Rhonda: Hi and welcome to Becoming Unapologetic. Today, ⁓ this is Rhonda and I want to talk about healing. One of the things that I have noticed over my time working in social services is that people think that other people should be over it, healed through vinyl. And that's not how healing works. If you have been someone who has been in a traumatic situation, whether it be abuse of childhood or abuse of relationship and even getting counseling, you know that healing is something that takes time. And it's very upsetting that You work with some people and they're like my family member or my friend. They don't understand that I'm not over it yet. They think I should be over it and I'm not. And I don't know how to be over it. I don't know what to do because they don't understand. how I feel and I can't explain how I feel and that's very true. You healing it takes as long as it takes and you can't put a time limit on it and there's all different depths and degrees of healing like myself for instance. My ex-husband, the father of my two children, I left him decades ago. was April of 1999, long, long time ago. And it took me a very, very long time to heal. And I had a choice to make every day, and that was to get up, go to work, take care of my kids, do something with my kids, be a mom, be part of their life. not lay in bed and cry and be scared, which truly at the end of the day is what I would have chosen had I felt I had that opportunity. But I didn't have that opportunity, so I had to, I had a mantra that maybe will sound weird to some, but my mantra was, okay, get up, be a normal person. And In my mind, a normal person with someone that could get out of bed, could get their children up and ready for daycare, could go to work, not cry all day while they're at work and not complain. And I felt I didn't want to burden other people with how crazy my thoughts were. 24-7 and you know these are my words about myself. You know I'm not implying them to anybody else this is strictly about me. ⁓ My thoughts were crazy 100 % of the time every day and I had to keep repeating that mantra be normal, be normal, be a normal person, function you know and Be nice to people is what I was having to do. Talk to people, know, just pretend like everything was okay. And, you know, in my head, everything was not okay because inside my head, there was this person screaming all day, every day, because I was afraid. I was afraid of absolutely everything and I just so insecure and just it was a nightmare experience for me that I had to pretend was fine because I made a choice to be there for my children and take care of them and be normal and that lasted for years and It got better over time. I would be able to, you know, not have to say my little mantra before I got out of bed every morning. Maybe it was only a couple of times a week and then it got less and, you know, I would only have some moments of bad time, but every April every April, the anniversary month in my mind, because that's when I left, ⁓ it was bad. That was a very bad month for me for years. And the time that I left was ⁓ the end of April. And so that week of time between like the 20th and the 27th, that was the time that everything just kind of blew up and I left and I was, so that week of April for years I would just break down and start crying. couldn't, just out of nowhere, just break down and start crying. I'm doing laundry and I'd find myself laying over the dryer crying and I would cry at night and everything because I just... that feeling would come back, that you're not safe feeling, that he's gonna kill you feeling, that you're never gonna be okay feeling. It would come back and it would be a living, breathing creature inside of me every April. And as the month progressed up to that week, that looming sense of disaster, would get worse and worse until it finally came to a head during that week of time and it was a bad week for me every year even when I was doing what I thought was good that I had been sleeping better that I hadn't been so paranoid about leaving the house that you know I was doing better I was okay my kids were great everything was going well That wasn't always true. But that's what I pretended because it had been years. Who's going to want to hear that I'm still struggling? It's been years. then it just got to be where April would come. And April would be bad. And it's been decades. It's been decades now. I have to say I don't think that, or I shouldn't say I don't think, I know that that trauma, that experience, no matter how much you work at becoming a strong person and moving past it, because that's a huge decision in itself, is making the choice to try to move past it and... live your life, have a full life and not let that period of time influence all your decisions that you can look at things and say not everybody's like that things will be okay and it's tough and I don't think that it ever truly goes away. I think that that is with you. basically for the rest of your life that trauma is there. It is always back there in the shadows hiding just waiting to see if there's going to be an opportunity to pop out and say hey I'm still here you thought you were doing good but look at me I'm still here and it sounds crazy when you say it because people go to therapy and they work really hard. They take the proper steps. They do what they're supposed to do. They get on with their lives and then something will happen. It's like for me today, my husband, he's wonderful. Wonderful man. And you know, we have a good life together. But He was upset with something on the TV. He was mad. And he said something. He made an off comment to me. And it's not like he was being mean to me. But his off comment triggered something in my brain that led that trauma monster. wake up from the shadows and go, haha, now is the perfect time to strike. She's not prepared and that's what happened is one comment that had absolutely nothing to do with anything hit me differently and made me feel a certain way because it brought up totally unrelated to what he was even talking about, it brought up inside of me these thoughts and feelings from decades ago and I had to leave the house because I was going to start crying and why? It was just, it was a nothing. It was just, in the scheme of things, it was a nothing comment that shouldn't mean anything to anybody. But my little trauma monster woke up and said, ooh, I can come out and play today and I can make you have a really bad day. And it started to. And then I had to catch myself and... have a stern talking to with myself and say, hey, this isn't going to happen. We're not going to let this happen today. You can do this. But it sounds easier than it is because it's really not that easy to put that monster back in the shadows and to know that that monster is still there. All these decades later, that little monster is still lurking around in the shadows waiting to pop back up and turn me into that person again because that person is different than the person I am now and anyone who's been through any type of traumatic experience knows that during that period of time while you're living it you never realize how bad off you really are and then when you finally do you're kind of stuck and you don't know what to do or where to go but you realize you've become this different person you have become this shell of a person afraid to make any type of decisions afraid to be who you are afraid to come or go. You're just afraid, period. And you're afraid all the time. And that's the part that is so hard about trauma is what it does to you. How it changes you so completely. And it takes no time at all, it seems, to change you. You know, it happens slowly, but... It actually happens faster than you think and you have become this totally different person and then once you're away and your circumstances have changed and you start realizing this is what happened to me I don't want to be like this anymore and you start looking at yourself which The absolute worst thing ever is to have to look at yourself in the mirror and take accountability for yourself. You might not have made a conscious decision to act a certain way or do something, but it was something you had to do because when it comes right down to it, you get into survival mode and you have to make a choice stay alive, stay safe. know, survival mode doesn't always mean that someone's gonna actually kill you, but they could hurt you. So it means different things to different people, but you go into the survival mode and you do what you have to do to stay safe. And if it's you and children, that changes things too. Because what you're going to do to keep everybody safe is amazing. What you can do to keep everybody safe. What you will say, what you will do, the person you will become to make sure that everyone is safe. And when you are able to hopefully finally leave that situation, then you have to acknowledge that to yourself that I made some decisions that at the time I had to make. I had to make these decisions because I needed to be safe. I needed to keep my children safe. know, whatever your situation is, you made decisions to keep yourself safe and that is a hard decision because it's It's scary. And then when you're trying to heal from this, you have to, you have to acknowledge it. And you have to learn to say, hey, I did what I had to do to be safe. I did what I had to do. I shouldn't feel guilty about it. I shouldn't have apologized for it. I did what I had to do to be safe. And that's the hard part, not feeling that guilt, not feeling... that remorse. mean it's there, don't get me wrong, it's there, but you can't move forward if you're going to keep yourself weighed down by that because at the end of the day the decision you made is the one that got you to where you are now, a safe place. so that healing first step is having to acknowledge that. Nobody wants to acknowledge that. It stinks to acknowledge that. And it makes it almost more real. Because sometimes when I would think about the life I lived during that period of time, it almost seems like it wasn't real. That it was just this never ending nightmare. that I was going through and I would wake up and it wasn't real, but it was real and it did happen. I was so different during that period of my life. I was so different. I wasn't the person that I was meant to be or the person that I was before the beginning of this. I was not that person. The person I was during that period is a total stranger to me. None of my, none of what I believe was that person. I mean, I don't hurt people, I don't lie to people, but I would have to lie. I couldn't tell people, this is what's happening at my house. I'd have to lie. And I guess the true fact of that is I didn't have to lie. It's what I chose to do because in my mind I did think that the danger if I said anything was very, very real. was a palpable thing that I could feel. And so I would lie about things. ⁓ yeah, I'm fine. No, no, everything's good. ⁓ no, no. You know, I just, life is grand, life is wonderful, you know, and, but those were all lies. It wasn't true. But... At that point in time in my life I felt like it was. I had to say this and I had to act this way because the fear was so very intense and so very real to me. so healing, you have to admit that to yourself. You have to kind of work through that process of I said or did this and this is the reason why. And it's not a fun process at all. And you don't want to do it. I mean, why would anyone want to have to say that about themselves, admit and acknowledge something like that? you know, but thankfully, especially nowadays, trauma is so out in the forefront with mental health and everything that people discuss it and There's amazing therapists everywhere, in person, online, whatever you need, they're there and they can help. But you have to be ready and willing to have them help you. They can't wave a magic wand and make you all better, you actually have to do some work. And that is the part that holds up a lot of people doing the work because in doing the work, you sometimes have to admit and acknowledge things that you don't want to. Or you have to re-talk about something or re-live it. They have so many great tools out now that is different than it was decades ago. But it's still a process. Healing is a process. And that... I think you can heal. think you can feel better for yourself about the trauma that you went through. And I think you can move past. You can acknowledge and move past it. And I think you can work on building up your self-esteem, building up your self-confidence. building up your ability to make a decision, which was my hardest part. you know, to this day, from that trauma experience, I don't like conflict. I hate conflict. Absolutely hate it. It makes my stomach hurt. And I just... for years and years tried to avoid it at all costs. I did not want to have conflict. And conflict's a part of life, unfortunately. ⁓ I didn't deal well with that because it was just too much for me. Conflict was too much for me. I couldn't handle it. And so looking back, because of not wanting to deal with conflict, because I knew that I did not have the ability to... manage conflict for myself with anybody well, I did not handle conflict, I avoided it. And that did not always lead to good decisions. ⁓ I did some stuff halfway because of it, because I didn't want to deal with the conflict part of it. And, you know, that's me. That's... part of what the trauma did to me. And, you know, it's taken a very long time to get to where I can deal with conflict. Now, don't let... Don't let that statement confuse you that I deal with conflict well. I still don't. But I can deal with some conflict and I do a lot better with it. But that is still a huge work in progress for me and probably until my last breath I will be trying to deal with that because... It was so hard for me. That part of the trauma, I just have had so much difficulty trying to get over. And with trauma, that's the thing is everybody has their own and their own way of managing it, getting through it. ⁓ Again, I cannot stress enough how working with a professional therapist and everything can really help with that because you need those coping techniques to deal with yourself sometimes, you know, and you heal. You make better decisions. You make decisions to move forward with your life. I realized that not every man I was going to encounter would be like my ex. Not everyone was like that. I could maybe, someday down the road, meet somebody that would treat me nice. Way down the road I did. I met a really nice man who treats me nice. He always has and he wants to take care of me and gets upset on my behalf sometimes, which good and bad, good and bad, but you know. ⁓ But it's a good relationship. We work well together. But in the back, lurking behind there is still my little monster that... sometimes hear something and says, woohoo, I can make that relate to something, she's not ready for it, so let's have some fun. And that's what happens. You make decisions to go forward, but that trauma doesn't, I find that it doesn't ever completely go away. There's out there that makes it go away. You can make it manageable. You can have a full, productive, happy life. And you can make healthy, happy decisions and everything. But that little trauma monster might still be lurking down there looking for a way to pop its head out and say, did you forget about me? You know? I like to say yes, I forgot about you. I forgot about you for a long time, but it's always there. I mean that's something that is in the back of my head pretty much all the time. And that's why for me it's so rewarding. to work with someone that has had an experience and they might be working with a therapist but they just need that little extra help and being able to work with them and just help them see the positivity of them and the strength that they have and helping them become more aware of how great they are and how what you're doing in therapy, this hard work is showing over here so keep doing this. know, just helping be that extra person that says, hey, you've got this, you're doing a great job. And it makes a difference. It makes me feel good because I love being able to do that. I love looking at someone and seeing their strength. and being able to say, I see you, I probably see what you don't see because I'm listening to you and I'm seeing you. And it's a great feeling to be able to do that because when you've experienced something very traumatic in your life, and it could have happened one time, but it was traumatic, it could be something that happened for your whole lifetime just a pattern of trauma for you or a couple of years you were in a bad situation there's no saying that one trauma is worse than the other trauma because it's not there's no you don't compare traumas you know how a person responds to it how they heal from it That's something you can emphasize with, but you can't say, totally understand, because I could meet someone that's been in a domestic violence relationship like I have, and we both left. But how I deal with it and how that person deals with it is different. Neither is right or wrong. how that person deals with it. my experience, I can understand where that person is coming from, my experience is neither better nor worse than that person's experience because you don't compare. If you meet someone like one of my best friends, ⁓ I got out, thankfully, with some help from her and another friend. ⁓ I got out and I got moved out of state and everything and kept in touch with her and a couple months later, she got out. And so we would talk to each other about the things going on in our lives and everything and We were each experiencing the same feelings. You know, how to move forward, what to do next. We have little kids. How do we handle this? And we would talk about it, but it was never in a, let's compare whose situation was worse, because who does that? It's not a competition. Nobody should ever want. to try to say my situation was worse because it's not. it belittles the other person. Everyone experiences something and they deal with it the way they need to deal with it. And you can't put a time limit on healing. Even if you don't, you're trying to be a good person, a good friend and you're like, hey, are you still moping around because of that? what because it's been a couple months and someone's still sad and having a hard time functioning so what it doesn't matter you can't put a time limit on that you can try to say hey would you like to do something fun right now just kind of get a different headspace for a little bit you know maybe that would be helpful to them but telling them that their time is up, they should be all better. Hey, 1999, that's when I got out. And here it is, 2026, and I still have a little trauma monster that's hiding in the shadows. It doesn't appear very often, but it popped up today. And... I didn't know it was going to pop up and I was certainly not happy to see it, that's for sure. But it's what happened and it's been a very, very long time. And I do have a very good life, a very happy life and things are good. So why is that little trauma monster still hanging around? Because that's what they do. It never... completely goes away and it can jump out at any time and blindside you and just say, hey, I'm still here, don't forget about me. And I want to forget about it. I do, I don't spend my days thinking about it and I try to react well to situations, I still try to avoid conflict. you know. I'll stand up for myself now, which is different than I used to be, but I don't really want to get into a big argument about anything because I can't handle it. It's like I handle conflict in my home with my husband by not talking to him for like three days. Yep, I'm just upset and I just choose not to have a conversation with him. I'm polite. But I don't want to talk to him. I don't want to be around him. And he knows that about me and he'll just wait. He'll wait till I feel ready and I'll go to him and say, can we talk? And then I don't feel like it's going to be a conflict or anything because I'm calm. But I still got the crazy going in my head sometimes. And it takes me on some wild path you know to this day that little trauma monster will be working underneath things and I'll have crazy thoughts sometimes just angry and for no reason just full of rage and it's just that little trauma monster trying to come out and get some fresh air and I don't let it happen. I have pretty good control over things these days but it's taken a very very long time to get to this place in my life and I was just thinking about that today when a little trauma monster popped up and I'm like you know I just never it never really goes away. There's lots of people that are living with this. have full happy lives and every so often something pops up and says, not today. Remember me? So I just wanted to kind of talk a minute about healing and how there is no time limit on it. You can't put a time on healing. You can learn to adjust the way that you think after an experience and understand that you survived. That's the foremost thing that you can understand is that you survived. And you can stop feeling like you need to apologize for that period of time in your life. You go through trauma and sometimes you have to act a certain way or say certain things just to keep yourself from getting hurt later or keep your children safe. And it doesn't make it feel right, but did you do what you had to do in that moment of time to be safe and keep everyone you cared about safe? Yes. So you don't need to apologize for that. You need to just understand that unfortunately that's what you had to do. It took me a really long time to understand that who I was then was a person just fighting to survive, just fighting to keep her head above water and that I had to... act a certain way in front of people to keep myself safe. couldn't say certain things. I had to go along with things sometimes that I knew I didn't like to keep myself and my kids safe. And those are decisions I made back then. to get where I am today and it took me a long time to realize that it's okay. didn't hurt anyone. didn't intentionally hurt anyone. I didn't kill anybody. I didn't rob any stores. That could have been what happened to me, you know, because things were getting pretty bad. So who knows what would have happened if I'd even still be here today. But I made these decisions and I had to learn that it was okay that I made them. But I don't need to feel guilty about surviving. I have tried to live my life better since then. I've tried to be a good person and I have to be okay with that. like I said, my kids, they're amazing. They have families of their own. Amazing grandchildren I have. Three. I have three. And they are wonderful. I take a lot of pride in them because they're amazing young women who have accomplished great things and they'll continue to do so, I hope. But we just do what we have to do and we have to learn to forgive ourselves for that period of time and we have to learn that it's okay. It's okay that... we went through it, it's okay, we survived through it, what did we learn from it, how can we be different, how do we want to be different, and how do we want to change our own lives, and I have a great life where I work in social services, which doesn't sound thrilling, but I've worked as a victim advocate, and I've worked in child welfare, and it's amazing to work with people, these families and individuals that I can connect with and have an idea of how they're feeling. Not exactly because it's all different, but at least I have some type of understanding and be like, hey, talk to me, talk to me about this. we can work it out and we do and it's great and I love it and I'm thankful and blessed to be able to do this and so that's why I want to talk about healing today because that little monster snuck up and kind of threw me out of sorts for a little while today but I'm not going to apologize for it because it happens and healing takes time even if it keeps popping up here and there. takes time. And I hope we can all be understanding about it. And I hope if there's anything I can ever do to help someone, you know, walk that healing path and help them see how amazing they are. I hope you'll check out my website, www.u-2-o.net. That's my life coach website, U2.0, because I think everybody's perfect the way they are. And sometimes you just need to enhance a little bit of that strength you already have or acknowledge and recognize that strength you already have. So thank you for listening to my podcast. Please, if you have any questions or comments, I would love to have some feedback and maybe you want to talk with me on a show that would be fabulous and we could have a fun, interesting conversation. So let me know. Thank you again for listening and start becoming unapologetic. Thank you.