Dealing With the Trauma You Caused
What to do when you've been the villain in someone else's story
Personal growth is always difficult when you get to the bits about trauma and healing. It becomes even more challenging when you’re forced to confront parts of yourself that have caused damage above and beyond yourself. It becomes even more challenging still, when you really need to think seriously about the pain and harm you may have caused to loved ones.
As many of you know, I’m a keen advocate of self-awareness when it comes to optimisation. It simply isn’t enough to want to change - self-awareness requires you to be aware of the factors and habits that are actively preventing you from changing. Sometimes it’s not environment. The bitter truth is, sometimes we’re culpable and choosing not to see the parts of ourselves that are stunting our growth.
I say this as someone who is flawed, acutely aware of my character flaws, and trying to do the work every day to be a better person. Before committing to this ‘self-growth’ and ‘self-awareness’ journey, I was a cold, disparaging and distanced ‘intellectual’. By virtue of being in many spaces which emphasised being ‘smart’ and competing to see who could win debates without being ‘emotional’, it became harder to demonstrate compassion and empathy. Such is the case for many social settings and environments we occupy - in order to get to the ‘top’, we are taught that we must be mean, cruel, cutting, harsh, biting, straightforward.
It was only when I started realising how many of my relationships felt as though they were lacking, and the reality of loneliness set in, that I decided that something was up. The ‘top’ was a little breezy - there were few people around to keep the heat around.
Whether you have been the class bully, caused harm in your relationships, are carrying the guilt of times past, or are simply trying to be a more compassionate, empathetic human - here’s the scoop for you on how to achieve just that.
Key Summary (TL/DR):
Own your wrongdoing
Eliminate your enablers
Establish your new normal and build micro-habits
Reach out to the afflicted
Own your wrongdoings
Imagine this. You’ve been given the location of a restaurant you really want to check out, or perhaps you’re trying to do a really cool or fun activity. When you plug the location into Google Maps, or whatever app you use to give you some directions, you’re also required to put in some information on your current position.
It is not possible to figure out the directions to where you want to go, without information on where you currently are at.
So many of us attempt to go 100 miles per hour to a chosen destination, without first taking stock of where you currently are at. If you’re attempting to improve your character, you need to start with owning the traits about yourself that you’d like to change.
It might involve writing down a list, or simply saying it out loud. As a writer, I’m already pretty biased towards writing as a mechanism for expressing yourself, but of course - whatever mechanism you choose. The most important thing, is ensuring you own where you are at right now.
Eliminate your enablers
Whilst you may have some traits or behaviours you may not like, enablers add fuel to the fire. Perhaps your sharp mouth is activated much more when you drink excessively. Perhaps you’re more likely to be mean when hanging out with other folks who aren’t the kindest. Maybe it’s harder for you to show empathy when you’re in the heat of deadlines or you’re particularly stressed.
Monitoring your environment and figuring out what are potential triggers for some of your bad behaviours are important. I’d also recommend engaging with some of your closest friends and loved ones, in order to find out if there are particular times or instances where your bad behaviour has manifested strongly. Sometimes we need someone who is close enough to us, but is slightly removed from our perspective, to shed some insight on our tendencies and enablers.
Establish your new normal and build micro-habits
What kind of person do you want to be?
Not what do you want to achieve. It can be so tempting to focus on what we want to achieve for ourselves - the tangible markers of success. But in terms of emotional intelligence, emotional maturity, and character, who do you want to be? Personally, some of the traits I wrote down for myself included:
I want to be compassionate and empathetic towards people around me.
I want to be slow to anger and measured in the face of trouble.
I want to be kind and considerate in a world severely lacking this.
The list goes on - I have roughly 5-6 statements which articulate the kind of character I’d like to have. Next to each statement, I have a few micro-habits which help me to demonstrate that element of my character. For example:
I want to be slow to anger and measured in the face of trouble: Whenever I feel myself getting angry when speaking to someone, I count to ten in my head, before proceeding to speak. If I am still really angry after counting, I ask the other person to give me either a few moments to collect myself, or inform them I am not in the right emotional state to engage with this right now.
It works really well when you have practical ways to implement character changes. As a result of my past trauma, I was prone to stonewalling, or completely freezing down when I could feel myself getting upset. The effect was icy communication, if any at all. Most people (shock horror) don’t respond well to that, and the effect of engaging with someone prone to consistent stonewalling can cause further damage to one’s self-esteem, wellbeing and happiness.
I’ve found striving to give myself processing time, whilst over-communicating, has been a great way to overcome this. I’d also encourage you to think about what ways in which you are prone to process negative emotions, and how you can work against the potentially negative impacts they can have.
Reach out to the afflicted
This is hard, and may not be possible in every instance, but where it is - reach out to the afflicted. Working on yourself is all fine and dandy, but sometimes when the impact of your previous poor actions has hurt someone, you could have caused damage, pain or trauma beyond those seemingly poor interactions. Many people often struggle to move on, because they haven’t received any closure, apology or attempt at reconciliation that they feel they deserve.
It may be as simple as calling a (dare I say it) ex, former friend, former work colleague, sibling - whoever you didn’t really show out as your best for, and apologising. It may be sending a message, or trying to support someone in their journey towards healing. Don’t expect them to welcome you back or even acknowledge you positively - you aren’t entitled to a positive response. But it’s the right thing to do, regardless of the outcome.
No-one likes to hear that they are, or have been, a ‘bad person’. Even when we consider our bad qualities, we love being assured that we are ‘good people who do bad things’. I think it is more powerful to be neutral - to acknowledge that we are people who choose whether to do bad or good things. It means we have the power to transform ourselves.
Let’s be people who choose to be good, and do good things.
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That’s all from me this week folks. As ever, if you found this useful, feel free to share Optimise Me with a friend.
Let’s all become better humans.
-RK
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Beautifully written! I really resonated with this Reneé