Learning to hold our past traumas with hope, curiosity, openness, kindness and self compassion

One of the key skills for folks with trauma history is to learn the skills of self compassion and kindness, and to hold our past traumas with those feelings of self compassion and kindness.

If one holds our past trauma history, memories and feelings with shame, guilt, not good enough, anger, fear, injustice, hate, sadness etc, then those feelings will tend stick with us again and again if triggered. This is of course not good for our biological, psychological or social health in the long term.

These uncomfortable feelings can also lead to a lot of avoidance by both the patients and healthcare giver when exploring and facing these issues. It’s not easy and one needs to be careful around “retraumatizing”, AND at the same time, not avoiding it either. A safe space is required, and unconditional positive regard with curiosity, openness, hope and compassion is that safe space.

So how can we teach curiosity, openness, hope and self compassion?

By cultivating it ourselves as Family Doctors I suspect.