Whenever an individual experiences trauma, their lives are changed forever. Most people have a hard time healing complex trauma because they do not know where to begin when it comes to the healing journey. Tim Fletcher speaks about how to locate your complex trauma to be able to heal it.
Tim Fletcher is considered a pioneer in the addictions and mental health treatment profession for his transformational programming. He is the Founder and President of Tim Fletcher Co. Over the past 18+ years, he has used his skills to develop a comprehensive treatment approach and interactive programs to help people overcome the effects of trauma and addictions, especially complex trauma.
“So much of it exists in the subconscious mind so we’re not even aware of all of these mechanisms and kind of subconscious brain templates and programs that have been operating our life. It’s almost like we’re on autopilot, um, and because it’s been normal for us all our life, we don’t see it as abnormal or unhealthy.”
Tim Fletcher shares that a lot of complex trauma exists in the subconscious. Most people do not even know they have complex trauma because the behaviors associated with the trauma are ingrained into their everyday life, so much so that these effects have become normal behavior.
Complex trauma or complex post-traumatic stress disorder often results from experiencing extreme trauma over a prolonged period. This can be in childhood or adulthood. Some of the stress responses associated with it include anxiety, flashbacks and nightmares, avoidance behavior, and difficulty in sustaining relationships.
“That’s where taking a program or watching videos where you begin to grow in self-awareness to understand trauma to understand the different characteristics of trauma.”
The only way to identify and heal trauma is by seeking to understand your behavior. “Once you begin to grow in self-awareness, then you go, oh wow, okay, now I’m starting to see it.”
Once one identifies what’s unhealthy about their behavior pattern, they should seek to understand what healthy is to heal the trauma and adopt a healthy lifestyle and behavior. According to Fletcher, one way to unlearn and relearn is by finding a surrogate family that can model healthy habits.
“Complex trauma requires reparenting. You need a surrogate family that can begin to model ‘healthy’ for you, teach you ‘healthy’ and help you learn healthy.”
Most people end up never seeking help to heal their trauma because part of recovery requires them to connect with other people. Most people fear that showing up in their authentic selves makes them unattractive. This fear of rejection keeps a lot of people from seeking help to heal their complex trauma.
“We are intellectual beings, we’re physical beings, we’re emotional beings, we’re relational beings, and we’re Spiritual Beings. We have to learn to meet all five the needs of all five of those areas if we’re going to be healthy.”
If you are a man looking for guidance on how to heal your complex trauma, Mensgroup.com is an online support forum for men where you can find all the resources and support you need to start your healing journey.
