in healing, I felt so defeated thinking, “I”ve done SO much work, I should be feeling better now!”
Pressure to “hurry up and heal” just prolongs your suffering.
Unfortunately, we can’t manually force our body to feel safe enough to let go of any stuck trauma or survival energy. Only our body can decide when it feels safe enough to let go of any trauma energy (anger, resentment, sadness, grief, etc.).
4. It gets easier over time because you know you’ll be okay.
In the beginning, everything still feels really intense. It feels like you’re always going to have these symptoms, you’re always going to feel awful, and life is going to suck forever.
Of course, this is not true, but it can certainly feel that way.
Over time, you get glimpses of what being “healed” feels like. Then, you get longer and longer periods of feeling really safe and okay.
When you’re at this point, and you get triggered back into feeling trauma-y, it sucks of course, but you have learned first-hand that you know you will find safety in your body again, and feel okay.
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5. You actually will heal your seemingly impossible symptoms.
Yes, it’s true! I want to shout this from the rooftops.
You can absolutely recover from trauma if you keep showing up for yourself.
Throughout my trauma healing journey, I used to think all the time, “Am I doing this for nothing!? What’s the point if I’ll be like this forever!?”
Like I mentioned before, whether you’re in active recovery or not, it can definitely feel really intense, lonely, and painful. Maybe you feel like this all the time.
But please know, you are not beyond help. Your symptoms always make sense, and there is always a way toward feeling better.
If I can experience radical transformation, literally anyone can.
6. Don’t be afraid to try multiple types of therapy or healing modalities.
If you’re turned off from talk therapy, or maybe you’ve been in traditional therapy for a while and aren’t seeing the results you want….try something else!
Re-read my list of therapies. You’ll see, I’ve tried so many healing modalities to heal from the past and re-regulate my body.
In most ways, I feel very healed. I feel really good, or “normal” most of the time and I can move through triggers very quickly.
To be honest, I don’t know if I would’ve gotten here without doing multiple types of therapy.
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Here is a list of therapies to try:
Talk Therapy: A conversational approach to explore emotions, challenges, and patterns to foster personal insight and healing.
CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy): A structured therapy focused on changing negative thought patterns and behaviors to improve mental health.
Group Therapy: Provides support and shared experiences in a group setting guided by a trained facilitator.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Therapy: Uses guided eye movements to reprocess and reduce the emotional impact of traumatic memories. It lessens the pain you feel from a traumatic event.
Brainspotting: Targets trauma stored in the brain by identifying specific eye positions linked to emotional distress.
EFT Tapping: Combines gentle tapping on acupressure points with affirmations to release emotional blocks and trauma.
Acupuncture: A Chinese medicine practice that uses needles to restore energy balance and reduce trauma-related stress.
Somatic Experiencing: Focuses on body awareness and releasing trauma stored in your muscles.
Breathwork: Uses intentional breathing techniques to release emotional trauma and promote relaxation.
Sound Healing: A practioner uses sound bowls to create sound frequencies and vibrations to reduce stress and promote emotional and physical healing.
Plant Medicine: Involves natural psychoactive substances used in ceremonial or therapeutic settings for trauma healing and self-exploration.
Psychedelic Medicine: Uses guided therapeutic sessions with substances like MDMA or psilocybin to process deep emotional trauma.
Hypnotherapy: Accesses the subconscious mind through guided relaxation to reframe traumatic experiences and beliefs.
IFS Therapy (Internal Family Systems): Explores internal "parts" of the psyche to address trauma and restore inner harmony.
Reiki (Energy Healing): A spiritual healing practice that channels energy to promote emotional and physical well-being.
Art Therapy: Encourages creative expression to process and explore emotions related to trauma.
Music Therapy: Uses music to facilitate emotional release, relaxation, and healing.
Trauma-Informed Yoga: A yoga practice tailored to help individuals reconnect with their bodies and reduce trauma-related stress.
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7. Your biggest obstacle might be the fear of fully feeling.
The biggest reason many people stay stuck is because they are afraid of facing themselves fully and their emotions under the surface.
Big emotions like despair, grief, humiliation, guilt, not-enoughness, abandonment, and aloneness are intense and overwhelming to feel. Our mind-body naturally suppresses these feelings if we don’t have nurturing support from someone else or capacity within ourselves to do so.
Unfortunately, the suppression of these intense emotions is what causes many people to stay stuck.
It’s like a boiling pot with a lid on it. The water is still in the pot, but there is steam sneaking through and causing you uncomfortable symptoms. It will get increasingly more intense, and get harder to suppress over time. This is when many people naturally turn to unhealthy options to keep the overwhelming feelings at bay.
If you are someone with a lot of intense emotions boiling under the surface, I would recommend breathwork, hypnotherapy, or IFS therapy. These are great options to slowly feel the big emotions without getting overwhelmed.
8. More people feel the way you do than you probably think.
Lastly, please never for a second feel that you are alone.
There are literally thousands of men and women who have felt similar feelings to you, people who have committed their life’s work to helping people recovering from what you’re going through, and a number of people who spend their life studying and researching emotional health to help people like you and me feel better and live life the way we want to.
Me, being one of them!
In my early twenties I was convinced that I was the only twenty-something year old that was unhappy from not liking my job, making no money, and really insecure about being single.
Looking back….now I see SO many people in their twenties that feel this way! How silly to think I was the only one.
Find someone to connect with who feels the way you do. It can be a friend, boyfriend or girlfriend, therapist, coach, someone online, or even me!
I promise, if you ask for help from the right people, they will be more than happy to support you.
Final Thoughts
There’s a lot of things that you will learn on your healing journey. Many of which I myself have yet to learn! But no matter what, keep the faith. You have no idea how good life can get for you.
As always, reach out for any coaching, support, or questions. And leave a comment below if anything stuck out to you!
