Mental Wellness Month Through a Trauma Lens: Small Habits That Actually Support Healing

By Jen Bennethum

January brings a flood of wellness advice that often feels like one more demand on an already overwhelmed system. For those of us working from a trauma-informed lens, we know that healing doesn't come from adding more to our plates—it comes from creating tiny moments of safety that help our bodies remember they're allowed to rest. The "Little Things" campaign this year offers us an invitation to reconsider what wellness really means when your body has learned that the world isn't always safe.

"Glimmers are those micro-moments of safety, connection, and ease that signal to your nervous system, 'You're okay.' They're the opposite of triggers—small, often subtle experiences that help your body shift out of fight-or-flight and into a state of calm and regulation." — Deb Dana, LCSW, author of The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy

Movement as Regulation, Not Performance

When we talk about movement through a trauma lens, we're not talking about crushing workouts or meeting step goals. We're talking about gentle activation that helps you feel your edges again. Trauma often leaves us disconnected from our bodies—either too activated or too shut down. We might feel nothing at all, living from the neck up, or we might feel everything too intensely. Movement becomes medicine when it helps us titrate between these states.

The challenge is that traditional exercise can actually be retraumatizing. Breathlessness might trigger panic. Increased heart rate might feel like danger. Being aware of your body might bring up sensations you've worked hard to avoid. This is why we start with micro-movements—tiny experiments in inhabiting our bodies again.

This might look like swaying to one song in your kitchen, letting your body move however feels good without any agenda. It might be tensing and releasing your shoulders while sitting at your desk, teaching your muscles they can hold and then let go. It might be a walk where you practice stopping the moment your body says "enough," even if that's just to the mailbox. Some days, movement might be stretching in bed, feeling the way your muscles respond to gentle attention. Other days, it might be dancing wildly in your living room, letting your body remember joy.

The goal isn't fitness—it's teaching your nervous system that you can move and still be safe, that you can activate and then return to calm. Each time you honor your body's cues to stop or slow down, you're rebuilding interoception—the ability to feel and interpret your body's signals. This is foundational to healing, because a body that can feel can also tell you what it needs.

Sleep as Safety

Sleep is perhaps the most vulnerable thing we do. We close our eyes, lower our defenses, and trust the world to hold us for eight hours. For trauma survivors, this ask can feel impossible. The body that's been hurt doesn't easily surrender its vigilance. Traditional sleep hygiene tips—no screens, consistent bedtime, cool room—miss the deeper issue: your nervous system needs to believe it's safe enough to power down.

Hypervigilance doesn't clock out at bedtime. Your body might be exhausted, desperate for rest, while your nervous system runs its ancient program: stay alert, stay alive. You might find yourself checking locks repeatedly, startling at small sounds, or lying in bed with racing thoughts that feel urgent even when they're not. This isn't insomnia in the traditional sense—it's a body that hasn't gotten the memo that the threat has passed.

Creating safety for sleep might mean weighted blankets that provide deep pressure input, telling your nervous system "you're held." It might mean leaving a light on, because darkness was when bad things happened. It might mean having your back against a wall, or your bedroom door locked, or a pet nearby—whatever helps your primal brain relax its guard. Some find that progressive muscle relaxation helps, systematically tensing and releasing to remind the body it can let go. Others need white noise to mask triggering sounds or provide predictable input.

Start where you are. If eight hours feels impossible, what about resting with eyes closed for twenty minutes? If the bedroom feels unsafe, could the couch feel better? If nighttime is too activated, could you practice rest during daylight? Each night you survive becomes evidence that letting go doesn't mean danger. Over time, these small experiences of safe rest can rewire your nervous system's relationship with vulnerability.

Reducing Nervous System Volatility

As we move into January, many people are exploring Dry January or sober curious movements. From a trauma perspective, this isn't about moral judgments or willpower—it's about understanding how substances affect our window of tolerance. Alcohol might feel like borrowed calm in the moment, but it often increases nervous system volatility over time. It's like taking out a high-interest loan on regulation.

For many trauma survivors, substances begin as adaptive strategies. When your nervous system is constantly flooded or shut down, alcohol can feel like the only thing that brings you back to baseline. It might be the only way you've found to quiet racing thoughts, to feel your body without panic, or to access emotions that otherwise feel frozen. This isn't weakness—it's resourcefulness in the face of an overwhelming internal experience.

The problem is that alcohol is a nervous system depressant with a rebound effect. It might calm anxiety temporarily, but as it metabolizes, your system often swings into higher activation—disrupted sleep, increased anxiety, emotional volatility. For a nervous system already struggling to find balance, this creates more chaos. You might find yourself needing more to achieve the same relief, or caught in cycles of using alcohol to manage the very symptoms it's exacerbating.

Reducing or eliminating alcohol isn't about perfection—it's about giving your nervous system the best chance at finding its own rhythm. When we remove substances that create artificial highs and lows, we create space for our bodies to practice authentic regulation. This might feel uncomfortable at first. You might meet the anxiety you've been numbing, the grief you've been avoiding, or the hypervigilance you've been sedating. That discomfort is often your nervous system learning to make its own calm rather than borrowing it.

If you're exploring this, be gentle. Maybe start with alcohol-free days rather than a whole month. Notice what comes up in the spaces where you'd usually drink. What other forms of nervous system support might help? Maybe it's a hot bath, a cold plunge, intense exercise, or gentle breathing. The goal isn't to white-knuckle through discomfort but to slowly build a toolkit of regulation strategies that don't leave you depleted the next day.

Talking About Problems in Safe Relationships

Perhaps the most powerful "little thing" is the practice of speaking our truth in relationships that can hold it. Trauma teaches us that vulnerability is dangerous, that our pain is too much, that we need to manage everything alone. We might have learned that sharing our struggles leads to being dismissed, fixed, or abandoned. Healing happens when we risk small shares with safe people—not dumping everything at once, but titrating disclosure just like we titrate movement.

The challenge is that trauma often damages our safety radar. We might overshare with people who haven't earned that level of intimacy, then feel exposed and ashamed. Or we might keep everything locked inside, even with people who've proven themselves trustworthy over years. Sometimes we're drawn to relationships that feel familiar in their lack of safety, mistaking intensity for connection or drama for depth.

A safe relationship is one where your "no" is respected without punishment or withdrawal. It's where your feelings aren't immediately fixed, minimized, or made about the other person. It's where you can share something vulnerable and watch how they hold it—do they gossip about it later? Do they use it against you in arguments? Do they dismiss it as "not that bad"? Or do they honor the trust you've placed in them by simply witnessing?

Safe people have their own emotional regulation. They don't need you to be okay for them to be okay. They can hear about your pain without immediately sharing their own bigger pain. They can sit with discomfort without rushing to silver linings. They demonstrate through actions, not just words, that your feelings are valid even when they're inconvenient.

Start small. Maybe it's telling a friend "I'm having a hard day" without explaining why. Maybe it's admitting to your therapist that you didn't do the homework. Maybe it's saying "that hurt my feelings" to someone who usually receives feedback well. Each of these moments is a tiny experiment in relational safety. Your body is watching, gathering data: what happens when I'm real?

Some people will fail these tests. They'll minimize, deflect, or make it about them. This isn't necessarily malicious—they might be fighting their own battles with vulnerability. But it is information. Your healing doesn't require you to keep offering vulnerability to people who can't receive it. Boundaries aren't walls; they're simply acknowledging what each relationship can actually hold.

Remember: you might need to be selective about what you share with whom. Your work friend might be safe for workplace struggles but not family trauma. Your sister might hold your childhood memories but not understand your marriage. This isn't about ranking relationships—it's about recognizing that different people have different capacities, and that's okay.

Summary: Moving Forward with Compassion

The Little Things campaign reminds us that healing happens in moments, not marathons. From a trauma-informed perspective, these aren't small steps toward big goals—they're tiny practices of safety that accumulate into a life that feels liveable. Each gentle movement, each night of rest, each day without numbing, each vulnerable share—these aren't achievements to check off. They're experiments in being human after experiences that made us feel anything but.

This January, instead of adding more to your wellness routine, consider what you might gently release. What would create more space for your nervous system to settle? What tiny thing would help your body believe, even for a moment, that the danger has passed?

Maybe it's moving for two minutes without checking your form. Maybe it's lying down even if sleep won't come. Maybe it's one evening without the wine, just to see what emerges. Maybe it's texting "I'm struggling today" to someone who's earned your trust.

That's where healing lives—not in grand gestures, but in the accumulated evidence of small safeties that teach us we're allowed to finally come home to ourselves. In a world that often feels too fast, too much, too demanding, these little things become revolutionary acts of self-preservation and hope. They whisper to our weary nervous systems: you survived, and now, slowly, gently, one breath at a time, you get to learn what it means to truly live. If you have any questions or would like us to walk with you on your journey to wholeness please feel free to reach out to us at Integrate Therapy and Wellness Collective.