Lesson 1: Is This the End of Your Story? Or the Beginning?

First, welcome to the Post-Traumatic Event Club. I know, I know. You really don’t want to be here. Honestly, none of us do.

This isn’t one of those places people seek out. In fact, this exclusive group never really crosses anyone’s mind until they end up here.

For most who have never experienced a traumatic event, everyday life could be called normal or familiar. Their routines, behaviors, reactions, and demeanor seem to run on autopilot.. They have a firm grasp on who who they are. Then, for some, a traumatic event occurs. In an instant, they lose the handle.

The trauma survivor is like a professional fireballer who picks up a baseball one afternoon and suddenly has no idea how to pitch it. Every ball placed in the palm feels like a foreign object. It’s beyond frustrating. It just doesn’t make sense.

If you fail to act post-trauma, that’s the end of the story. You never recover. You never get your pitch back. Even worse, your relationships with others erode when they can’t trust who you are at any given moment. That makes sense to you because YOU can’t trust who you are at any given moment.

I had to learn this the hard way. I lost a wife, a fiancée, and a job in part because I couldn’t loosen trauma’s grip on me. Yet even losing those things didn’t seem to matter until I was ready to answer one question: “What was I NOT willing to lose?” Once I had that answer, I was ready to do the work.