As a person who is currently in CBT (and seeing positive results), the biggest thing that helped me is to understand trauma, and cognitive distortions. Just as

As a person who is currently in CBT (and seeing positive results), the biggest thing that helped me is to understand trauma, and cognitive distortions. Just as this article says, your thinking brain is trying to piece together and digest what has happened. The problem is often that we repress it during the peaceful down time that our thinking brain is trying to make sense of it. We drown it out with drugs and alcohol, or we try to make ourselves so busy that we don’t think about it (hence creating more anxiety through work issues, family drama, or overstimulation). Best thing that works for me is to learn to accept it. Process it. Digest it. Learn and talk through examples of how it’s safe to experience the world again. This is part of the de-escalation process. Note, this goes against advice of “oh just don’t worry about it”. This approach is essentially “okay self, bad shit happened, let’s finally talk about it”. Your thinking brain is designed to keep bringing this up until it gets resolution. This is resolution. And cognitive distortions helps me because I understand now how my mind plays tricks on me. When I say things like “this bad thing happened, I’ll never be able to get over it”, it’s giving too much power to that bad event. I don’t have to feel or think that way. I’m allowed to change my thought process and think “yeah that bad event happened, but I can’t let it be the end of the world for me.”