Practical Activity: Reflecting on Personal Traumas

In this activity, you will reflect on personal traumas and the effect of these on your long-term mental health and on your family and community. You will have the opportunity to journal about ways in which you managed the effects of trauma in your life and possibly identify further actions that you would like to take to reach optimum mental health.

This should take approximately 30 minutes to complete.

Instructions

1. Obtain a hard copy journal that will serve as your journal for this entire course or an e-journaling or note-taking tool such as Notion, OneNote or Apple Notes. There are also many e-journaling apps that you might like to use. 
2. Identify an experience in your life that traumatized you or a time when you were significantly discouraged or depressed. 
3. Answer these questions in your journal about your identified experience:
   1. How did that experience affect you, and your relationships, in the long-term that you are aware of?
   2. How did you or how are you currently addressing the above-mentioned effects? If you are not addressing them, do you think you should be?
   3. What resources or strategies did you or are you using as part of your management of these effects?
4. Reflect on people in your life who you know have suffered from trauma recently or are suffering from long-term effects of trauma. 
5. Answer these questions in your journal about these persons:
   1. How might you begin to pray for them?
   2. How might you understand them better and point them to resources (that you might have used and described in the previous question) to help them? 
6. Pray about the thoughts, issues and concerns that have arisen while completing this activity, and ask God to help you take the necessary steps to help yourself and others in your journeys to reach healing and wholeness.