6 Signs Your Trauma is Healing and You’re Making Real Progress

Healing trauma is not always a straightforward process, and shifts can be subtle. If you’ve undertook this life-changing process and need some inspiration to keep going, and see how far you’ve come, this is for you.

In this post, I’ll share 6 signs your trauma is healing that I’ve witnessed in my clients and in myself as I’ve healed.

This is the final post in this series. If you’re interested in how we got here, checkout my previous posts where we cover:

·       How trauma changes your brain and creates beliefs that hold you back

·       How to resolve trauma triggers and intrusive memories

·       How Hypnotherapy heals trauma at the root

6 Signs You Are Healing Your Trauma

Here are the signs that your nervous system is finally letting go and your trauma is truly healing.

1. Intrusive Memories Lose Their Charge or Cease Completely

Intrusive memories are highly emotional memories from traumatic experiences that seem to barge in at random. They can be difficult to work through and cause an intense emotional reaction when you experience them.

Healing means that these intrusive memories lose their emotional charge, or they stop showing up completely.

When we heal the root of the intrusive memories, we release the build up of emotion that’s been stored within them. With no emotional charge, they’re just memories.

2. Your Relationship with Yourself Strengthens

Trauma can cause a disconnection from parts of us such as our independence, personal power, or sexuality. When we start to heal the wound that the trauma left, we start to rekindle the relationship with ourself.

This might look like more self love for some, or more belief in themselves for others. You might be able to set boundaries more easily, or find that your inner critic is softer.

Overall, it’s a sense that you’ve come to accept yourself fully, regardless of what you’ve been through.

3. Physical Aches and Pains Ease

This might sound surprising if you don’t understand the relationship between mind and body, but I’ve had many clients notice a decrease in aches, pains, and inflammation after healing trauma.

In some cases, they came to work with me to heal their body, and healing trauma is what did it. You can read about some of those stories in my book, The Uncaged Mind, or in other posts like this one about healing arthritis pain.

4. Low-Level Anxiety and Stress Eases

This is something I hear a lot, and something I experienced myself. Personally, I didn’t even know how stressed or anxious I really was until I addressed my trauma. I couldn’t even recognize myself after!

You might find that things just don’t feel as urgent or stressful as they always used to. This is because healing trauma heals your dysregulated nervous system, bringing you out of that constant state of fight-or-flight.

When your nervous system calms down, you experience more moments of peace in your life that you would have never noticed before.

5. Triggers Fade Away Quietly

Triggers are what happen when your limbic system senses a threat based on your previous experiences. For example, if your parent was physically abusive, you might feel intense and irrational levels of fear when someone raises their voice.

Essentially, your brain is trying to avoid that same kind of situation again, so it responds before you can think logically. When your subconscious mind is no longer harboring so much intense emotion, the things that used to trigger you don’t have the same effect.

6. You Can Think About (or Even Talk About) Past Traumas Without Feeling The Original Emotion

This is something I noticed after healing my trauma. I could actually talk about it without feeling all those awful feelings I used to feel. I could even think about the memories without feeling the shame and fear that once used to flood my body.

Its truly a sign that my subconscious mind no longer see those experiences as threats to me now. Of course, I certainly don’t want to have it happen again, but I’m no longer bracing for something that happened decades ago.

This kind of freedom helps us connect with others, too. When we can talk about our experiences, we can inspire others with our own healing.

Healing is a Spiral

Years ago I was introduced to the idea that healing happens in a spiral. I love this metaphor because I believe that healing isn’t a one-and-done process, nor is it a dreaded life-long chore.

It’s both, and it’s nether.

When we turn inward and begin to heal ourselves, we feel shifts. Maybe subtle, maybe life-changing. But as we spiral up, we may come across situations in the future which trigger that some wound.

When we do, we approach it from this higher state. It might still hurt a bit, but if we allow it, it can be another opportunity to heal it some more. As we do, we spiral up again.

Each time we come across an experience that touches that old wound, we get the opportunity to heal it further. And each time we do, we access it again from a higher state.

It might feel at first like you’re not making progress, but each time you choose to go within, you are healing that wound on another level.

Healing isn’t a life-long chore that “never ends”, but one can only hope that we continue to grow at ever stage of life. Healing isn’t a one-and-done process, but there can be major breakthroughs that absolutely change your life.

Healing is a beautiful thing. Each of our journeys may look a little different, but ultimately, we are all in this together.

I’m curious to know what subtle (or massive) changes you’ve noticed as you’ve healed.

And if you’re just starting your journey and need support, you’ve landed in the right place. You can book a free consultation to speak with me directly, or check out my hypnotherapy services to get started right away.

Katie is a board-certified Clinical Hypnotherapist and Pain Reprocessing Therapist who helps people retrain their brains, calm their nervous systems, and heal chronic pain and anxiety naturally. She teaches somatic techniques, guided visualization, and hypnosis to reduce stress, inflammation, and anxiety, empowering clients to step into wellness, self-compassion, and lasting healing. Explore her signature brain retraining program, The Recovery Code  to start your journey toward recovery.