TRAIN YOUR BRAIN TO AUTOMATICALLY CREATE PEACE & CALM
IDENTITY ROADMAP PROGRAM
GENTLY WALKS YOU THROUGH CREATING THE NEW (POST-TRAUMA) YOU
For a long time you’ve wandered around as your survivor self wondering what to do, who to turn to and how to heal. Then you find yourself here – in this minute, on this page, wanting to be The New You, the one who lives unaffected by the past – and wondering, “What makes this program the right way to go?”
Let me answer that question for you:
I know this is exactly the right way to go because I know you. How is that possible?
Easy: I used to be you.
For over 25 years I struggled with symptoms of PTSD. I bounced around from professional to professional, resource to resource looking for anything or anyone to soothe the pain, reduce the sense of disconnection, fear and anxiety, and give me back my life.
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We’re very individual in our traumas but so very similar in the post-trauma world. Whatever you’ve done so far to decide what you need and the safest place to get it, chances are I’ve done that too. From therapy to considering medication to stress reduction practices I went at each option full-force without any criteria to guide my decision. And I, like you, didn’t get as far as I wanted to go in reclaiming myself and my life so that I felt better and better every day.
It was exhausting! I spent so much time, money and resources and either got a little relief for a short amount of time or I actually got worse. I went through some very depressing times feeling utter hopelessness and believing that I was destined to live a fear-driven life of “less than”, grief, loss and pain. I couldn’t figure out what to do to change my situation until….
I Finally Discovered What Changes EVERYTHING
Fortunately, there came a defining moment one New Year’s Eve as I faced entering yet another year of a life I hated living. I was in the bathroom crying my eyes out at a party when that small voice in my head said, “You need to reconnect to who you truly are.”
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There I was, thinking that struggling to cope in a high state of anxiety and hypervigilance was who I truly was when a part of me quietly stepped forward and suggested there was another way.
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“Reconnect to The Real You, your core self that exists despite trauma,” the voice proposed. I felt so dead inside I didn’t even for a second think it was possible for me to connect to anything as alive as a core self. But I had nothing left to lose; I agreed to follow the voice.
It was a decision that changed my life.
Right about now you might be thinking, “Michele, trauma changed absolutely everything about
me all the way down to that core self.”
I used to think so too. Actually, that’s what held me back in healing for so long: I often shut down possibilities. I believed that trauma had so irrevocably altered me that I was too damaged to heal even though healing was what I so desperately wanted.
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Now, I’ll share with you what I learned that most surprised me:
You don’t have to believe you will fully achieve your desired transformation. It’s enough to just hope, choose and take action, repeatedly.
I set out on what I thought would be a useless mission. I was so wrong….
Despite My Disbelief In My Ability To Feel Better, I Actually Started To Make Significant Progress
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The final piece of advice I received from the voice that night was that I needed to feel something opposite to the pain in which I lived. I defined that as “joy” and deliberately set out to connect to something good about who I was. For me, that was dance. When I’m on a dance floor I feel free and alive and as if the past doesn’t matter.
For the next three months I went to a dance class and/or went dancing every day of the week. At first I dragged myself through the motions, but then my brain caught on: it started anticipating those few moments that felt better and started looking forward to them.
It happened slowly but deciding to reconnect to my core self turned out to be a fateful decision. The more connected I felt to who I was in a way that felt good the more courage, focus and dedication I brought to my recovery process. I became resilient and went on to achieve a wholly successful recovery (I’ve been free of all PTSD symptoms for almost a decade despite significant triggers).
But that’s not all that reconnecting to my core self did: it set me off on a path of creating an identity I love and opened up opportunities for enhanced family and friend relationships, romance and launching a meaningful career helping others.
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When I started my journey to reconnect to a part of myself that felt good and strong and skillful I had no idea I was engaging in an identity formation process that’s available to everyone. My personal joy quest may not be the launchpad for your exact path, but connecting to and discovering who you are outside of trauma, then engaging that self to help you feel secure, courageous and capable can absolutely be as accessible and life-changing for you as it was for me.
This Method Of Identity Re-Creation Is What I Now Teach Clients To Successfully Reclaim Their Lives
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Here’s what makes this process unique: Most trauma treatment approaches focus first on two things: 1) creating a sense of safety and control, 2) developing methods to regulate emotions and reduce symptoms.
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But here’s the problem with those approaches: In focusing on how you interact with and react to triggering stimuli associated with the past they overlook a core element that drives all of
those reactions in the present: your feeling of disconnection from a self that feels powerful and able to handle whatever happens.
Without healing the disconnect from your personal sense of strength, ability, “I can handle it!” attitude and self-efficacy it’s virtually impossible to overcome any post-trauma symptoms with long-lasting success.
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Too often the idea of identity is either not discussed in treatment or left until the end as a transitional element to the rest of life.
This is so totally backward.
Post-trauma and PTSD symptoms are rooted in a sensation of powerlessness. The more quickly you shift into a position in which you feel increasingly powerful in who you are the more quickly you can engage in profound healing work and reap the results.
The Difference Is In The Approach
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Constructing your post-trauma identity focuses on creating a sensation and perception of yourself as one whole, empowered entity. While you want to immediately eliminate insomnia, mood swings, intrusive thoughts and flashbacks the most important thing you can do is to create a sense of self that operates from a source of strength and self-esteem. That is what creates resilience, plus a surge of feeling safe and in control.
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Your lack of connection to a self that feels sturdy and robust can cause you to feel helpless, doomed and irreparably broken. On the flip side, restoring that connection increases your creativity, adaptability and flexibility – major hallmarks of healing.
Powerlessness, your mind and body’s ultimate enemy, leads you down a path of amplified anxiety and reduced healing capability. When you engage in an approach that allows you to take simple actions that reconnect you to a source of your own strength and power, you become inspired, self-motivated and able to move to your desired results with an increased likelihood of success.
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Trauma changes what you know, remember and feel about the past, but how you live in the present depends on what you choose about who you are, what you think, what you believe and how you engage with the opportunities placed before you. It’s entirely possible for you to make the shift from powerless to powerful, that’s why I created The Identity Roadmap program. Let's do it!
DIVING IN:
Full Workbook to
Guide Your Process
The workbook contained here holds all the elements you need to create a deep and proactive experience. From theory and education to exercises and templates the content in this document easily gets you on the road to transformation -- and keeps you moving with accelerated momentum.
