How gratitude can help with trauma recovery

I've dealt with trauma for a long time and let me tell you it is something that can really screw with your mind. It is like an organism, a parasite that clings to your thoughts trying to suck the life and happiness out of it.

But there is something I'm testing, a principle found in the Bible. I believe that the Bible is not law but it contains universal laws and principles that we can use to help us better understand ourselves, each other, God, and the world around us.

Do you recall that in the book of Psalms, there are numerous mentions to the Israelites to remember God's wondrous works.

There's a psychology hack behind that concept. Just like us, they had a sequence of events that could have been traumatic for them. Things like having the Egyptians army pursue you relentlessly is not an easy happening. But here's what I have observed. If they were to apply this concept of remembering the wondrous works which are the miracles, then they could help their minds reprocess the event to be one that doesn't stir fright or flight mode in them.

By rehashing it through the lens of seeing how the hand of God and the Universe helped them, which is gratitude, then their nervous system would be relaxed.

It really does make sense because when traumatic things happen in our lives, though the event has passed, our subconscious minds which cannot separate time and space, feels as though it is happening over and over when we recall it with the raw emotions of the moment. This then stimulates the body to go into defense and long term defense causes physiological problems. In other words stress causes sickness.

So by rewiring the subconscious to recapture the moment from gratitude, we disarm the alarm system from threat to be in mental peace which allows our body to heal.

I'm sharing this because I'm the kind of person who needs reasoning to believe something: it has to make sense to me. I really do hope this helps you as it has helped me to process why gratitude is beneficial, why reprocessing is helpful and how the subconscious plays a role in your healing.