When the Nurses Leave: Rebuilding Your Life After Trauma
The hardest part is not the surgery. It is the quiet months after, when you must choose strength over victimhood and start living your values again.
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After you’ve left the surgery, they wheel you down to recovery so that you can start the rehabilitation of your shredded life.
For the first few days and weeks, there will be a constant influx of people standing at your bedside, checking your vitals and asking if you need any help. They are a soothing presence and vital for your recovery.
This article is written for the bit afterwards, that nobody prepares you for. The time when nobody is there to help you and it all falls on your shoulders to get back up again and live as normal life as you can.
It can be the most lonely and depressing time of your life, but I’m here to try and convince you that it doesn’t have to be that way.
“Fall down seven, get up eight”
(My favourite Japanese proverb and one that I live by)
The Danger of Being the Victim
I get it.
You’ve been dealt a hand that you never wished for and the life you dreamt of living has disappeared like a house of cards.
It happens and no amount of fighting or denying it will change that, so you have no choice but to deal with it and accept it. That’s the first step.
Take the brave step and seek medical therapy to help you come to terms with your current situation, it will help loosen your rigid fixation on the negative situation. For the longest time, I didn’t do this and my mental health spiraled to a point I never want to go back to.
This isn’t somewhere you want to go either because at some point, if you don’t seek help, there’s no exit ramp.
Just knowing you’re not alone and that you have a support network can be key to moving forward, even if it’s just one step at a time.
What does your support network look like for you? Who are you going to reach out to in your darkest hour, when you don’t have time to explain your mental state, instead you just need the other person to ‘just get it’.
PTSD, panic attacks, anxiety and ultimately depression can all be traced back to your traumatic event. They fester and increase in intensity when you do nothing and play the role of the victim.
Have you found yourself continually asking “Why me? Why did this shit happen to me and not to somebody else? It’s not fair!
You may not realize this and I certainly didn’t at the time, but asking ‘Why’ is one of the most disempowering questions you can ask. It feeds the victim mindset and puts you in a place of learned helplessness.
This isn’t where you want to operate from and the solution is easier than you think.
You are going to change the question, which drastically changes the answer.
What is the question you need to ask?
That’s right, you already know the answer. It’s staring you right in the face.
What is the question you need to ask.
You understand this don’t you? Let me help make it clearer by changing the grammar to the question…
What, is the question you need to ask.
See what I did there? I placed the emphasis on the word ‘What’. When you do this and stop asking ‘Why’ instead of ‘What’, the quality of your outcomes improves immeasurably.
Go back to your list of values and look at the top 3 things you have written. Think about the type of person who embodies those values in everyday life. How do they behave and what are they doing?
Can you incorporate some of those behaviors and action into your life today? Bet you can!
The more of these you copy in your life, the quicker and easier it is to live your list of values. Then it’s just a case of being semi-disciplined and repeating them everyday.
It can be that easy, but humans have a very real and annoying ability to make the simple complicated.
Exercise
Take a sheet of paper and split the page in three by drawing two vertical lines to create a 3 column vertical table.
In column 1 write your first value.
In column 2 compile a list of all the behaviors and actions that reflect that value.
In column 3 write a list that corresponds to each of the actions from the previous column.
Today, you are going to incorporate everything from the third column into your day.
Tomorrow, repeat steps 1-4 for the second value on your list.
Repeat step 5 the day after tomorrow.
This is a brilliant exercise to get you started on living your values and creating some enjoyable moments into your day.
Drop me a comment below telling me what your favourite action was and which value it relates to.
Before You Go
If you’re tired of repeating the same lessons the hard way, my Wisdom Journal is a gentle place to think things through properly. It helps you turn real life experience into clear decisions you can trust. If that sounds like something you need, you’ll find it linked below.