5 Things Family and Friends Can Do To Help While I Work On Healing
How can friends or family help support your healing? Your first response might be to say they can’t help as healing is personal to each person and a journey we each have to do for ourselves. However, while this may be true in some ways there are actually things important people in your life can do to help.
Your first response might be to say they can’t help as healing is personal to each person and a journey we each have to do for ourselves. However, while this may be true in some ways there are actually things important people in your life can do to help.
Things That Are Helpful:
Gently support them and ask the person doing the work what would be helpful. Continuing through life as if the work they are doing is not difficult or taxing is not helpful. Validating the work they are doing as important and expressing being proud of them can help too.
Be understanding that the work they are doing may leave them tired. Especially if they are doing work like Eye Movement Desensitization or Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) where they are reprocessing memories which means their brain is working hard to make sense of past memories and traumas. This is even more true if they are doing an EMDR Intensive or multiple hours of EMDR in one day.
Be genuine, if you are unable to be supportive, encourage them to be around others who can be supportive as you work on your own things.
Consider if doing a couples or family session may be helpful to better understand the work they are doing.
If there are relationship issues, it often makes sense to hold off on addressing them until after trauma work as doing it during trauma work just tends to trigger past traumas and makes it hard to resolve current issues.
I hope this information helps you understand how best to support a loved one that is doing trauma work or if you are the one doing trauma work, helps you explain to a loved one what you need. I also hope it helps you feel like trauma work is more doable with this support. If you are interested in learning more about trauma work or EMDR in general you can find out more about the EMDR or other approaches I use here. If you are interested in the EMDR Intensives I do you can find out more about them here. If you are just feeling stuck and have questions, please feel free to call me at (707) 954- 7060 for a free 15 minute consultation. I’d be happy to hear about what is going on for you and to help direct you to the right person to help you.