When you have experienced a traumatic incident or very stressful period in your life, there will always be some people who will say…” Why didn’t you do this?” or, “You should have looked before you opened that”.
These are the should haves and could haves that people often say to you and in the moment can feel very hurtful, critical and judgmental. For them, it is often the only helpful thing that they can say, as they were not in your situation and at that moment your body was being flooded with chemicals and hormones from your brain that gets sent there to keep the body safe in a Fight/Flight or Freeze response. We don’t know how we will react and hoping there will not be a next time, the next time may be different.
In my personal experience with trauma, I took peoples should haves very personally. I did take me some time to realise that they were not saying this out of malice. I was not in a good place myself initially, as I was taking a lot of the should haves personally.
I should not have opened the door to let the dog in.
I should not have screamed.
If I did things differently then perhaps my Husband would not have been shot.
It took me many years of healing to be able to talk about this.
Are you struggling to get over a traumatic event or big stressful time in your life? It may be big or small, but regardless of the size, it can become like a snowball on a hill, and just keep getting bigger if we don’t clear it.
I invite you to connect with me to explore the ways that I can assist you in the kindest way to work through these events.
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