Trauma and PTSD are funny, strange and difficult things.

They have the capacity to colour or infuse every experience with a shady kind of feeling. That's tough. And it can render normally joyful experiences sad, or depressing or clouded in fog of difficulty.

But it doesn't have to be that way forever.

If you learn to change your attitude, you learn to speed up your healing or coaching process.

Making trauma a new kind of friend

So on that note, I'm inviting you to hark back to earlier times in your life. 

Try and give it a go...

Do you have any special memories of childhood?

Do you have any memories of childhood holidays?

Maybe you remember the excitement as you packed the car and left whatever difficulties were associated with your family home, pulled out of the driveway and took to the highways with a sense of adventure and new experience? 

And maybe in that moment you found a way to leave your trauma worries behind and focus on a jewel moment in your otherwise difficult life?

I certainly have these memories and moments...

When I was young we would sometimes head down to a little coastal village just south of the city. We'd drive south, through sprawling suburbs, and then we'd hit the bushland of the national park area, and make our way along the road hugging the coastal cliffs, as seagulls gathered on headlands and the white crest of choppy waves frothed out in the deep ocean stretching beside us.

Finally we'd come across the seam of tiny dotted coastal village towns, populated by the men and women and children of the mining communities who worked in the coal mines and cutouts along the steep escarpments between Sydney and Wollongong. I'd watch from the car window, a little urchin-like tomboy in tan shorts and worn tee-shirt and bowl cut hair, a little unkempt and feeling as if I never fit in anywhere, and I'd dream.

And driving past the old coal mine that was carved into the steep coastal escarpment, I imagined the miners - the fathers and sons of those coastal families -  down in the tunnels and the labyrinthine coal seam, working away and singing together, or struggling, black with soot like a scene out of How Green Was My Valley.

I'd do something else too. 

On those drives past those towns, I'd also imagine they weren't sourcing black coal, but were digging through the dirt and rock to find the shine and glint of diamonds.

Jewels.

Diamonds the size of fists, buried in the sharp and dirty and dusty and wet and pitch rock-face.

Diamonds that would catch and glimmer and reflect back the headlamp light, to the dark toiling miners. And the light would dance a thousand refractions against the shaft and tunnel walls.

Healing from past adversity and trauma - and moving beyond it to a new kind of life - is also a  a bit like that. 

You find and claim the diamond.

PTSD symptoms 

This way of thinking - as a principle and practice -  is an important one. 

It's all about mining from adversity. It's about developing an attitude and system of thinking that encourages you to view your PTSD symptoms in a new light. 

You can view and experience them as painful episodes and ongoing interruptions or stressors, or you can learn to view them as a portal and signal for deeper change.

This is a step by step strategy I teach you in the coaching programme and one to one coaching sessions.

Shifting into this more embracing mindset can be a challenge at first and it requires certain ingredients if it is to be maintained.

But if you learn to do so you can experience the following benefits:

• compounded trauma symptoms decrease
• greater calm in relation to experiencing ptsd
• increased acceptance
• reduced shame and guilt about symptoms
• greater communal connection'
• increased self-love

This is both my personal experience and the experience of many clients who've worked with my strategies.

How to mine adverse childhood experiences

It's certainly not a good idea to remain bound down by your adverse childhood experiences. As a coach, I help your resolve these and then we move beyond - into the evolutionary stage of your life creation.

Yes, you may need to revisit your adverse childhood experiences here and there.

It's important you learn how to work through these experiences so you frame them in a new light that finds grace and meaning in them. 

The journey is yours alone but it's made so much easier when you work with someone who can take you through a life process beyond these adverse historical experiences so you thrive.

The goals are:

• Life creation
• Life design
• Increased self-acceptance
• A new sense of peace
• Harmony 
• A more balanced life
• Increased health
• Increased financial security
• The ability to trust

You want to move beyond your past.

You don't want to live in your historical memories, but you may need to touch upon them here and there and then learn HOW TO REMOVE YOURSELF FROM THEM if you need to.

Learn how to touch upon them and then let them go, without abandoning yourself or your profound history in the process.

When you learn how to do this, you can really make strides forward beyond a life of feeling low, depression and difficulty. 

It's also important to work in the following strategies to your life as best you can, no matter where you are at right here right now:

• healthy eating
• good sleep patterns (trauma survivors do best with regular and routined sleep habits)
• journalling
• support from a community
• support from a coach

These fundamentals will give your life a sense of foundation and a platform that is well structured and sturdy for the life design processes that lie ahead.

And that is exciting.

Mine your life for beautiful diamonds. 

Love from Camilla xx

If you'd like to move beyond your trauma once and for all, reach out to [email protected] or book in for your free discovery call here