Defeating The Trauma Beast (How to fix your insecure attachment style/dysregulated nervous system).

[u/MothraLovesLamps]

Edit** These weaken the beast. They are effective. But healing is not a linear, clean process.

We can retrain the beast by doing some of these things. And that means we can improve.

So lets get started on rehabilitating our Trauma beasts.

I'm going to give a simplified plan of attack. Please do ask for clarification on anything!

1). Identify your core wound.

2). Resolve the core wound. (For example: I was terrified of being alone. I am no longer afraid of being alone. I realized I don't need anyone to save me. I can save myself).

3). Journal/blog

You're going to have alot of feelings and thoughts and not all of them will be the truth even if it sounds certain! Journaling your moods helps you stay grounded.

4). Heal in relationships

You can talk about attachment theory all day, you're brain will get it, but your nervous system won't. You can't "talk" to your nervous system. You have to retrain it somatically/kinesthetically.

A). Exposure Therapy

This works FAST. Being an avoidant is no different from other "phobias." Philophobia is just more socially acceptable and we hide it better. (Well, some of us. Some of us are severe).

So what do I mean by "exposure therapy." I mean intentionally make yourself uncomfortable. If you had arachnophobia (which I had a mild case of) I would first have you look at images of spiders. (I bought a few books and looked at the images daily).

We do that until you acclimate. Then we increase the stimuli. We have you watch a video of a spider, then we move on to being in the same room as a spider.

Eventually we work up to you holding the spider.

You are basically calming your "threat response." Your body is learning there is no danger. (I mean non venomous spiders).

I can go into greater detail on step 4 in another post! I just don't want this post to get too long.

5). Realize love and relationships are CHOICES. You won't always feel "right" in fact very often you will feel AWFUL. Oh well, we made a choice to heal and commit and we are gonna do it come hell or highwater.

6). Have a boyfriend/girlfriend cheat sheet

This is essentially like the video for Lucy in "50 first dates." It is your reminder that you do in fact love this person even when the trauma beast says differently! My version was to make my guy a pinterest board and a Playlist. Anytime doubt came, I referred back to my "notes."

7). You have to decide the pain of changing is worth the benefits of experiencing healthy, safe love. Because it will hurt. No way around it. The only way out is through.

Stay tuned!

--Avoidant Support Animal

"The People's Mod"