What has helped YOU find joy in life?

This is my favorite tool! I could write for days about this topic. It utilizes creativity, personal choice, and psychology. This helped me far more than anything next to challenging my body learning aerial arts. This is a long read but it’s joyful and extremely helpful. Enjoy. 🫶🏼 There is a fun activity at the end. Many people who are healing from complex post traumatic stress disorder or other mental health issues spend years studying trauma, understanding the nervous system, and learning why their body reacts the way it does. That knowledge is important. But at some point in the healing journey, something equally powerful begins to emerge. The ability to intentionally create positive experiences inside the brain and body. Positivity is often misunderstood. It is not about ignoring reality. It is not about pretending life is perfect. It is not about forcing happiness when you feel something else. True positivity is a practice. It is the intentional creation of mental and emotional environments that help the nervous system recognize safety, stability, and possibility. For someone healing from complex trauma, positivity becomes less about mood and more about regulation. It becomes a tool that helps retrain the brain toward balance. When the nervous system experiences repeated positive states, even small ones, the brain begins to shift. New neural pathways begin forming. The body begins learning that calm, safety, and hope are not temporary accidents. They can become familiar places to return to. This is the power of positivity in healing. One of the most important things to understand is that the brain does not only respond to danger. It also responds strongly to safety and pleasure. When the brain experiences something positive, chemicals such as dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin begin to circulate through the nervous system. These chemicals help regulate mood, stabilize emotions, and promote feelings of connection and wellbeing. These states send signals through the vagus nerve, which is one of the primary communication highways between the brain and the body. When positive states are repeated often enough, the nervous system begins to favor regulation rather than constant alertness.