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Belongs to: Therapist reacts to PUSHIT by Tool
I’ve gotten so use to being in survival mode it’s hard for me think about how it must be to be “normal.” I think the only solace I’ve ever felt is in helping other people but it’s been fleeting.
Yes, it can be very difficult to remove ourselves from survival mode. We try our best to be as normal as we can.
That what trauma does to us SURVIVAl mode. I could agree that helping others. It keeps me alive and puts a smile on my face as well.
It fills such a void in our hearts when we help others. The fact that being in survival mode we dont realize how much damage we do to ourselves physically and mentally. The fact that we do things for our selves we tempt to not be bothered of anyone helping us.
Prayers for all of us in survival mode.
Hey my friend.
Boy does this hit close to home. I absolutely know what you mean.
Sometimes we are in survival mode for a decade or longer. To remove yourself from it can feel…scary. Foreign even.
I remember when I started dated my now wife, we had to both take a moment to address this within ourselves. We had both been in and out of survival mode sometimes that it was almost a comfortable place to be. Which meant being maybe more defensive than we shouldve been, interpreting things through our own wounded lenses, etc.
Undoing that survival mode takes so much work. For me - it took therapy and several books. I learned about my attachment style and journaling and for my partner, it was a lot of yoga and working on being present in her body and not so much in her head.
We arent perfect. We are still and likely always, going to be working on this in some way or another.
But you’ve got this. I thoroughly believe in you. Hold fast, my friend.
Living in survival mode can be so utterly exhausting and I am sorry that you have been in that mode for so long. When we finally get into environments where our survival mode is no longer needed, we almost don’t know how to operate. It’s almost like we’re lost.
We have become so accustomed to having to deal with trauma that our survival mode feels almost “normal,” but we know that it isn’t. Because no one deserves to live their lives in survival mode 24/7. It’s hard to think about what it is like to just be able to exist because it almost feels like a myth when we are deep into our survival mode.
But it isn’t a myth. You can live a life not in survival mode. Sometimes the first step is to put some distance between whatever environment caused you to go into survival mode. I remember when I first moved in with my now husband two states away from the house that I had grown up in, a few months after I moved in I started processing different events that happened in that house during my childhood that I never would have realized if I hadn’t moved out. My mind didn’t let me become aware of those memories until I was out of the environment that caused them and I was away from the person that caused them.
Each person is different in how they get their bodies out of that survival mode. Therapy helped me work through a lot of the mental and emotional trauma that I faced while living there and it also gave me the tools that helped me work through those unearthed memories years after I was out of therapy. Journaling has been a new practice that I have been trying and it has been helping. I also look for different ways that I can learn about myself in various different aspects. But I find that talking about the trauma is one of the best ways to start processing how to get out of survival mode. Whether it’s to a therapist, a trusted friend or family member, a mentor through our mentorship program, or us on the support wall. If you want to talk, we will be here to listen.
I am so glad that you enjoy helping people. It helps spread the light throughout all the darkness that we face in the world. It takes special people to be able to share the light while being in the darkness themselves. You’re going great! Don’t give up. You deserve to be “normal,” however that looks for you. 