Use the Law of Exposure for Self-Healing and Growth

What you expose yourself to shapes who you are. This is the Law of Exposure. 

If you want to use the Law of Exposure to overcome generational trauma, you’ll need to intentionally surround yourself with people, information, resources, and environments that support your healing, growth, and resilience. 

Here are some strategies for applying the Law of Exposure in positive ways to help you heal and grow holistically after trauma.

1. Choose supportive, growth-oriented communities.

• Expose yourself to groups focused on healing where people can share experiences and receive understanding and encouragement.
• Look for safe environments where respect and compassion are common values.
• Don’t sacrifice your peace for connection. Create your standards and boundaries ahead of time so you can filter out the right social groups for you.
• Stay away from support groups who only want to complain and commiserate unless you want more misery in your life.
• Sometimes finding communities is challenging, so when it's not clicking yet for you, keep working on yourself and other areas of your life that you can strengthen.

2. Surround yourself with growth-oriented relationships.

• Hang out with friends, colleagues and family members who are actively working on their self-healing, spiritual awakening and personal growth.
• Practice setting healthy boundaries and respecting those of others. Notice how people respond to your boundaries and how you respond to theirs.
• Choose individuals who have healthy habits and people you admire.
• Remember don't sacrifice your peace for connection. We all go through periods of recovery when we are called to have faith that the right connections will show up when we are ready. Meanwhile, keep doing the inner work. 
• Notice your old defense mechanisms and unhealthy relational dynamics when they show up in your relationships. Work on self-regulating your triggers and practicing direct communication as well as showing up in healthier ways that support healthy connection.
• Minimize your time and energy investments in negative and toxic people unless you want more of that in your life. This also includes not letting your mind focus on them even if they’re no longer in your life.

3. Challenge your limiting beliefs and replace them.

• Notice when you have negative programs pop up (ie: “I'm not worthy of mattering to someone else” or “it’s not even worth trying” or "I'll always be alone" or “it’s impossible to have reciprocal relationships”) and write these down.
• Reflect on where that program came from. Who or what experience taught you that? How has that pattern repeated in your life?
• Ask the Creator of All That Is to download you with a replacement program (ie: “it’s possible to have reciprocal relationships and I’m worthy of being in reciprocal relationships” or “I'm worthy of love" or "it's safe for me to be safe" or whatever comes to you through the Creator). 

4. Expose yourself to uplifting and educational information and content.

• Consciously choose the videos, podcasts, books and other media that you consume based on what you want to create in your life.
• It’s good to be informed without getting overwhelmed with fear, anger, stress or otherwise getting triggered. The goal is to find your personal balance between knowing what’s going on in the world AND choosing to create the life you want to live. How will you know? Listen to your Inner Dialogue and the things you say to other people.
• Pause before clicking and ask yourself what is your intention for watching/reading/listening to that. Is it only going to soothe your ego or reinforce your negative emotional state? When you're in a negative state, you'll feel a gravitational pull toward negative content. This requires self-discipline to re-direct yourself.
• Learn more about healing, spirituality, personal growth and other topics that you’re interested in, which support the person you want to become. Don't get carried away in all the ego fluffing stuff out there. You'll know it's stroking your ego when you're feeling superior or better than other people (and when you're feeling down, you'll feel inferior or worse than others).

5. Intentionally create your environment to support your growth.

• Reflect on what changes you can make at home to support healthy habits and a positive, growth-minded state (ie: what foods you have in the kitchen, the organization and cleanliness of your space, decluttering, a spot where you meditate and journal, etc).
• Carefully choose who you are living with and who you invite into your space. Notice how they affect you.
• Interrupt any self-critical or negative thoughts and say “cancel” or “delete” immediately then re-direct to a positive and constructive perspective. Your Inner Dialogue is a BIG part of your mental environment, which was programmed during past traumatic experiences. It's also a constant inventory of your belief programs. Be kind to yourself and treat yourself as you'd want someone else to treat you.
• Make some adjustments in colors, the arrangement of furniture, lighting, plants and other elements to create a safe space and a type of sanctuary that you love to be in because it makes you feel so good. Get rid of garbage and old junk that's just sitting around. Donate or trash gifts or other items that toxic people gave you because that stuff carries energy.
• Choose the places you work, play and visit based on how it supports your personal growth, wellbeing and goals.

6. Find positive role models and mentors to shift your perspective from limitation to possibility.

• Identify people who have overcome similar challenges that you have or have accomplished what you want to accomplish, and hire them or offer to volunteer for their organization in order to gain exposure to their culture and perspective.
• If you can’t find these people in real life yet, or can’t afford to hire them, then tune into these types of people online, read their books and do the practices they recommend to overcome your challenges. Learn from their examples and mistakes to expedite your journey.
• Notice what specifically you admire about them and want to cultivate more of in yourself and in your life. Reflect on their journey and how that can inspire you to transform your life.

7. Imagine your Future Self, the person you want to become.

• Take time every day, especially before falling asleep at night, to vividly imagine who you are becoming, the character you want to be. Take it in with all your senses.
• Think BIG, bold and brave… and I mean wayyy beyond where you are right now. It should be almost uncomfortably big. The bigger it is, the more it will make you realize that your current system isn’t going to get you there so you’ll need to be bolder and braver. Check out Dr. Benjamin Hardy's book Be Your Future Self Now.
• As you visualize your Future Self, imagine it’s already happening. Tell yourself “it’s done, it’s already happening.” This is what Neville Goddard called "living in the end."
• Anytime your mind distracts you or takes you back to the negative, cancel/delete that thought, then re-direct your focus to imagining what you want to create in your life and your Future Self.
• Dr. Benjamin Hardy asks, “Who are you being accountable to, your past self or your Future Self?” Check in with yourself throughout the day to see who you’re investing in.

To avoid using the Law of Exposure negatively when healing from generational trauma, it’s essential to steer clear of influences that might reinforce trauma patterns or hinder your growth.

Here are some common pitfalls to avoid:

1. Limit your exposure to negative and toxic relationships.

• Repeated exposure to people who engage in toxic behaviors—such as manipulation, criticism, complaining or undermining—can reinforce old trauma patterns, particularly if these behaviors are similar to dynamics experienced in the past.
• These relationships can re-trigger wounds and delay your healing.
• Contact with toxic individuals takes up space and energy that you could use to for creating as well as allowing for nurturing and supportive relationships to develop.

2. Avoid consuming media that reinforces fear or negativity.

• Content that is overly negative, violent, or fear-based can amplify anxiety and reinforce limiting beliefs about the world being unsafe or people being untrustworthy.
• While it’s healthy to stay informed and to have healthy discernment about the people, places and experiences you venture into, it’s essential to find your balance. This balance will differ person to person. 
• Limit your exposure to media that perpetuates stress or pessimism. You’ll know based on how you feel after exposing yourself to that information. You'll know if you're getting overwhelmed with worry, fear and despair through your Inner Dialogue and what you say to other people. You'll also know when you feel magnetized to engage in doom scrolling. Interrupt the pattern when you catch yourself.
• Look for uplifting, informative, or healing content that both acknowledges reality AND supports a positive mindset shift about what you can create. When we are in fear states, it's very difficult to access creativity, imagination, insights, intuition and other faculties of higher human consciousness.

3. Avoid replaying negative self-talk or self-blame.

• Undisciplined self-talk that’s programmed by unresolved trauma reinforces internalized beliefs about unworthiness or guilt.
• Persistent, negative self-talk often stems from generational trauma. It's usually the internalized voice/s of other people. Unsubscribe yourself from internalizing other people's emotions, thoughts, opinions, pain and projections.
• Self-criticism and harshness toward self can become a toxic cycle, re-triggering feelings of shame, rejection and unworthiness.
• Practice mental ninja tactics to cancel/delete negative thoughts and then reframe them to something positive and constructive. This will help you build a more compassionate self-perception and a kinder relationship with yourself. 

4. Minimize time in environments that do not support healing.

• Environments that feel chaotic, unsupportive, or unsafe, can perpetuate stress responses tied to past trauma.
• Recognize and limit time that you spend in such spaces, particularly those that remind you of past trauma experiences. It may not mean that certain people or places are bad, but the space or relational dynamic may not be healthy for you.
• Give yourself permission to honor your standards and set your boundaries accordingly. It's okay if other people don't understand. You don't owe them an explanation.
• Opt for spaces and places that evoke calm, safety, and connection in order to reinforce your healing and inner peace rather than perpetuating stress. 
• This can be very personal and relative to your own journey, which may differ from other people. 

5. Avoid rehashing trauma excessively without supportive processing.

• While reflecting on past traumas can be part of the healing process, repetitive storytelling and repeatedly focusing on painful memories can re-expose you to unresolved pain and further convince you that you are powerless, which keeps you stuck in the learned helplessness.
• Be leery of support groups where people only vent and tell their trauma stories. That might initially feel good to your ego, but it will become toxic, reinforcing the misery, suffering and struggle.
• It’s helpful to process trauma constructively, such as through coaching, therapy, courses, growth-oriented support groups or journaling, to ensure that exposure to your past leads to growth rather than re-traumatization.

6. Steer clear of negativity or cynicism in peer circles.

• Surrounding yourself with people who constantly complain, gossip or speak cynically about life can reinforce a mindset of hopelessness or victimhood.
• A focus on shared negativity, or bonding over similar traumas, can prevent movement toward growth and healing. Many people fall into the trap of wanting to be with people who went through the same painful experiences, and when the past is still unresolved, it's more like trauma meets trauma, which will cause more trauma. 
• Seek to create relationships with people who emphasize growth and resilience so you can shift your exposure toward a more hopeful and empowering perspective. If you don't know any people like that yet, start becoming that person for yourself so you can attract people like that.

7. Avoid excessive exposure to high-stress stimuli.

• Exposure to high-stress activities, environments, or even types of work and workplaces that continuously activate a stress response can disrupt your healing process.
• Some stress is good for evolution and growth. However, chronic stress can keep your nervous system in a heightened state of reactivity and defensiveness, preventing the trauma from being processed. When you’re in a state of fight, flight, freeze or fawn you’re not processing trauma, you’re re-living it.
• Check yourself when you notice that you're putting yourself in intense situations to prove you're strong or capable. Reflect on why that's motivating for you and who you're trying to prove yourself to. Usually that's one of your parents and a dysfunctional habit developed since childhood to prove that you're worthy.
• Prioritize activities and environments that allow for relaxation, concentration, self-regulation and growth, as well as where it feels like it supports your stability, safety and healing.

By mindfully choosing positive exposure and eliminating negative exposure, you can create a nurturing physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual environment that fosters your growth, healing and resilience.

The Law of Exposure is always working. Use it to work for you instead of against you.