Daring To Dream: Thoughts on following your dreams when healing from trauma

Much of what keeps humans motivated to heal and improve their lives is trying to reach a goal. When we are suffering and being held back by dysfunctional people in our lives, it is daring to dream that often brings us out of the darkness.

While dreaming can also put us into a cycle because too much daydreaming can be a form of escapism, it is also a powerful tool in establishing goals and deciding what life we want to build.  However, we have to be careful not to let ourselves fall into depression with too much daydreaming and not building confidence in ourselves. Another obstacle that I find stands in my way is that I am used to denying my own needs because I was taught that they are never more important than someone else’s. Once we break free of the chains that bind us to being dependent on someone else, we are the obstacle that stands in the way of our dreams.  

In this article, I am going to explore my thoughts on following your dreams while healing from trauma and share a few things that I have learned along the way.

Don’t Share Your Dreams

The first rule of having hope and following your dreams is to be very careful who you tell about your dreams. Sure, when we are sharing our hope for our life direction with people, we can tell them what our general direction is, but our most desired things can be quite fragile ambitions, and the slightest doubt about their possibility may cause them to shatter. Because of their fragility, it is best to keep these fragile things to ourselves. We want to believe that the worst of people are in our past, and now that we’re healing, we can see the signs of people with malicious intent and keep them out of our sphere of influence, but that just isn’t true. People reveal their true selves over time, and even after you understand a person’s true nature, we are all subject to change. Not all people with negative, dream-shattering behavior know they have these evil superpowers and do it on purpose, so it can be tough to judge who is ultimately a safe person to share your daydreams with.   

People let themselves be ruled by jealousy and will accuse those people they are jealous of as having malicious intent, so they can convince themselves that the person they’re jealous of, their victim, deserves mistreatment. This is not an absolute truth, but we have to be wary of people who do not account for the needs of others or are unable to simply congratulate people on their good news. The largest sign I have found of a jealous person is that they talk about everyone behind their back to everyone else, and they are never the perpetrator of bad relations. If possible, it’s probably best not to let jealous people into your sphere because they hate people with dreams who dare to try to outshine them. They would rather be the lord of nothing and surround themselves with people who feel like they are nothing than try to latch on to their own dream and support others who have one too.  

Jealous people are just terrified that they will fail at something, be criticized, or not be good at things the first time they try them. It’s not the fear that makes them detrimental to the dreams of others, but the mentality, conscious or not, that they need to hold everyone else back, so they don’t look like they are scared, unambitious people. The most common demonstration of this is the narcissistic trait of belittling and talking down any positive thing their victims try to do (i.e losing weight, finishing a degree, taking a good job offer, learning a new skill.)  but just because someone has some narcissistic traits does not mean that they have NPD, and we cannot expect everyone who may not have our best interest in mind to act the same way as someone we have encountered in the past.

Every Small Step in the right direction is a step forward 

Once you have successfully put on your proverbial horse blinders to uncalled-for negativity and stowed your dreams safely in your heart, the next daunting task is trying to figure out how to accomplish your dreams.  For people who have been told our perception is always wrong, we can’t do anything on our own, and that we don’t deserve basic needs, it is hard to wrap our heads around the idea that we can accomplish our dreams. It is important to remember that if you never try, you will never succeed.

Something that has helped me with taking the first step on a big goal is to break things down into really small steps. My best example to demonstrate this idea is this blog. At first, I just wanted to publish my writing online so that I could get a job in writing. I like to joke that I’m building a castle on a pile of poop because being able to share my experience and things I’ve learned with others suffering from some of the same stuff has enabled me to build something great out of experiences that were terrible. We don’t always know what our endeavors will become when we are first starting out, but every step that we take towards building something is another brick in place.  

So maybe take out a pen and paper (or crayons and cardboard) and start brainstorming something that would bring you joy. Pretend for a few minutes that nothing stands in your way, and what sort of dreams and goals do you come up with? Perhaps some of these are feasible, and some aren’t, but this is a good way to narrow things down.  

A few other tips for following your dreams healing from trauma

Having a planner of some kind can be invaluable to plan out your life. It is also especially important to note that often living with a mental illness makes for less energy available to us throughout the day. Using a planner can be a useful way to make sure that you are getting the things you need to be done without overloading yourself so that you burn out and go through a long period of time not able to do anything.  

I find that I need to stay very organized to feel like I can handle things.

For important information like doctors and appointments, I need to have a planner to keep everything all in one place. If I have to make a phone call, but I know I have to search for the number I need to call, it feels like a giant task to get that call made. I hate making phone calls and being on the phone, and having to search for the number just gives me more time to dread the process of being on the phone. If you have tasks that are painful to complete, maybe there is a compromise you can find with yourself to get them done. Mine is to have a planning stage where I write out my tasks for the next day, the day before, and if it requires a phone call, then I put the number in there. I like to refer to this as taking away my excuses to not do something.

Vision boards or a form of a “don’t panic” poster can be a great assistant in staying on track. In the past, I made a “don’t panic” poster with words of encouragement, minor goals, and a few major goals, and I hung it in a spot where I would see it when I woke up every morning. Over time, things would get crossed out, and I would make a new poster with more goals and new motivational messages. If you are following my first advice and trying to keep your dreams to yourself, then hide them in something only you see every day. Or maybe use pictures so only you know what it means.

Never Say Never

Never call something a failure or impossible until you have tried and are out of options. Too many times, we just give up on something we want because it sounds like something we can’t do, or we quit at the first hiccup on the road. Nothing worth it is ever easy, and if you give up on everything just because you don’t think you can, then you will never get anywhere. Many times when we talk down to ourselves, we are mimicking the voices of people from our past who told us those things, and those people were likely jealous of us in some way. Even though we may not remember exactly who it was that killed our self-confidence, we can still recognize these negative voices for what they are and tell them to shut up. You can’t always control who you are in the room with, but you can control who gets to live rent-free in your head, even if it does take a long time and a lot of work to kick them out.

Celebrate Your Wins

Celebrate all of your small wins, even if you only celebrate with a bathroom facial, a coffee from Starbucks, or a few hours of your favorite video games. Often, we were denied the ability of satisfying our own needs without being guilted or shamed, so it is very important to start celebrating yourself and what you do now to help feeling proud of your accomplishments, not just finishing something and moving on to the next problem.  

Over time, celebrating our accomplishments will retrain our brains to be excited for new challenges, feel good about ourselves, and feel like we deserve good things (Guthridge, 2019).  

In Conclusion

The future can be scary, but it doesn’t have to look bleak. The difference between a bleak future and a happy one can often be defined by the goals that you are working towards. Many of us are coming from a situation where we haven’t been fully prepared to succeed as adults, and people in our lives have done everything they could to make sure that we never succeed. In a way, having a happy life is the ultimate revenge on our abusers, and it is the ultimate goal of healing.

Dare to dream. Dare to make plans. Dare to follow through.

Tell me what you think or what has helped you to keep your dreams alive, and comment below!

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References

Guthridge, L. (2019, June 24). Recently succeed at something? Celebrating is good for your brain. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2019/06/24/recently-succeed-at-something-celebrating-is-good-for-your-brain/

The Diary Of A Flopping Fish and any posts or articles published on Diaryofafloppingfish.com are not reviewed by a therapist or medical or mental health professional. Resources are cited, and opinion is opinion. No advice or opinions in any articles replace professional advice from a doctor, therapist, or any other kind of health professional. The author is not a licensed professional of any kind.