Friday Q&A: How do you heal from trauma on a budget?

Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

Here’s another round of our Friday Q&A:

Q: How do you heal from trauma on a budget?

A: This question is certainly apropos today, when the world found out the devastating news that Anthony Bourdain had committed suicide, just a couple of days after someone equally as successful, Kate Spade.

The point: pain and trauma do not discriminate. And money can’t buy healing. The point: pain and trauma do not discriminate.

It certainly can help – don’t get me wrong. I’m certainly thriving more when I can pay for a therapist, getting massages and acupuncture on the reg. But ultimately the work of healing lies within our own hands. Help and support are necessary, but it comes back to the work with do with ourselves on a daily basis.

I’ll start with the obvious things of healing on a budget: search Youtube and find several people that really, REALLY resonate with you, who can guide you in some aspect of your healing. I have a friend who is a very grounded business woman, but is also experiencing, according to her, the issues associated with ascending into the Fifth Dimension (for those interested, you can read here; for those who aren’t, the particulars don’t really matter). She swears if Youtube didn’t exist, she’d be dead. It has helped her to connect with people who understand what she is going through and has grounded her experience into something she can handle.

If you know my work, you know I’m a big fan of EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), so much so that I create personal videos for my Whole Health Coaching clients. EFT actually helps clearing out old trauma, first and foremost by getting you out of fight or flight in the very moment you are in it. There are tons of great EFT videos on Youtube and free guides to how to do it properly if you throw EFT in the old Google. After you get the hang of it following someone else’s lead, I highly recommend creating your own personal scripts, or allowing whatever comes up to come up during a session.

Journaling is a big one for a lot of people, because you are able to track your patterns over time and catch where you are getting stuck. Plus, it’s an actual processing technique that gets thoughts out of your head and moving through and out of your body.

Eat as healthy as you possibly can afford, and pay attention to the foods your body likes and does not like. We now know that inflammation is linked with depression and other mental issues, and can exacerbate old trauma (or keep us from fully being able to heal it). Good bacteria is essential to a good working gut, so make sure you get fermented foods in your diet on the daily, and take a probiotic pill if you can afford it. Do not underestimate how much eating right and removing toxic substances can help with trauma.

Find a form of movement that helps to process your emotions when they arise. This is why I have danced for so many years – it has long helped me to move through my emotional terrain (even before I knew that’s what was happening!). It’s essential to find something that really impacts you in a positive way, and often this can lead to new communities that can also be supportive in helping to heal trauma.

Let yourself feel the fuck out of it. Cry and wail and cry some more. Go out into the woods and scream. Pound on the earth (it can take it). If you are afraid of where your pain and your anger might lead you if you really feel it, let a friend or family member that you trust know before you do it. If you feel comfortable, let someone witness it. But damn, that pain has to move, and sometimes it has to move in the biggest way possible. Do not judge yourself for this.

So in summary, search out free resources on Youtube, practice EFT, journal, eat an anti-inflammatory and pro-beneficial bacteria diet, and move your body in ways that feel good to you – which often opens up new communities that help support, too – to work with trauma on a budget. Do these things DAILY (this is key to actual long term healing). Shout out your pain! And though it’s not always easy to find, there are often low-cost or free therapeutic resources out there, too. Be sure to reach out when you are hurting, even though that may be the hardest time to do so! 💗