Think of your brain’s health like the foundation of a house. The foundation being your mental health, and trauma as the destruction that weakens it all – like termites in the base boards.
The foundation has to be the strongest part of the house, because it supports everything built on top of it – aka your life. The foundation bears all the weight, much like how your brain handles all your life’s experiences.
Since my brain likes creating analogies to better help understand things, I thought I’d share this helpful one with you.
The bigger the destruction (or trauma), the weaker the foundation (your brain), and whole house (your life) becomes.
Destruction to the foundation can cause certain areas in the rest of the house to be off limits or unusable.
With trauma, this can be seen in dis-functional relationships, losing close connections with friends, or only having enough energy for work and little play.
A damaged foundation can’t repair itself, and needs hard work from trusted people and takes time to fully repair.
If you use cheap materials or rush to repair the problems, you’ll most likely need to redo the repairs later on, spending more time fixing them than the first time.
If you don’t repair the damages in the foundation, the problems persist and slowly spread, creating even bigger problems for you down the road.
You can kick the repair-can down the road as much as you want, but you’re only hurting yourself more in the long run.
Putting off getting the foundation fixed is risky to you and the people you invite into your house.
Getting frustrated that the house isn’t fixed yet, without putting in any work, doesn’t do you any good.
In my opinion, the best ways to repair a foundation (or mental health trauma) are: start repairing as soon as possible, don’t rush through the process, and have trusted people, friends, and/or professionals to help you.
If you are currently struggling with mental health issues – You are not alone! Keep going, you got this! 💜
Thank you for reading!
Did this analogy help you? Please share with a friend or tell me in the comments below!