Anastasia Kaminskaia - Integrative Trauma-Trained Holistic Health Coach

Dear cPTSD survivor,

Not being afraid to ask for help is only half the battle. The other half is not gaslighting yourself while trying to find the right person to work with.

One simple technique to support yourself when you are experiencing overwhelming emotions is to:

- close your eyes,
- take a nice, deep breath, and
- notice what is happening in your body without judgment.

Just notice, welcome whatever arises with compassion, and breathe through the discomfort. You can even imagine sending a big wave of love and/or compassion into your body and your entire being. Keep focusing on the sensations in your body as you do this practice.

You do not need a sophisticated technique to help yourself feel better. In reality, the simplest techniques and practices are often the most profound and effective, but they require us to slow down and observe our feelings.

When you focus on your emotions and bodily sensations long enough, you will notice that your inner state begins to slowly move, shift, and change. As a result, you feel empowered because you realise that you are able to support yourself and shift from one sensation or emotion to another completely on your own. You also realise that it is not as scary to sit with your emotions, and that your focus is what moves and shifts whatever is within. We have to acknowledge what is there first to be able to heal or release it.

In the beginning, it might feel overwhelming and scary to do this practice, but you can absolutely do it. Be there for yourself.

Focusing on emotions or sensations in the body allows you to understand what is happening internally and to shift your state in a positive direction. This is the power of focusing within.

As human beings, we often wonder if our internal experiences are normal. Those might be anything, really. Maybe you experience:

- Chronic anxiety

- Strong triggers in social situations

- Body image struggles

- Spiritual awakening

- Phobias

- Chronic shame

- Unexplained physical symptoms

- Paranoia

- A feeling that you’re the worst person in the entire world

- Mystical experiences

The first thing that most people want to know is if anyone else is going through the same challenging or unique experience. Especially if we keep struggling with it and have a hard time understanding what is happening to us.

We subsequently search for answers and meaning in difficult and unique experiences. When we are finally able to understand what is happening to us, and when we are understood by a compassionate other, the internal conflict slowly subsides and eventually dissipates.

However, we tend to spend so much time in that internal conflict. Feeling less than. Feeling totally alone. Weird. Pressing ourselves to figure things out quickly and fixing ourselves as soon as possible. Feeling angry about others minimising or invalidating our experiences. Wasting our precious energy resources…

It is important for all of us to acknowledge that we are never alone in our struggles. Whatever you’re currently going through, someone else is going through a similar experience. It will never be exactly the same, but it will be very similar. Imagine having a conversation with that person and finally being understood. That would heal at least one of your wounded inner children! This is the power of human connection.

Another important thing to understand is that whatever internal experience you are going through, it is normal. And by ‘normal’ I mean that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with you for experiencing whatever you are experiencing.

We are often afraid of being different in some way or abnormal because most people are afraid of being ridiculed, shamed, hated and ostracised. But what if there is nothing abnormal about you? And what if there is nothing pathological in your internal experience? What if it all makes sense and is normal considering your past experiences, unique personal traits and current life situation?

When we focus on being abnormal in some way and/or pathologize our experiences, we bring more tension into our life and hinder the possibility of healing. What first was just a thought becomes a cage limiting our understanding of ourselves and the reality we live in. A cage that subsequently creates more struggle and division in our already complicated and heavy world.

Lately, I’ve witnessed so much confusion and hostility in the trauma field, with therapists criticizing coaches and coaches criticizing therapists. I will never understand people who feel the need to waste their precious energy devaluing other people’s work or ignorantly speaking about something they do not fully understand and have no direct experience with. I believe so much good could be created in this world if professionals and people in general stopped fighting with each other and started learning from and uplifting one another.

The same goes for therapists and coaches in the trauma field. By uniting our efforts, we can provide clarity to trauma survivors and help them understand what type of service would benefit them most, depending on their specific trauma history, their experience with trauma healing, and the season of healing they are in. cPTSD is a relatively new and, at the moment, very confusing field because we are all learning about it as we go. We are in the epicenter of some major changes and developments.

I published an article some time ago about the differences between trauma-informed, trauma-trained, and trauma-focused care. This article's purpose is to raise awareness around these terms and simply an attempt to scratch the surface of current issues in trauma care. I wrote it to help trauma survivors and professionals better understand what these titles actually entail.

There is so much information to share here. Some of it is absolutely eye-opening and has a potential to challenge the status quo hence improve the quality of support cPTSD survivors receive from therapists and coaches.

For now, here is a link to the article I published on my website:

Trauma-Trained Holistic Health Coach - Trauma Informed vs Trauma-Trained Date of publishing: 09.01.26 Author: Anastasia Kaminskaia

It is absolutely bothersome how many professionals in the trauma field have started using AI to write their posts, courses, and emails.

AI cannot replace a human soul, energy, or connection. It also sounds very fake.

When you write your text with the help of AI, you can say goodbye to your individuality and your natural ability to evoke a felt response in another person.

cPTSD survivors absolutely hate inauthenticity and emotional flatness. They can immediately sense when AI is being used.

cPTSD survivors do not need more mechanical, robotic, or inauthentic relationships with their therapists and coaches - they have already experienced that due to all the rules imposed by the system on the professionals they work with.

The key component in trauma healing is authentic human connection. There is no way to bypass that and somehow help a trauma survivor.

I will never use AI to write anything because I am here for human connection. I do the work that I do because I care about people and prioritize genuine human connection. I would never want to water myself down to the point of becoming unrecognizable in writing or in any other form.

AI can be a helpful tool if used wisely but it will never replace a human soul or authentic human connection.

A bright light always illuminates darkness. So, if many bad people and bad situations have happened to you as a cPTSD survivor, it may be because your bright light illuminates other people’s darkness/shadows.

Every trauma-healing journey is unique. Since no one else has lived your life or inhabited your body, only you can know what is right for you in the healing process. Trust your intuition.

I cannot emphasise enough the importance of taking care of your body when it comes to complex trauma healing.

Healthy body = healthy mind = healthy spirit.

When we begin properly taking care of our bodies, we raise our energetic frequency. The body begins to feel better. cPTSD symptoms lessen. You feel lighter, healthier, more vibrant, more you. All the small little things you do for your body and mind count.

However, it works the other way around too. You skip exercise or taking a shower. You eat junk. You isolate yourself at home. Numb yourself. Dissociate. Your energetic frequency goes down, and that results in

Unhealthy body = unhealthy mind = unhealthy spirit.

And so it goes.

It might be overwhelming at first to figure out what to do and how to begin taking good care of yourself. So, start small.

- Drink that water

- Move your body, even if it is just slow-paced stretching.

- Eat healthy foods, even if it is just one apple a day.

- Take a shower even when a part of you hates your body.

- Do something that feels good and is good for your body.

- Begin creating predictable daily rituals. They are your anchor of safety and an opportunity to ground yourself in the present moment. Feeling more alive. Living every moment with as much presence as possible.

And always remember, you are never alone in your struggles, and you absolutely got this.

THE TRUTH ABOUT TRAUMA HEALING

When I just embarked on my own complex trauma healing journey, I was naive enough to think that I would finally reach the perfect point where I would be completely healed. Where I would not feel triggered anymore. Where I would be this perfect, confident, and bold human who dares to live and dares to act on her dreams.

To my disappointment, that perfect moment never arrived.

I spent years thinking that there was something wrong with me, that there was no hope, that I was broken. However, that was far from the truth.

The problem is that nobody really talks about what the word “healing” truly means in the context of trauma healing.

You come across thousands of courses, therapists, and coaching containers with big promises, but when you go through the processes that they teach you, you end up in more or less the same place. You are still triggered by thousands of things. You gain all this knowledge about different topics, but there is no significant change within you to positively impact your life and get you unstuck.

What you should know is that healing is a lifelong process, because there is always something to heal and there is always something to learn in life. Healing is also a very complex, multilayered, and non-linear process. You cannot tame it. You cannot stop it. You cannot fully comprehend it. You cannot control what aspect of you will be healed, how it will be healed, or when. You can contribute to this process, but you cannot manipulate it in any way.

Understanding this can change a lot for you, because if you know that healing is a lifelong process and that there is no stop to it, you can finally come back to reality and understand that you have been wasting so much of your energy on this illusory idea of a perfectly healed future version of you. And then, what you need to come to terms with are all those things within and outside of you that you have been running from, having a hard time accepting, and trying to erase about yourself.

You have to understand that all those things are not bad. Your trauma is not a disease. Your adaptive strategies might have been unpleasant for you and for others, but they are what helped you survive. They had to be implemented. At the time, there was no other way. All those things are a part of you and your journey, but they are not who you truly are at your core.

So, instead of pursuing this illusory journey from point A to point B, you might find it useful to look at trauma healing from a different perspective and to maybe even find words that resonate with you the most in relation to how you approach trauma healing.

At the foundational level of trauma healing lies the ability to consistently make healthy and loving choices for yourself and your body. They might be big, small, or even tiny, but they all count and eventually pile up. That one healthy choice could be sticking to a consistent hygiene routine. Brushing your teeth religiously twice a day or not skipping showers. Or it can be eating a bowl of salad before every meal. Or breathing deeply for two minutes a day. Or finding a job that does not suck the life out of you. Or ending relationships with abusive individuals.

Making those healthy choices might be extremely hard for you, because that is not what you were taught as a kid. You might know how to suffer. You might know how to self-deprecate. You might know how to destroy your self-esteem and weaken your body. You might know how to dissociate for many hours a day. You might know how to people-please. You might know how to allow other people to bring you down. You might know how to overgive. But you might not know yet how to make a healthy choice for yourself. Where to begin this journey. Or you might not even have learned yet that you truly deserve to be supported by yourself and others. That you deserve to feel better.

If that is you, I hear you, my friend. It is okay to be in this place, but it is time to learn how to take care of yourself, because now you are an adult and it is up to you how to live your life. It is up to you to decide whether you are worthy or not. It is up to you to stop entertaining the trauma vortex and see the light.

If you take anything from this post today, take this:

- Trauma healing is a lifelong process. There is no end to it. It is not your life purpose, but it is a part of your journey.

- Trauma is not a disease. Do not label yourself with diagnoses. Use them to support you and not to deeply root the trauma within your body and mind.

- The foundation of trauma healing is your ability to make healthy choices for yourself, your body, and your life. Begin small, and then it will become second nature. One day you will wake up and you will be blown away by how much better you feel.

- Start your healing journey today. Do not wait until tomorrow. It will never come.

A lack of tolerance for other people’s imperfections and flaws is one way your shadows show up in your life.