Trauma is a part of life. The word "trauma" comes from the Greek language, meaning "wound". We all have wounds because of our upbringing, our inherited traumas, and the difficulties that our society brings. You might have an idea of what "wounds" you need to heal in therapy, or you might not know why you are struggling. Trauma might be a once-off event (e. g. having your tonsils removed), or an accumulation of emotional hurts (e.g. having emotionally absent parents). The area of the brain that makes sense of things, giving meanings to your reality and remembering things, is not fully grown when you are a child, and inactive during stressful, traumatic situations as an adult. As a result, you may not have a typical memory of what happened to you in the past, but you will remember as feelings, impulses or sensations (fear, impulse to run away via addictions, muscle tension). These "memory feelings and sensations" will make you feel as if you were experiencing your hurt right now when you are triggered at work or by your family. But you are experiencing a feeling/sensation flashback.
Trauma is what you experience when you were not able to integrate past events that you interpreted as overwhelming and life-threatening. Your interpretation of the events will depend on your personality and your relationship to your primary caregivers (parents, grandparents, etc.).
It is as if you are living with the programming of a child or young version of yourself that activates with certain triggers. The programming was created by a child that needed it, but the circumstances have changed, and the programming needs upgrading.
Trauma can be resolved
Thoughts like "I am unlovable", behaviours like taking drugs, overwhelming emotions that make you feel needy are all symptoms of trauma. As a consequence of your experiences, you have created these thoughts, behaviours and emotional responses in your brain in order to survive. Thanks to them, your body survived. They saved your life and kept you sane. At present, they may be making your life very difficult, but this can be changed.
What happens in your brain?
When trauma happened, the areas of your brain that register events were either not fully developed (if you were a child) or inactive (if you were an adult), so you might not remember what happened to you as a story, but as body or feeling memories, as irrational beliefs about yourself. You can also remember it by nervous system activation.
The brain has an area that archives memories (hippocampus). I call this area the Librarian. The Librarian allows you to remember your first kiss, the first time you rode a bike, or how you met your best friend. The Librarian archives the information given by the prefrontal cortex, which I call the Wise Adult. When you are facing a threat, the Wise Adult is inactive, as all the energy of the body is needed to escape the threat. You don't need to think about how to avoid being run over by a car; you need to jump in order to avoid it. Your energy needs to be in your legs to jump, so before the Wise Adult can think, you are already safe. As a result, the Librarian may never get information from the Wise Adult about how the car was coming towards you, what colour it was and how the event happened, and this memory is never archived the way we understand memory.
When the Librarian archives the memories, we can recall them when we wish, and we know they are in the past. When the Librarian is not able to archive the memory because it didn't receive the information from the Wise Adult (as in the example), your brain has no way of knowing that this event is in the past. In fact, the memory is temporarily stored in the amygdala (which I call Scared Child) and other parts of your body. When you are triggered, the amygdala will sound the alarm, and the memory of the event will come unexpectedly in the form of flashbacks, anxiety, muscular tension, exhaustion, future expectation of danger, irrational beliefs, or panic attacks. You brain thinks you are in danger and the child programming that saved you in the past gets activated. You were smart at creating this programming as a child or young person, but you are now an adult and need an upgrade to an adult-like programming.
Why does it hurt so much?
Because you may not remember exactly what happened to you, but you remember in the form of feelings, sensations (shame, fear, a look, a smell), an expectation of danger or irrational beliefs ("I am not safe", "I am unlovable", "I need to keep a low profile"). You may never know what happened to you, but your distress will indicate that you have wounds that need healing.
The feeling, sensation or thought memories will be recalled when you are triggered by anything that may remotely remind you of your trauma. Your brain is trying to protect you from further harm because it doesn’t know that the trauma is over. The feelings belong to your past, but you will feel as if they are real now and you may give them an incorrect interpretation.
Example
For example, if your parents punished you harshly when you did something wrong as a child, you may be very afraid of making a mistake for fear of the consequences. As a result, you may keep a low profile, only engaging in activities that you truly master to avoid making mistakes, while a part of you is longing to expand to other areas, but too afraid of doing so.
You cannot change your past, but if you can manage to calm down while recalling the adverse events, your brain will start changing. This doesn't happen overnight. You need to get to know yourself and your triggers to calm the activation in your body when needed. This is called self-regulation. When you will learn to self-regulate better, you will be able to start healing your wounds, creating a new life, with increased self-confidence, better relationships, self-esteem, and a sense of purpose.
You need to upgrade your programming while calming your activation so that your child programming doesn't override the upgrade.
How You Can Heal
There are many ways of treating trauma. Research with brain scans has challenged our traditional view that talking about the past helps. This may not always be helpful. Sometimes it helps, but sometimes it can make things worse. Most trauma experts agree that these things help:
Creating Separation
Your wounds can only be healed while your "wise adult" (prefrontal cortex) is active. Activating your wise adult creates separation between yourself and your wounds, making it easier for you to look at them. There are different ways in which you can do this, and you can choose the one that feels best.
You can work with a sandtray, art or movement and speak about the different objects in the tray, pictures or movement and sensations instead of directly about yourself.
You can do meridian tapping or other energy tools and calm down the activation of your nervous system while you are recalling a difficult experience.
You can use "the language of the parts" and talk about your different parts to create separation between the part of you who knows how to heal, and the different parts that need attention or healing inside (your inner critic, your needy child, your scared part, your depressed part, etc.)
You can observe what is happening inside you while you speak about a particular topic, observing your sensations (areas of tension, aches, heartbeat, etc.).
These may be easy for some people, while it might be frustratingly difficult for others. Your first step in healing your traumas is exercising your ability to engage your "wise adult", creating separation between yourself and your wounds. You will stop feeling wounded. Instead, you will understand that you have wounds, and they can heal.
Having New Experiences
Your trauma is remembered in body sensations, feeling memories and irrational beliefs. You can heal if you can convince your brain that things are different now and you are safe. Because they are, but your brain doesn't know it yet. You need to experience it for your brain to truly believe it is over.
Having an attentive therapist accompanying you while you face your wounds can be in itself a new experience for you. But there are different ways in which a therapist can facilitate your healing.
You can express your feelings with art materials and release the emotional charge of your experiences.
You can use meridian tapping or other energy tools and release the emotional charge of the difficult events recalled.
You can use movement, letting your body express the "memories" that is holding while attentively observing that it is safe now.
You can enter into a conversation with your different parts and gain clarity about your internal conflict, creating a new experience for your hurt parts.
Each person will need a combination of these techniques, or different things at different times in your healing process. Be assured that you will only do what you feel comfortable and safe doing.
Self-acceptance
Two things need healing in therapy: your wounds and your adaptive responses to your wounds (symptoms). Once you accept that your symptoms are courageous attempts to survive a less-than-ideal past, you will be on the right path to heal.
You might hate your reactive behaviours, your body image, your panic attacks, negative thoughts or extreme fears, but they were all adaptive responses to survive your environment and get you where you are now. They serve as protectors against your distress. When you can accept them, and heal what lies behind, things may start changing, you may start feeling a different sense of self: calmer, curious, joyful, creative.
Feeling Safe
Taking the time to choose the right therapist for you will save you a lot of time and suffering in your healing. Every therapist will try to do its best, but you will not feel at ease with all of them. Pick a therapist that helps you feel at ease. Most therapists offer a brief telephone conversation so that you can have a sense of who they are, and a first assessment session where you can check if that is the person you would like to accompany you in your healing process.
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