When in the throes of healing from complex trauma, survivors can get lost in all the memories and emotions. Whether or not we are in therapy, we are prone to self-sabotaging behaviors.

Self-sabotage describes things people do that block their success and prevent them from reaching their goals. This behavior affects a survivor’s professional and personal success and mental well-being.

Facing the past isn’t easy. It takes guts, hard work, and recognizing our habits to overcome self-sabotage. This article will focus on overcoming and integrating trauma to end self-sabotaging behavior.

Overcoming Fear of Vulnerability

At first glance, you may wonder what the fear of vulnerability has to do with self-sabotage. Being vulnerable is one of the hardest things to overcome. Like you, it’s a casualty of complex trauma. As you may have realized already, those who suffer from CPTSD tend to hide away from others and not trust, significantly influencing relationships with others and themselves.

Being vulnerable requires facing rejection and exposing ourselves emotionally, which makes many survivors feel dread. We often fear vulnerability and try to close ourselves off from friends and family. People like us who have survived complex trauma often have social anxiety and avoid being among others, bringing isolation into the mix.

When faced with being emotionally vulnerable, our tendency is to sabotage our efforts and close up like a morning glory flower after the rays of the sun have changed to a new position. Sometimes, we may make excuses not to be vulnerable with others or avoid people altogether.

Being vulnerable with others and ourselves is the answer to self-sabotage in that we strengthen romantic relationships and friendships, improve our self-confidence, and increase our self-awareness. Once aware and open, we become beacons of light for those who remain caught in the self-imposed trap of self-sabotage.

The Trouble with Trauma

Our brains are elastic, growing, and changing depending on our experiences and the accompanying emotions. Usually, when we have an experience, our brain can file the memory and its emotions away in long-term memory, which can be retrieved later.

However, trauma changes how our brains function because when overwhelmed, our minds cannot file memories correctly. Memories impacted by trauma, especially chronic trauma, interfere with the function of the amygdala and hippocampus of the brain. The amygdala and hippocampus are necessary for memory consolidation and storage. This interference sequesters memories of what happened to us, keeping our brains from incorporating traumatic memories into ordinary consciousness.

Integration of memories is the opposite of dissociation and is necessary for one to function correctly. Simply put, dissociation is failing to incorporate information and experiences, leaving thoughts and emotions disconnected. Integration means pulling all the memories together to make a whole past. Many who live with complex post-traumatic stress disorder experience dissociated emotions and memories.

Repeated trauma exposure leads to over-reliance on dissociation, a normal defense mechanism that helps with emotional regulation. Unfortunately, if we are dissociating in order to handle our feelings and emotions, we are not living our full lives.

The Integrating of Traumatic Experiences

When traumatic experiences are not adequately integrated, many survivors say they feel stuck because of the memories of what happened. The experience of being stuck in trauma-time (the past where the trauma is still occurring) makes life difficult to navigate as it is interrupted by flashbacks and other symptoms.

Successfully integrating traumatic experiences, especially when they are chronic, takes time and patience. Integration means being capable of remaining centered in the present while acknowledging and remembering the trauma of the past.

Integration occurs when trauma memories are properly stored in your brain as long-term memories and no longer affect your daily experiences. You accept your past as your past and the full knowledge that it cannot be changed. The memories of abuse become incorporated into who you are and are no longer ruling your life.

Integrating who you are away from dissociation requires some actions and developing coping skills that can serve as distractions if nothing else.

Journaling. Putting your racing or negative thoughts down in black and white on paper aids you in having clarity of your thought processes and feelings. Write down exactly how you feel about your life, but don’t forget to sprinkle in a lot of self-love and respect.

Pursue gentle movement. Yoga and tai chi are only a few physical things you can do for yourself that improve mental health. Consider taking a meditative walk to move and relocate energy throughout your body and clear your mind.

Get out in nature. Nothing is more grounding than walking or sitting in the natural world. Listen to the birds singing in the trees or the sounds of children enjoying a playground. Breathe deeply while outside and drink in relaxation.

Practice deep breathing. Paying attention to how you breathe and doing breathing exercises will immediately calm you when you are stressed. Better yet, deep breathing is something you can practice anywhere at any time.

Make evening plans. Plan a night where you relax alone or with a friend. Play games or eat a nutritious meal with someone and enjoy a good conversation.

Challenge negative self-beliefs. Whenever you experience a negative thought about yourself, you push yourself further and further into the abyss of self-hatred. Stop it. You are a wonderful person who deserves the best. Challenge negative ideas about yourself by doing any of the following.

• Identify your feelings so you can challenge them.
• Accept your feelings, and don’t worry if they are right or wrong.
• Find replacement truths to replace your old negative ones.
• Repeat your new truth back to yourself.
• Meditate on your negative thoughts to see how they harm you.
• Be kind and loving to yourself, and allow yourself to be human.

Don’t allow echoes of the pain from the past to sabotage your life today.

Where Are You on Your Healing Path?

Healing takes time; that is a truth we all must bear. Survivors must address trauma that occurs throughout a lifetime, including those of early childhood. Building resilience and post-traumatic growth makes the healing journey easier to swallow.

Your healing journey is a long and challenging process, but it is all worth it in the end. Self-persistence enables healing, developing a sense of trust and safety, making new connections with other people, and acquiring new tools such as reframing and remaining positive.

Where are you in your healing? This is a legitimate question you need to ask yourself so you will know your next steps.

You can gauge your healing by several signs, as listed below.

• You are experiencing increased self-awareness.
• You have better relationships with others and more of them.
• Your physical health has improved due to lowered stress levels.
• You have stopped blaming others for your problems.
• You have begun taking full responsibility for your words and actions.
• You no longer feel like a victim.

Overcoming self-sabotaging behavior to arrive at the destination of inner peace is possible and achievable.

Ending Our Time Together

Healing from complex trauma is an arduous task. You go to therapy to heal and find that your therapist is only your seeing-eye dog, your Annie Sullivan, and cannot give you answers that only you can find.

To make matters worse, you discover through your many hours of treatment that you are self-sabotaging your life and relationships.

No matter where you are in your healing journey, I understand. I’ve worked on my mental health issues for more than thirty years and have gone through many of the stages of healing.

Living with the knowledge of what happened to me in my childhood and the bad decisions I’ve made since then has been difficult at times and has nearly cost me my life. Yet, I am still here and stronger than most people will ever be. I’ve learned to accentuate my positives and downplay my shortcomings. After all, I am only human, a lesson I also had to learn.

Integrating my past experiences meant allowing the past to be the past while acknowledging it but not living there. I have found most of the places where I committed self-sabotage and have stopped those behaviors because I have learned to love and accept who I am.

I invite you to continue your healing journey while watching for self-sabotaging behaviors. If you mess up, learn to tell yourself that you never win or lose; you win or learn from your mistakes.

“I never lose. I either win or learn.” – Nelson Mandela.

“You should never view your challenges as a disadvantage. Instead, it’s important for you to understand that your experience facing and overcoming adversity is actually one of your biggest advantages.” – Michelle Obama.

“Every human has four endowments – self-awareness, conscience, independent will, and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom: the power to choose, to respond, and to change.” – Stephen Covey.

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Shirley Davis

My name is Shirley Davis and I am a freelance writer with over 40-years- experience writing short stories and poetry. Living as I do among the corn and bean fields of Illinois (USA), working from home using the Internet has become the best way to communicate with the world. My interests are wide and varied. I love any kind of science and read several research papers per week to satisfy my curiosity. I have earned an Associate Degree in Psychology and enjoy writing books on the subjects that most interest me.