Trauma Survival Toolkit #4: Coping skills for cptsD | Healing is the Best Revenge Episode #22 transcript
THIS IS AN EPISODE TRANSCRIPT OF MY PODCAST, HEALING IS THE BEST REVENGE, EPISODE 22 ON “trauma survival toolkit #4: coping skills for cptsd.”
Welcome to Healing is the Best Revenge, a podcast for survivors and the folks who love us, where we discuss the politics of survivorship, healing, and self plus community care. This is a space where we honor the messy and complex realities of healing from trauma, rejecting pedestals and perfectionism along the way.
Hi, I’m your host, Karina Hagelin. I’m a survivor with complex post-traumatic stress disorder AKA C-PTSD and, I get it. I’m here to offer affirmations, pep talks, encouragement, support, and conversations about being in the messy murky middle of healing from trauma. Wherever you’re at in your journey, I believe in you. And I believe you. Welcome to Healing is the Best Revenge, sweet friend.
Hi sweet friend, it’s Karina. Welcome to the 22nd episode of Healing is the Best Revenge!
How have you been? I just got home from an infusion for my lupus. I get infusions of my lupus medication, Saphnelo, administered via IV at the hospital every 4 weeks. I’ve been doing immunosuppressive therapy like this for 5+ years at this point. I have medical trauma, so this can be pretty difficult for me, but I’m grateful for amazing workers at the infusion clinic, like Anne and Alissa. They make doing this treatment a lot easier and less scary for me.
The first edition of the Survivor Affirmation Deck have been mailed out. I’m so excited to hear what folks think of it. I’m also gearing up to launch the Kickstarter for the second edition on February 1st. I’ll have 30 days to raise $2,000 by selling preorders. If the project meets my funding goal, the decks will be printed and if not, folks won’t be charged for their pledges.
For today’s episode, I want to share a few skills from my trauma survival toolkit. I’ve done a few of these episodes already. If you want to learn about additional coping skills for CPTSD, check out episodes 8, 9, and 10. The skills I’m covering today include reaching out, visualization, and positive self-talk.
Reaching out
The first skill I want to talk about is reaching out.
Calling or texting my friends, family, and folks I’m in community with to just talk has been really supportive for me. Building community and nurturing my relationships has helped me foster a sense of connection and community that I’ve desperately needed, especially when I’m feeling isolated, detached, and alone.
Reaching out when we’re struggling can be so, so, so, hard. I want to acknowledge and honor that. As a survivor, I’ve never found self-care easy. Just eating, staying hydrated, and sleeping are often daily challenges I have to face and take a lot of my energy to do. Reaching out is hard and/also it can be a super supportive practice if we’re patient with it.
I’ve learned that when my first impulse or thought is to isolate myself, I should probably seek connection instead. Over the years, I’ve been able to do this repeatedly. And sometimes when I reach out, nobody reaches back. Sometimes when I reach out, people aren’t able to offer me the care and support I need. And/also after doing this for over a decade, I still think it’s worth it. I 100% believe this is a worthy skill to build.
Visualization
The second skill I want to talk about is visualization.
Visualization can take many forms. My favorite visualization exercise is to imagine myself today, standing by my younger self, my self who was really, really, really struggling, who felt isolated and alone and so hopeless. I imagine myself surrounding them with golden, protective light and telling them that they’re not alone and that they’re going to build such a beautiful life for themselves. I also imagine my future self standing by me right now, surrounding me with golden, protective light and reminding me that I’m not alone and that things are going to get so much better than I could ever imagine. This really helps me a lot. Think about who or what you would call on to protect you and try to visualize them with you, protecting and watching over you. You are never alone, sweet friend.
Positive self-talk
The third skill I want to talk about is positive self-talk.
I know that for some of us, positive self-talk might feel really cheesy. Like, how the fuck could positive self-talk help me when I’m feeling like THIS? I remind myself it’s a practice that I’ll build upon and strengthen over time; that it’s a skill, not a band-aid.
I talk to myself with the gentleness and care that I would talk to a child or a friend with. I work to reframe critical thoughts and words into more gentle, compassionate, and caring ones. This has taken a long time and it’s also been a total gamechanger for me. It’s not always easy but in my experience, it has been worth it. Being cruel to ourselves doesn’t help us heal. Ask yourself: would I talk this way to my best friend? If your answer is “Hell no,” then I want to ask you not to talk to yourself that way either. You deserve the same care and compassion you offer others. You’re worthy of love, sweet friend. So worthy.
That’s all I’ve got for you today. As I mentioned earlier, you can check out episodes 8, 9, and 10 for other parts of the trauma survival toolkit series where I share my favorite coping skills for CPTSD. I also offer these in zine format as the Surviving to Thriving series. I’ll leave a link to my shop in the show notes.
Before I go, I want ask for your help in getting this podcast to more folks who need it.
I’d love it if you could share a screenshot of this podcast to Instagram and tag me in it, subscribe to or follow this show, leave me a five star review or rating, and/or share this show with a loved one. I really want this podcast to reach more people who need it. Thanks for your support!
Okay, sweet friend. As always, I believe you and I’ll talk to you soon. Bye for now!
