Radical Kindness and Trauma

recovery and healing from mental distress

I am writing this in Mental Health Awareness Week, in the middle of the covid-19 pandemic. Perhaps appropriately, this year the theme is kindness.

For many survivors of trauma, the mental pain and distress we feel is essentially a result of the unkindness we experienced in our lives — either deliberately inflicted by abuse or other maltreatment, or from accidental and incidental trauma — the unintentional unkindness that the world so often inflicts.

For many of us who grew up in environments where we received unkindness, cruelty and abuse, we came to believe ourselves to be unworthy of kindness. Sometimes we still treat ourselves with the same lack of kindness that we received from others. We don’t look after ourselves. We develop lifestyles that are unhelpful to our emotional and physical well-being. even the ways in which we speak to ourselves are all too often cruel, self-judging and lacking in love. Most of us would never dream of talking to or treating another person in the ways we talk to and treat ourselves.

We deserved far better than we got, and we deserve better now. We may not be able to change the unkindness we received from others, but we can change the unkindness we continue to inflict upon ourselves.

Being kind to ourselves costs nothing. In fact through being kind to ourselves we are investing in ourselves and in our lives. It doesn’t take very much to get started. Investing even the smallest amounts of love, care and nurture in ourselves is a little like planting seeds and then watering them every day. Sooner or later those seeds of love and kindness will take root, grow and bear fruit in our lives, and potentially in the lives of many others.

Kindness means that we do not need to be fixed ourselves to be able to show kindness to others. Neither are we responsible for fixing anyone else’s lives or problems. Kindness to others comes from things that may seem very little or unimportant to us, but which may literally save lives.

Kindness means we listen to those who are hurting (including ourselves), with open hearts and minds — not judging, not trying to fix, not trying to change them, but simply being there, available and paying attention.

Kindness means we feel with those in pain — our own experiences may not have been exactly the same, but we have experienced things that are similar enough to allow us to feel of empathy. When we feel with someone — we are connecting at a deep level and little by little overcoming the sense of isolation.

Kindness means we respond to what we have heard and felt, with gestures that do not have to be large or complicated, but which are genuine and heartfelt. These are the things that are priceless and which will be remembered and will keep survivors going on the bad days.

Kindness means we challenge with gentle firmness the old self-destructive narratives that so many survivors of trauma feel compelled to live inside. We do not invalidate how they feel, but we can offer an alternative perspective.

For trauma survivors, struggling with mental distress and injury, unkindness in all its forms has always been the enemy. It is time for us to recognise that on the journey of recovery and healing, kindness is the best tool we have for finding our way.

Breakthrough is a UK Charity providing specialist therapy and other support for survivors of abuse and trauma. You can find out more about our work at traumabreakthrough.org or facebook.com/traumabreakthrough