Your most difficult experiences can be your greatest teachers. According to research, there are at least five ways that you will grow after trauma, challenging experiences with shame, depression or anxiety, or from addiction recovery.
- Appreciation and gratitude for your life, your work, your relationships and your experiences.
- Relationships with others, a deeper sense of connection and feeling less alone, and an ability to compassionately support other people.
- Seeing new possibilities in life, being more open to your opportunities, more curious about your experience. This could even include gaining a new sense of valuing your life and being grounded in what matters to you.
- New or enhanced personal strengths and skills that could include vulnerability, empathy, compassion and self-compassion, courage.
- Spiritual change, an expanded sense of the world around you and within you. Spiritual change is not limited to a religious commitment, but is about learning to live more in the present, knowing that there is a part of you that is always there even when you have good emotions, good situations and good behaviors… and also when you have bad emotions and feel down, when your life is not going well and when you are getting caught up in your anxiety and behaviors that are not your preferred life.
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This is where I am supposed to write some serious stuff about myself. But in reality, I just hope that you enjoy what I write. I hope it makes you smile, makes you feel a little lighter and enjoy your life a little more. Nope, it’s not therapy, but I am sharing the good stuff… the stuff that helps me.
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Keep it Real
Photo by Adam Skowronski
