The Truth About Trauma and What It Really Takes to Move Forward
- May 6, 2025
- 7 min read
Updated: Jul 11, 2025
Eszter Noble is an RTT® practitioner, Clinical Hypnotherapist, and Coach, specializing in anxiety, fears, and depression. Her method utilizes the most effective techniques from CBT, NLP, psychotherapy, and hypnotherapy, with the ability to provide freedom from any issues and deliver permanent, lasting solutions.
Trauma is something we all experience to varying degrees. Lasting change is something most of us want to achieve. Traumatic events are incidents or experiences that are so stressful, frightening, or overwhelming that they exceed our ability to cope, often resulting in lasting negative emotional, psychological, or physical effects. These events can deeply threaten our sense of safety or well-being, often resulting in powerful and long-term changes.
It’s very important to note, however, that it’s never about what happens to us but how we interpret and internalise the event. People respond differently to traumatic events. Not everyone who experiences a traumatic event will develop lasting trauma or mental health issues; personal history, support systems, and resilience play significant roles in recovery. What we can probably all agree on is that the majority of us want to improve our lives, and we strive for the betterment of our circumstances.
Lasting, meaningful change in our lives is a multifaceted process that requires more than just wishful thinking. Allow me to outline some key elements required for real and lasting transformation that you may not have considered yet.
Embrace living with an onion
Overcoming trauma and achieving lasting change can often feel like living with a massive onion. It is a multi-layered process that involves lots of tears, no matter how much you try to avoid it. It will require both practical strategies and emotional healing.
Needless to say, seeking professional help is often necessary to heal, alongside accepting that there will be emotions that have to be faced while also allowing the tears to flow. Crying permits you to release pent-up emotions and pain associated with traumatic experiences. Rather than bottling up feelings, tears provide a natural way to express and process grief, sadness, or fear, helping prevent these emotions from becoming stuck or overwhelming over time. This emotional release is often described as cathartic, giving a sense of relief and lightness after tears have flowed.
When you cry, your body releases oxytocin and endogenous opioids (endorphins), natural chemicals that help ease both emotional and physical pain. These “feel-good” chemicals lead to a sense of calm and well-being after a crying episode. Crying also activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps your body relax and recover from stress. This self-soothing effect can take a few minutes to set in, but it’s a powerful way to regulate intense emotions often associated with trauma.
Allowing yourself to cry helps you acknowledge and validate your feelings, which is an essential step in trauma recovery. Rather than seeing tears as a sign of weakness, embracing them can foster resilience and emotional strength, showing that you are confronting and working through your pain.
Simply put, crying is a natural, self-soothing mechanism that helps process and release the emotional and physical burdens of trauma. It reduces stress, promotes healing neurochemicals, and supports both emotional and bodily recovery, making it a crucial part of the healing journey.
Focus on how you could mess up
This may seem absolutely counterintuitive, and most magazines or gurus will have us reciting positive affirmations round the clock, but I encourage that we instead leverage the nervous nature of our mind and use it to our advantage.
Think of your mind for a moment as an overprotective parent. The reality is that your mind does not care whether you’re thriving, living happily, and to your fullest potential—it only cares that you stay alive. It is constantly looking for what could be a threat, an issue, or potentially dangerous. Going to the worst-case scenario, outlining what could go wrong, is a skill we all possess and are familiar with, so let’s use it to our advantage.
Let’s imagine you want to be successful at a new job, or be happy in a new relationship. This does take a moment of introspection and willingness to let go of your ego. Once you’ve embraced past flaws and mistakes that have been made, simply ask yourself, What would I need to do to mess this up?
Most of us would have no issue coming up with a multitude of answers that would sound something like this: “Well, to mess up this new job, I should probably get to work late most days, not speak up in meetings, be disinterested, and leave everything to the last minute…” You get the idea. Now that we understand the pitfalls so well, let’s just invert that. Do the exact opposite of what would cause you to fail, and you’ll be well on your way to success.
In addition to understanding and inverting the potential points of failure, it may well be necessary to reprioritise and change up your schedule as well. We all spend an astonishing amount of time on nothings, doom scrolling, and activities that do not benefit us in the least. Tracking, for a few days or a week, how your hours are spent will shed a bright light on your daily schedule and how easy it would be to optimise your day. Time is precious, and we can never ask for a refund, so spend it wisely!
Always keep your word to yourself, even through trauma
It has never been easier to be lonely, to seclude ourselves, and to keep our thoughts and plans private. Whether it’s by choice or not, it can be truly difficult to stay on track, stick to a plan, and get things done—especially when no one is ‘watching’.
I mentioned earlier that our mind’s number one job is to keep us alive. In line with that, it is also hardwired to save energy. Any activity that it doesn’t deem absolutely crucial for survival becomes an option, not a necessity. When you have the urge to stay on the couch and not write up that business plan or repaint the balcony after work, that isn’t necessarily a sign of laziness—it’s your mind trying to preserve energy, should you need it in an imminent life-threatening situation.
Understanding this is nice and helpful. However, we are in control of our life, and not a three-pound squishy pink organ. At any given moment, you can choose to override the urge to become one with the couch and get on with your plans.
Achieving clear and precise goals with realistic timelines won’t be difficult when you commit to keeping your word to yourself. If you say you will do something, then actually do it—no excuses!
When you keep your promises to yourself, not only will it fortify your self-esteem, but it will also send your subconscious the message that you are worthy and deserving of great things. Implementing this in my life has been, by far, one of the most significant changes I’ve ever made. You will feel so proud of yourself when you consistently do as you say, eliminating the need for outside validation.
Keeping promises to yourself is crucial because it directly impacts your self-confidence, self-worth, and, of course, your overall ability to achieve your goals. When you honour commitments you make to yourself, no matter how small, you build trust in your own abilities and reinforce the belief that you can rely on yourself. This creates a positive feedback loop: the more you follow through, the more confident and motivated you become to set and accomplish bigger goals.
Honouring self-promises also fosters discipline and personal responsibility, helping you develop habits that support long-term success and well-being. As you consistently meet your own expectations, you cultivate respect for yourself, which naturally extends to how you treat others and how others perceive you.
Create new standards, not goals
Everyone understands what goals are, and most of us have plenty of them. However, I want to take it a step further and outline why having high standards is so much more valuable than chasing goals.
High standards are about the minimum level of effort and quality you expect from yourself every day. They become part of your identity and routine, making positive behaviours automatic and much more sustainable over time. In contrast, goals are often one-time achievements. Once reached (or missed), motivation can fade and old habits can return easily.
Standards emphasize how your daily actions and behaviours are, rather than just the what or the end result. This process-oriented approach leads to steady progress and improvement, regardless of specific outcomes. Chasing goals can lead to frustration if you don’t achieve them quickly, and can often cause us to give up or feel like a failure, consequently eroding our self-esteem.
When you set and uphold your own high standards, you’re succeeding on your own terms, not by someone else’s criteria. This builds self-respect, confidence, and a strong sense of autonomy. Relying solely on goals, especially those influenced by others, can undermine your sense of control and satisfaction, especially in the long term.
High standards foster a growth mindset: you strive for your best, accept mistakes as part of the process, and continually learn and adapt. With goals—especially unrealistic ones—failure can feel like a personal flaw, leading to discouragement and self-criticism. Most of us already have plenty of harsh words to say to ourselves and certainly don’t need any more.
People who maintain high standards naturally achieve more because excellence becomes their norm, not an exception. They are better positioned to reach bigger goals as a by-product of their daily habits and standards. Having high standards is about defining and living by your own benchmarks for excellence every day. This approach fosters consistency, growth, and self-respect, making success a natural outcome of who you are, not just what you achieve.
While goals can motivate, it’s your standards that build the foundation for lasting change and extraordinary results.
In life, what we get is what we are willing to tolerate. Upgrade your standards to get better outcomes. Creating better standards for yourself means setting clear, realistic guidelines for your behaviour, choices, and achievements that reflect your values and continuously support your growth.
Change is a choice that only you can make. The real desire not to be defined by the past or others has to emerge from within. You have to really want it. It has to hurt enough for you to take action.
Read more from Eszter Noble
Eszter Noble, Clinical Hypnotherapist & Coach
Eszter Noble is an established Clinical Hypnotherapist using the RTT® (Rapid Transformational Therapy) method, trained by world-renowned hypnotherapist Marisa Peer. She is known for dealing with extremely difficult cases and clients who have been stuck for years and who have tried it all. Specializing in anxiety, fears, and depression, she is extremely intuitive and honest, dedicated to empowering her clients to become the best possible versions of themselves. Offering her expertise in English, German, and Hungarian, Eszter’s mission is to take the taboo out of therapy.
