I recently listened to a podcast on how everyone around the world is faced with a new reality of being totally unsure of what the future will bring. If you are like me, you like to make a plan and then think through all the steps on how to execute the plan. This helps us feel safe and secure as we build meaning and purpose in our lives.
Having a predictable plan is also fundamentally essential to complex trauma survivors. When we have had experiences or childhoods where there was no sense of predictability or control, we crave predictability and control. As adults, we don’t typically like surprises or unpredictability because it makes us feel unsafe.
This is one reason, among many, that the last two years have been so incredibly hard for so many people. All plans and predictions went out the window and we are forced to take life one day at a time. With no planning or predictability, we not only lost our vision of the future, but also the routine with which we live life day to day. For complex trauma survivors, this can trigger us to spiral into self doubt, blame, isolation, fear, anxiety, depression, and rip open the chronic sense of loss and emptiness.
If you have been experiencing these feelings, then please know you are not alone.
I don’t know anyone right now who is fully ok and thriving. Some of us can manage the unpredictability of the future better than others, but there is a pervasive sense of fear in planning or having expectation for the future because no one wants to feel the loss if it doesn’t or can’t happen.
We are all now grappling with “what now”. Do we go back to the office full-time, part-time, hybrid, neither, or find something different to do all together? Everything feels a little pointless because we are different. We are changed people and we cannot go back to the way things were.
What I loved about this podcast is that it normalized that this is something we are all feeling, worldwide. I also loved that the researcher gave us language for the experience of having a purpose, but having no vision. I do have a purpose, than hasn’t changed. I am here to help people. I am here to be an advocate for the broken hearted. Those who have been broken hearted by life and want to heal, recover, and forge a new path of freedom and abundance.
What I am struggling with, like everyone else, is vision. What does that look like? Just like you, I am having to re-think, and re-create a vision for how I work, how I live, and how to best connect to people in meaningful and life changing ways.
One thing trauma survivors often feel is different. “It must be me”, is a very common phrase to think and feel. Please know it is not you. We are all not ok. We are all changed and we all have no idea what the future looks like. Everything is different now.
What is most important right now is finding connection and safety within yourself. Ground yourself in the truth that you are enough just the way you are, right where you are. Allow time and space for meaningful connection with yourself. Commit to finding joy and gratitude in life right now, even if it is only in the small seemingly insignificant things. Take deep breaths and allow yourself to just be. Be present with the day to day. Be present with the people in your life, and get to know the new you emerging from the life changing last two and a half years.
You have new strengths, new tolerances, new ideas. Your new visions, goals and dreams will emerge as you rest in what is right now.
We are tempted to create a vision for what we should be or want. We are tempted to create a vision for what we know others see as successful or meaningful. If you hijack the process of allowing your true, authentic needs and wants to emerge, then you will be disappointed with the hijacked version you manipulate into existence. I used to be so guilty of this and sometimes still am. I am good at manipulating outcomes I think I need and want or that I know others see as good or successful. I am disappointed every single time. We have been through too much. Don’t do this.
Now is the time to rest. Rest in the knowledge you are enough. Rest in the meaningful connections and friendships you have with yourself and the people around you, and allow the vision to reveal itself as you become more and more comfortable with who you are now.
To listen to this amazing podcast, go here.
To book a consultation with me on how to rest in what is now while you wait for what is next, go here.
You are so courageous and so loved.
Janice
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