Daily Habits to Heal Trauma and Clear Emotional Clutter

Healing trauma requires a breakdown of the trauma centers within your mind, body, and spirit so they can be rebuilt or reprogrammed subconsciously. We make thousands of tiny decisions throughout our lives. Those tiny decisions can be made to continue the cycle of trauma, or they can be used to rewire your nervous system differently by creating new, safer patterns by altering one habit at a time.

This final post in the healing trauma series is focused on integrating the rewired pathways into your life as a lifestyle change, through the adjustment of your daily habits.

You’ve learned how trauma lives in the body (Week 1), how unfelt emotions can make you sick (Week 2), and how movement supports the release of stored trauma (Week 3). Now, it’s time to pull it all together and apply all that knowledge into your day-to-day life.

Healing isn’t something that happens quickly or overnight. Healing requires lifelong commitment to change. The goal is to be better than you were the day before. That is growth and that is healing. This is not competition, it is holding yourself accountable and making the necessary changes. Change is uncomfortable, and that’s okay. This is how you will know you are doing something right. Take it one day at a time and offer yourself grace on the tough days. The key is to keep going and never give up.

Consistency and Repetition Matters

When you experience a traumatic event, your nervous system will rewire for protection. Depending on how your body reacts to that trauma, you either become hyper-vigilant, or you learn to shut down emotionally. This is usually dependent on what kept you safe in the past. As it’s said:

“What wires together, fires together and can rewire together.”

Creating new pathways by way of making different tiny decisions will begin the process of starting a new pathway that will rewire your nervous system.

Your nervous system learns through consistency and repetition, while utilizing slow, simple daily practices. This way is much more effective than intense, occasional practices.

For example:

• When you do daily grounding, you are telling your body that “It’s okay to relax, be vulnerable, soften up”.

• When you practice breathwork daily, you are telling your brain that “It is safe to just be now, there’s no ongoing danger”.

• When you do specialized movement every day, you tell your fascia,” It’s okay to release, you don’t need to hold this anymore”.

In this way healing happens every day.

Re-Regulate Your Nervous System

Nervous system regulation is your body’s ability to easily shift between stressful states and relaxed states in flexible and adaptive ways.

You want your body to have the ability to feel stress, but you also want it to be able to recover effortlessly from that stressful event in a timely manner. A demonstration of your nervous system re-regulating involves:

• Your ability to recover quickly after getting upset

• You are no longer easily triggered

• Your sleep has improved

• You are now vulnerable enough to feel your emotions without being consumed by them

6 Categories of Daily Trauma-Healing Habits

Here are six main types of rituals that support long-term trauma release and emotional clarity. (It is not necessary that you do all six rituals, pick the one or two that will fit into your life easily) The key is not to overwhelm yourself.

1. Breathwork to Re-Regulate

Simple breathing techniques send safety signals to your brain.

Examples:

• Box breathing (inhale 4, hold 4, exhale 4, hold 4)

• Long exhales (inhale 4, exhale 8)

• Humming while exhaling to activate your vagus nerve

Habit idea: 2 minutes of breathwork before checking your phone in the morning

2. Ground in Nature

Nature calms your nervous system by reducing your cortisol levels and improving your emotional balance bringing clarity. The trees, sunlight, water are all conduits of grounding energies that are highly vibrational and encourage healing.

Ways of Grounding in Nature:

• Experiencing sunrise in the mornings or finding time to get sun exposure

• Walking barefoot in grass

• Listening to birds or flowing water

• Hug a tree or sit under a tree in the grass, barefoot

Habit idea: 5-minute walk outside barefoot in the grass without your phone

3. Express Through Journaling

Writing helps emotions surface and move. Somatic journaling brings awareness to the body and gives insight into where your healing process should focus.

Prompts:

• Where do I feel tension right now?

• What emotion might be living in that space?

• What would I say if I didn’t censor myself?

Habit idea: 5-minute body check + journal after lunch or before bed

4. Movement for Release

Even 3 minutes of trauma-informed movement can unlock stuck energy.

Examples:

• Gentle shaking

• Somatic yoga

• Spinal waves, hip circles, intuitive stretching

Habit idea: Movement break every time you feel overwhelmed or stuck

5. Digital Detox for Nervous System Hygiene

Staying connected through your phone, the news, and social media can keep unconsciously in fight-or-flight causing your nervous system to be in a reactive state longer than it should be. Creating rituals to help you disconnect can help you get off that nervous system dysregulation ride, halting the unnecessary release of cortisol. A nervous system hygiene or digital detox every day is necessary to free yourself and allow for better control.

Ways to Detox:

• Do not access your phone for the first 30 minutes of the day

• Set a timer or set up “no scroll” hours in the evening so your phone reminds you to take a break

• Turn off notifications that cause you stress

Habit idea: Replace doomscrolling with a 5-minute grounding ritual

6. Relational Safety for Emotional Repatterning

Healing should be done with a support system in place that is around you to encourage you and keep you accountable. Healing should never be done in isolation; you need to be surrounded by individuals who make you feel safe and supported. This is co-regulation. Co-regulation is the feeling of safety in the presence of others, and it shows up as:

• Having open and honest conversations with someone you trust

• Making eye contact with someone dear to your heart like a pet or loved one

• Feeling open and vulnerable enough to give and accept hugging, touching, and being able to sit in shared silence

Habit idea: Schedule regular time with someone who makes your nervous system feel safe and protected

Real-Life Example: A Small Routine That Changed Everything

Working as a nurse coach, I’ve encountered several clients anxious to make lasting changes in their lives. I have one particular client that comes to the forefront of my mind.

N.M. was a 49 year old mother of 5 children, who lost her husband to infidelity, then divorce. For years, she had gotten used to pushing her own needs, wants, and desires aside to be a wife and mother to her children. Once her husband left, she became hypervigilant for fear that she would lose something else after her traumatic breakup. She tried therapy and read every self-help book, she even subscribed to many YouTubers who promised to help her get her life back, but nothing was working as she was still waking up anxious most nights, interrupting her sleep cycle.

When we started working together, and after working together for a few weeks, I encouraged N.M. to start creating small morning routines that she can make into a habit that may help with some of her anxiety.

She decided on a 3-step morning routine, that she would do upon waking, before attending to anyone else she was to:

1. Do 5 minutes of breathwork,

2. 3-minutes of intuitive movement, and

3. 1 minute of gratitude journaling

At first, she was skeptical and did not believe it would work. But after three weeks, N.M. noticed that she was less reactive to stress, her sleep began to improve, and she had lower anxiety than what she used to start her days with. She felt that taking that little time (less than 10 minutes) before beginning her day allowed her to ground herself for the start of her day instead of her past practice of waking with a start, checking her phone, then frantically starting her day.

N.M. recognized that with consistency lasting changes began to occur in her life making things easier to work through and making her day begin on a softer note.

Exercise Now It’s Your Turn: Build-Your-Own Nervous System Reset Plan

Use this to design a simple, healing routine. Remember to always start small, go with just 2 or 3 habits max.

Step 1: Pick Your Top 3 Ritual Categories

(choose what resonates most)

• ☐ Breathwork

• ☐ Nature

• ☐ Movement

• ☐ Journaling

• ☐ Digital Hygiene

• ☐ Connection

Step 2: Choose Your Time

• ☐ Morning

• ☐ Midday

• ☐ Evening

• ☐ “When I feel stressed”

Step 3: Set a 7-Day Micro-Commitment

“I commit to [insert habit] at [insert time] for the next 7 days.”

Example:

I commit to doing 2 minutes of breathwork every morning before my phone for the next 7 days.

Write it down. Stick it on your mirror. Track it on your calendar. Consistency and repetition are the key.

Healing Is a Lifestyle

Think of trauma as disconnection and healing as reconnection. Trauma disconnected you from your body, your emotions, and your sense of safety and healing is the only way to reconnect. You are responsible for writing your story and that story is written in your daily choices - in how you breathe, how you rest, how you move, and how you show up for yourself, especially when no one’s watching.

So don’t wait another moment.
Start slow. Start with 2 minutes. Start where you are. Start today.