STOP Running From Your Past | PTSD & Trauma Recovery

Hey everybody, Brad Schipke here, and today I'm talking to you about how to stop running away from your past so you can face it, so you can heal it, and so you can be free from the pain, from the trauma, for good. Because if we do not learn how to face our past, if we do not look at it, if we don't face the monster and look at it in the eyes and overcome it and process it and deal with it, it will stay with us for the rest of our lives. So it is so essential to learn How to stop running away. Whether you're running away from the pain by using substances or different behaviors or drugs or alcohol or anything like that, we need to stop running away from the pain and start facing it, start processing it. And the first step is learning a few strategies to do this. Now, in this video, I'm going to teach you 2 different ways, so 2 things that you can do right now to help you get motivated Even if you're like completely hopeless, um, so you can stop running from your past and so you can start facing it. Now these are really, really 2 simple things, and I actually just got off a Q&A with my clients and they asked this same exact question: how do I face the past when I'm absolutely terrified of it? I'm tired from running away from it is what they said. I'm tired from running. I'm tired from living this life where I'm in pain 24/7. I'm afraid of where my future will lead if I do not face this right now. So there are 2 really, really simple things. This is gonna be a really simple, really easy video for you guys. So what I want you to do to help you is to— I want you to write out 2 stories, okay? So I want you to write out 2 different stories. The first story is The story if you don't change. So this is the story of your life if things stay exactly the way they are right now. So what if you didn't change? What if you didn't face your past? What if you didn't heal your past? What if you didn't heal your trauma? Maybe you've had PTSD or CPTSD or any other kind of— you could just be in pain from your traumas and from your past for years, for decades, for even longer. What if that continues for the rest of your life? That's the story that I want you to write first. We want to build the pain of your current situation and build the pain of, hey, what if this continues for the rest of my life? Because that is a very, very motivating thing. And humans are— we are motivated by carrots, but we are also very, very motivated by a big old stick. So that's what this does. It shows you the reality of your situation, and that's all we're looking at. We want to find the truth. What is going to happen to you if you don't change? What's going to happen to— and when you write this story, I want you to write it as if it was a story, as if it did happen. I want you to think about every area of your life? What would your health look like? What would your family look like? What would your love life look like? What would your finances look like? What would your dreams look like? Where would you live? Just what would your happiness look like? You know, like, what would every aspect of your life look like? How would you feel? And just extrapolate this out to the rest of your life, and that is going to really, really help you get clarity on the truth of your current situation, how painful it is to stay where you are right now. And now the second thing I want you to write Is if you face your past, if you face your past and heal, right? So that's the second story I want you to write. The second story is if you faced your past and heal. That's what that says. So facing your past is a terribly, terribly scary thing, right? And especially when you don't really know what to do, you don't know if it's possible. Maybe you have a lot of people in your life telling you, hey, you've had this for so long, you will never get over this. Maybe they're saying time will heal the wounds and you just have to be patient and things will get better. But those things aren't true, and you might be terrified. But what I want you to do is I want you to write a story, the second story, as if you faced your past and healed. If you faced this pain, if you faced the discomfort, if you moved towards the pain instead of running away from it. Your whole life, my whole life up until this moment that changed, I was running away from my pain. And you are likely in a similar situation. I know most people are. And I speak from personal experience. I'm not dumping on you. I'm not dumping on anybody here because I know exactly what it's like. To run away from the pain again and again and again and again and again. And I know how painful that is, to just be stuck in that cycle of hopelessness and pain and trauma and hurting the people you love and all those things. I know what that's like. But you know that path doesn't work. You know that path does not work. If pushing your pain away and running away from your pain worked, you wouldn't have this problem anymore. You would— it would have been solved. So we know that pushing the pain away won't work. So we have to face the pain. We have to look at the pain. We have to heal it. We have to move towards it. We have to kind of dig it up. We have to unbury it. And we start— we need to look at it and release all of those emotions inside of us so we can heal. But if you're not motivated, if you don't have the proper motivation to take action during those hard times, when those hard moments come up in your healing journey, Which they will. You will have many, many hard times along your journey, and if you're not properly motivated along the way, it's going to be really easy to quit. So maybe you're having a hard moment right now. Maybe you're on your recovery journey and you've, you've kind of hit this plateau, or maybe honestly you've gotten, you've gotten, you've gotten your ass handed to you a few times, you know? Like, I've gotten my ass handed to me a lot. And maybe you're just really depressed and hopeless. This is something that you can do to get yourself motivated again and to realize, I cannot stay where I am right now. In the future, of facing this pain despite how scared I am of facing it is way better. The prospects of me facing this pain is way better than staying where I am right now. And that's what this process does. So what I want you to do— this is a really action-based video right now because really I just want you to do these 2 things. I want you to take out a sheet of paper A notebook, a journal, or something, and write each one of these stories in detail. And really, really think about what would your life be like if you didn't change? If you kept going through these cycles again and again and again and again, what would that do to your family? What would that do to your finances, your health, everything? What would that do? And it's so important. That's a painful thing to write, but it's so important to write it because if we keep running away from the reality, the truth of our situation, Then we will never change. Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is painful as hell. So you need to look at this. What if you don't change? And that's the reality you need to face, that you need to face and look at to properly motivate yourself to do the hard things to heal. Because healing is one of the hardest things you will ever do. And you need to use the power of pain and pleasure here To properly motivate yourself to take action when you don't want to, when you are terrified, when you are scared, you still need to take action and move forward because that is the only thing that will help. And you— I will say this again— you know the path that you are going down right now. You know avoiding the pain, you know running away from it does not work. If it worked, you'd be healed, right? We know that doesn't work, so we cannot keep doing that. So I want you to take out your journal and write down a story of what, what What will happen if you do not change, right? And then I want you to write down what will happen if you do face this pain, if you try something new and you, you, you move towards this pain and you try something different and you win. You face the— you face them when you stand up tall, you look at the devil in the eyes and you beat it. What will happen then when you heal? How good would your life be? How proud of yourself would you be? How confident would you be? And that's what— that's the story, the second story I want you to write out. And when you have these 2 combined and you really make them emotional and you bring in the people of your life that you love and you bring them into these stories and you make it a real story of your life, you suddenly aren't faced with all of these complex decisions. You're suddenly faced with 2 decisions: do I stay where I am right now, or do I change? Do I face Do I let this pain continue? Do I let things be this hard and painful for the rest of my life? Do I let this thing ruin my life for the rest of my life? Or do I face this thing? Do I look at this thing? Do I start fighting? Do I start fighting back? Do I stop giving up and start standing up to this thing and start acting like a warrior? Like, do I start fighting this thing? Am I gonna beat this thing? So those are the decisions that you have, and that really is what it comes down to, is that you have 2 decisions. You stay where you are right now, or you change. You face the past, or you ignore it. And I'll speak from my own life. There was this one year where it was my rock bottom, and I made this realization in my own life, and everything changed. I realized that my whole life I just pushed all my problems away. I pushed all my emotions down and I never looked at them. And what that did, all those emotions just built up more and more and more and more and more until I was a hopeless, broken emotional mess. And that strategy, I kept using that strategy even though it kept hurting me and it kept spiraling me down further and further and further. I thought the solution was I'm gonna push it away. Hope it gets better. I'm gonna push away. Play some video games. Hope it gets better. I'm gonna push away all this pain. Eat a bunch of food. Hope it gets better. Just hope it gets better. So many people are stuck on a plan of hoping and praying, and if you're on that plan, you're on the path to rock bottom. I know what that's like. It's not a fun place. I want to help you. Get out of it if you are there, or help you avoid it. And that's what this will do. And this is, this is a real exercise. I used it. I used it in my rock bottom. It got me motivated. It got me out of that situation. Now, oh, that's a lot. That's a big thing. That's a big thing, right, to write these 2 stories. But if you just do this, you will be so motivated. And if you don't know where to start, On your journey, this is what I want you to do. I want you to first of all do this, and then— because after you do this, you'll be super motivated, but you won't know what to do. What I want you to do is look through the other videos on this channel and start watching those videos, because we give you specific tools. We teach you how to manage your triggers. We give you full in-depth trainings on how to, you know, work through your past, process your past. I'm gonna do another one this week on how to logically think through Your trauma so you can process it. And basically, it's a way of connecting the emotional part of your brain with the logical part of your brain and making those connections and processing different events in your past. So I want you to do this, and then you're going to be super motivated, but then you're going to need more tools, you're going to need more information. So what I want you to do— we have so many resources on this page, I want you to go through them. And that's the first thing I want you to do after this. And the second thing is we have a free training below in the description I want you to check that out as well. If you're in need of coaching or anything else, we are here to help you. We want to help you on this journey. So that's the second thing you can do. There's no pressure. There's no pressure in doing, in doing that and taking that training, but it will help you immensely. So that's what I have for you today. If you enjoyed this, please hit that subscribe button, hit that like button if you want more videos. I try to make things as actionable and practical as possible. These are actual things that I use. These are actual things I just got off a Q&A with my clients, and this is exactly, exactly what I recommended to them. So I try to give you real actionable things that you can do, but still the most important thing that you can do is take action. At the end of this video, you could just scroll on to the next video, or you can pull out the notebook, your notebook, and actually fill this thing out. And that's what I want you to do. I want you to make a commitment right now to filling out Pulling out a notebook and filling and filling out these stories, because action is the only thing that's going to change your life. You can think about it. You can watch videos all day, but if you don't sit down to actually do the work, nothing will change. So I hope this video has helped you. Make sure to hit that subscribe button if you enjoyed this video and want to see more. I love you guys. I believe in you guys. I know you guys can do this no matter how hard it is. No matter how hard it gets, you can heal. You can. recover. I've done it, Kayleen's done it, and we've seen hundreds of other people do it as well. So you can do it. You are not alone on this, and you got this. So I will see you guys in the next video, and I hope you have a fantastic day. Bye.