Trauma Healing Mistakes That Keep You Stuck

Oh my goodness, can we talk about this?

I've been in rooms where therapists are pushing clients to "process their trauma" when their nervous system is literally screaming "I'm not safe enough for this!" It breaks my heart because I know they mean well, but we're missing something crucial about how healing actually works.

Let me tell you about Sarah (name changed), a Type 6 therapist who came to me completely burned out. She'd been in therapy for two years, doing all the "right" things—EMDR, somatic work, parts work—but somehow felt worse. Why? Because everyone skipped the most important step: helping her nervous system feel safe first. Her hypervigilant system couldn't integrate new insights because it was too busy scanning for threats.

Here's what I see happening everywhere:

Mistake #1: Jumping straight to processing. Your nervous system has one job: keep you alive. When it's dysregulated, it can't learn, integrate, or heal—it can only survive. I learned this the hard way in my own healing journey. As a Type 3, I wanted to "optimize" my trauma work, get the insights quickly, and move on. But my nervous system needed time to trust that slowing down was actually safe.

Mistake #2: Making our protective patterns wrong. Listen, your hypervigilance isn't a disorder—it's your nervous system's security system doing exactly what it was designed to do. When we pathologize these responses, we're literally telling someone their survival mechanism is broken. The polyvagal theory research shows us that these responses are adaptive, not pathological.

Mistake #3: Using cookie-cutter approaches. What regulates my intense Type 3 nervous system would probably overwhelm a gentle Type 9. What helps a Type 5 feel grounded might feel suffocating to a Type 7. We're treating nervous systems like they're all the same when neuroscience clearly shows us they're as unique as fingerprints.

The Enneagram gives us a roadmap that actually honors how your specific nervous system works. When we stop fighting against our protective patterns and start collaborating with them, healing becomes so much more gentle—and effective.