What are the signs that I’m recovering?
Effective recovery work leads to an ongoing gradual reduction of emotional flashbacks. Over time we become more and more proficient at managing them and alleviating unnecessary states of activation; this in turn results in flashbacks occurring less often, less enduringly and less intensely. Another key sign of recovering is that the critic begins to shrink and lose its dominance of the psyche. As it shrinks, the user-friendly ego has room to grow and to develop the kind of mindfulness that more readily recognizes when the critic has taken over, which in turn allows us to more readily disidentify form or fight against its perfectionistic and drasticizing processes. Another sign of recovering occurs as a gradual increase in our ability to relax – to resist overreacting from a triggered position, i.e., from an inappropriate fight, flight, freeze or fawn response; (See my article: “A Trauma Typology”). Moreover, there is an increase in our ability to use our fight, flight, freeze and fawn
