How I Became Unstuck After Trauma

For years, my world was a renovated attic with poor airflow — a tower in the sky. My escape: a single, thirty-by-sixty-inch window. It was stifling in summer, freezing in winter, and tolerable only briefly. I never really minded.

Outside work, grocery trips, and library visits, I spent every day there. It was my safe space. The world I needed existed between a novel’s covers. This is where I stayed stagnant for two years —separated and disconnected. I  only daydreamed of leaving – until I finally did.

I didn’t realize then that stagnation was trauma-induced.

If anyone had asked me a year ago if I would move to the second-largest city in the United States, I would’ve laughed. I couldn’t do it for this reason or that, too expensive or too something. But none of these explanations meant anything because they were true.

I lived comfortably in limbo, in my own liminal space, because at least I was somewhere familiar. 

Even if your familiar is chaotic and unhealthy, predictable chaos is hard to leave. Anything outside that chaos was the opposite, leaving me feeling uncertain about my ability to manage it.

If you’re in the middle of this and want to change but feel like you can’t, I want to share advice that helped me. Understanding the barriers and uncertainties I faced might help, too. I understand how difficult and nerve-wracking it is to make such significant changes. But it is possible, and these are three ways I beat my brain and conquered.

1. Don’t wait for the people who hurt you to apologize. 

We didn’t hurt ourselves, and maybe in the experience you had, nobody hurt you, either. In any case, we often get trapped in a cycle of wanting someone or something to take accountability and help us make it better. We want them to point at us, admit what they did, and make it right. 

Sadly, this rarely happens. I had to stop pointing an accusatory finger. What happened did happen, and it wasn’t my fault. But if I didn’t take responsibility for my lack of forward movement, I would be like the people who contributed to these behaviors.

2. Refuse to pity yourself. 

When you exist in a liminal space, you have a sense of self-pity. But you have to work through, disown, and discard it. Pity is heavy, and it is justified. But when I decided to leave my tower, there would be no one at the bottom yelling at me to throw my hair over. I was on my own. If I were going to get to where I needed to be, I’d have to travel light.

3. Give up the illusion of control. 

I have always wanted to be absolutely sure of the results, a desire stemming from my lack of control over my own life. We need to harness control to feel like we aren’t spiraling once outside the comfortable chaos. But this behavior doesn’t help. Instead of embracing it, I pushed it away. Now, I allow myself the space to have healthy concerns instead of this need for control.

This was by far the best thing I could have done. It allowed me free space to navigate my new life. Over time, I understood just how much control I actually had and was surprised to realize how little I actually needed it.

I wanted more for myself. You probably feel the same.

The motivation to change came from the necessity to live the life I saw myself in. I knew that I was the only person who could give it to me. The moment I left, I never stopped asking, “Do you want to grow, or do you want to stay the same?” I knew the answer every time, and as I pushed on, it became easier to answer. 

I showed up for myself, and it made all the difference. You’re more than capable of this, too.

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