What is the Opposite of Trauma

The oppo­site of trau­ma is resilience. Resilience is the abil­i­ty to adapt and piv­ot to your sit­u­a­tion in a healthy way. When adverse child­hood expe­ri­ences hap­pen and a child expe­ri­ences no sup­port or inter­ven­tion, that child is more like­ly to expe­ri­ence that event as a trau­ma. On the con­trary, when the child expe­ri­ences an event and has safe and sup­port­ive adults in their life, then that child is more like­ly to expe­ri­ence resilience.

Con­trary to some beliefs, resilience is a skill avail­able to every­one. You don’t have to be born with resilience and it’s not a char­ac­ter trait. Rather, it is a strat­e­gy that helps peo­ple to thrive. Learn more about resilience and click here. 

How to Be Vulnerable Without Being Needy

Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is one evi­dence that you are prac­tic­ing resilience. How­ev­er, per­haps some­times you go about it in the wrong way. You may have received the crit­i­cism from some­one close to you that “you are needy,” when you are try­ing to be vul­ner­a­ble or to share your expe­ri­ences. Some peo­ple, how­ev­er, do not ful­ly under­stand the dif­fer­ence between vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and need­i­ness. Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is your deci­sion to relin­quish a por­tion of the con­trol you have over your life, and your choice to show peo­ple an authen­tic side of you. Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is about con­nec­tion, rather than main­tain­ing an image. Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is not only a hall­mark of trust but also a valu­able com­po­nent in many rela­tion­ships. Some peo­ple may shy away from vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty due to mes­sages from trust­ed adults (i.e., par­ents, grand­par­ents, or oth­er author­i­ty fig­ures) that it is not safe to be vul­ner­a­ble and that you need to “keep a mask” or “don’t show emo­tions.”

Need­i­ness, on the oth­er hand, is more self-cen­tered as it focus­es exclu­sive­ly on solv­ing your dis­tress. Con­sid­er the fol­low­ing actions:

• Ask­ing your part­ner if every­thing is okay/they still love you/if they are mad
• Hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty being on your own – want­i­ng to be with the oth­er per­son con­stant­ly
• Hav­ing trou­ble mak­ing your own choices—needing some­one to guide you in your deci­sions
• Feel­ing jeal­ous, mad, or sad when your part­ner doesn’t spend time with you

If you’re review­ing this list and real­iz­ing that these actions are cre­at­ing prob­lems in your rela­tion­ship with your part­ner, reach­ing out for ther­a­py is a great place to learn how to make changes. Things you can learn in ther­a­py can include:

• Improved self-esteem
• Improved bound­ary set­ting and bound­ary respect­ing
• Cop­ing skills for man­ag­ing your emo­tions
• Learn­ing bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion strate­gies

Reach out today to start your journey to change.

Individual relationship counseling

Many peo­ple reach out for indi­vid­ual coun­sel­ing for a vari­ety of issues. At Bridge­Hope Fam­i­ly Ther­a­py, I offer indi­vid­ual and rela­tion­ship coun­sel­ing, as well as indi­vid­ual coun­sel­ing focused on rela­tion­ships. Through work­ing with me, you can gain greater self-con­fi­dence and shed the need to be reliant on oth­ers for your val­i­da­tion or assur­ances. You can gain greater self-respect and find that you don’t need to peo­ple please, as you can be con­fi­dent in who you are. If you believe you’ve expe­ri­enced a dif­fi­cult event, series of events, or  rela­tion­ship, reach out to have a con­sul­ta­tion about how I can help you to change for the bet­ter.

Let’s talk about what is going on