Trauma

 

When we experience trauma in childhood (e.g., childhood abuse), it shapes how we develop and how we learn about the world around us. If we experience, witness, or are exposed to details of a traumatic event(s) later in life (e.g., rape, assault, tragic death of a loved one, working in the capacity of a first responder), it can fundamentally change how we view ourselves, other people, and the world. We might start to feel like the world is unsafe, that other people cannot be trusted, or that what happened is our fault. Our minds generate memories, thoughts, or images of what happened, and these reminders can cause any number of intense emotions, including fear, anger, guilt, and shame. We are constantly on high alert for anything bad that might happen. We startle more easily. We might switch into “fight mode” to protect ourselves. Sometimes these memories, thoughts, feelings, and situations overwhelm us like a tsunami wave. They pull us in and make us feel like we are drowning.

It is like you are watching a horror movie, alone, in an abandoned house, in the dark. Except this is not a movie. It is your life, and this really happened to you.

We start to do things to protect ourselves and the people we care about. We avoid the people, places, and things that remind us of what happened to try to stop all the difficult feelings, thoughts, and memories from showing up. Sometimes we resort to drugs or alcohol to do this. As we allow our mind to take control over what we do and what we say, our life begins to narrow and becomes less enriching. We might withdraw from relationships and stop doing the things we enjoy.

The animation below, created by Dr. Russ Harris, uses a metaphor of a chess board to describe how we struggle with our internal experiences and what we can do instead.

 
 

What is trauma?

An individual might develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) if they witness or are involved in a life-threatening event(s) or are repeatedly exposed to details of highly distressing events (e.g., as is the case if you are a first responder). This is a very narrow definition of trauma, however. Trauma can include anything that causes or threatens serious physical or psychological harm, and the effects of trauma can manifest in many different ways, such as post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, complicated grief, aggression, relationship problems, self-harm, and drug or alcohol addiction.

Having difficult emotions, thoughts, and memories about these events is a completely normal and understandable reaction. If you could not save someone from a burning building or you were assaulted repeatedly at the hands of a partner, having nightmares and flashbacks are completely understandable. Maybe you went through a bitter divorce, and now everything you look at reminds you of them. You feel angry, depressed, and exhausted as you find yourself grieving the loss of an important relationship. Again, these are all normal, human reactions to loss. When it becomes difficult for us to cope with these internal experiences, however - when we allow them to jerk us around and pull us away from what is important to us - the quality of our life decreases.

My Approach

  • Using the arrows, scroll through the slides to learn more about my approach.

  • I work with whatever is showing up in the room during the session. This is especially important for trauma work because, as I noted above, trauma responses can be wide-ranging. Limiting ourselves to a narrow definition of trauma, whereby we are working solely to address PTSD symptoms, means that we are missing out on the big picture (i.e., living a meaningful life). This narrow definition also excludes people who have had traumatic experiences but their symptoms manifest differently.

  • We can think about our brain as a filing cabinet, with all our experiences (files) placed in an appropriately labelled folder. We don’t have a folder for trauma, so the file sits on top of our desk until we do something with it. We try to shove it in another drawer or maybe stick it under a stack of pictures on the desk, but it doesn’t belong in those places. Eventually we need to open that drawer for other things, or we want to reminisce by going through old pictures, and – bam – there it is. What we thought was safely buried is in our face once again, and now it is impossible to concentrate on what we were doing in the first place.

  • What we need to do is create space in the filing cabinet for a new folder. Creating space does not mean we are giving up or saying that what happened to us is okay or acceptable. It is not. What we are doing is creating a place where it can be held safely without overwhelming us to the point that we cannot do the things that are important to us, like sorting through that stack of pictures.

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