As I stated in a previous blog post help from grooming victims online is almost nonexistent. In this blog post I will cover some of the things that you can do to help overcome grooming and also some tips to help you identify the specific areas that your groomer targeted, and you can work on.
I am also creating a guided journal with each area broken out in multiple exercises available soon on Amazon to help you work through some of these steps if you want a full guided experience and don't want to attack everything on your own.
This one sounds easy but can be hard learning to love yourself all of yourself. A lot of times groomers can make you feel like no one can really love you or love you the way they could. To the logical brain we should know this isn't true but groomers often use wounds we don't even realize we had to make us feel this way. Learning to love yourself can be achieved in a few ways.
1) Daily affirmations- Yes this can seem stupid at first especially if you look at yourself and tell yourself them every morning. They can be a very important tool in reprograming your brain against the programing your groomer installed. I have covered some examples of this in this blog post
2) Create a daily routine for yourself only- this can include taking a bath, reading a book, for women this can also be putting on your favorite pajamas or using makeup for yourself.
3) Treat yourself occasionally this can be with going out and doing something you really want to do or getting yourself a new thing, you have been really wanting.
4) Learning to forgive yourself This one should seem obvious but often when we carry feelings of shame or guilt after being a victim of grooming and this one can be really hard.
5) Try journaling out your experience- let your feelings flow and all of your feelings, the good, the bad times. Its important to let all of your feelings out and don't second guess what you feel. If you want to write it write it. This is for you and you only.
6) Stop negative self-talk. This one can be really hard to recognize you are doing but it's also an extremely important step in the recovery process. This can include thoughts like. I shouldn't feel like this or phrases that start with I can't.
7) Learning to trust yourself- This one may seem very odd at first. Most people feel like the only person they can trust is themselves and go through life after experiences abuse not trusting anyone else. The problem is they have also learned to not trust their own feelings and have lost touch with actually trusting themselves. This is also the step in which you learn to listen to your own body. We have a habit of not listening to what our body is telling us because we can't either accept it or believe it. Examples of this would be feeling tired but saying to yourself that you slept for 8 hours you shouldn't be tired.
8) Learning to put yourself and your needs first. This is the step in which you will learn to create health boundaries for yourself. This step really builds on the first 3 items, and it can be really hard to set healthy boundaries for yourself without knowing yourself first and as you work through the first three you will find yourself rediscovering yourself. This is the step where we learn to say no to things, we really don't want to do to make other people happy. this is the step you will also learn to set restrictions on things that you know you can't get out of but are not really good for you. An example would be having to go to a work party around someone who was involved in your abuse. You can't say no completely but you can say I will attend for a specific amount of time, or you will go as long as you are not seated near a specific person.
9) Adopting a positive attitude. Having a positive attitude is going to be key in the healing process. As you heal some people may not like that you are changing or may not know how to handle the changes. Keeping a positive attitude about your healing and the process can not only make it easier for you to tackle but also easier for others to accept as well. It is also very important to remember that you can't control how other people are going to react you can only control yourself and your own actions.
Healing from grooming, sexual trafficking or even narcissistic abuse isn't going to happen instantly. It is a process that will take time, you are relearning how to do things or think about things. This is a process that will take some time, but I do promise you if you put in some real effort and time these steps will start making you feel better rather quickly. Also, if you have a setback or bad day, please don't let it get you down. We all have them have faith that you will get better and start feeling like yourself again or maybe an even better version of yourself than you thought possible.
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