It Doesn't Hurt Me. I Am Traumatic

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

A person who has suffered, but did not survive, emotional trauma can be blocked, frozen feelings. Outwardly, a person can look calm, balanced, communicate with people, maintain social contacts. But if you look closely, it turns out that he does not let anyone close to him. Contacts with people are superficial, the deep need for intimacy is not satisfied. Easily communicating on the topic of “nature and weather,” the traumatic person carefully protects the inner world that is in contact with the topic of trauma, constructing a powerful protective wall inside himself. Once, in a situation of trauma, there were too many feelings, the intensity of the experiences was on the verge of tolerance.

How does this happen?

Trauma appears in the place where there is a collision of reality and internal attitudes, values, any knowledge about oneself and the world. A traumatic reaction to an event develops when this reality cannot be accepted. Either events develop too quickly, information and emotions do not have time to be processed, or there are not enough resources for processing, living. In the first case, we can talk more about shock injury, in the second, developmental injury is more likely. Shock trauma is an event that dramatically changes a person's life. Rape, car accident, sudden death of a loved one are traumatic events. Sometimes a shock trauma can be betrayal, divorce, job loss - this largely depends on the accompanying factors, on the life situation in which the person is and his personality characteristics. Developmental trauma is a trauma extended in time, when the intensity of experiences per unit of time may not be high, but accumulating, leads to a destructive effect.

One gets the impression that "I am wrong" or "the world is wrong" is a strong inner conflict that can be very painful and difficult to live through. To block, to split off emotions from oneself at that moment was necessary for self-preservation. It may even seem to a person that nothing terrible has happened, that the situation is over and everything is already in the past and you can just live. However, it just doesn't work out for some reason. Periodically, memories come up, some random events, things suddenly cause a strong emotional reaction.

His emotions are frozen, his sensitivity is reduced. A person lives as if half-heartedly, breathes with the tops of the lungs. Avoiding deep breaths because it can hurt. And then it seems that it is easier not to feel at all, to remove emotions from your life - this is a kind of anesthesia that protects against fear, anger, guilt …

Why doesn't it work? It is impossible to block emotions selectively, you cannot give up the experience of anger and leave love - feelings come in a set. By rejecting the "bad" ones, we automatically deprive ourselves of the good ones. Communication turns into a dry retelling of life events, sometimes with a tinge of cynicism. A person devalues his own pain and does not notice it in others.

For example, having experienced childhood violence, a person may reason about the benefits of this approach to parenting. “They beat me, punished me with a belt and nothing (no big deal) - I grew up as a man. And I will beat my children. Thus, bringing violence closer to normal, denying their own pain and fear - unbearable feelings in childhood.

A woman who is faced with rudeness and rudeness, an inhuman attitude of doctors in childbirth, traumatized by this, can then say: "It's okay, before they gave birth in the furrow, but modern women have become sissies."

Why is the splitting off of these painful feelings so terrible?

First, it significantly impoverishes one's own life, deprives it of color. Makes the process of life mechanistic, empty.

Secondly, unconsciously, we still strive to get rid of pain, to live it. Because of this, a person can regularly find himself in situations in which the trauma, one way or another, is repeated. This happens unconsciously, in the hope of living through the trauma with a different outcome, more prosperous. And thereby restore your own integrity, regain yourself.

Unfortunately, this often leads to retraumatization - repeated trauma "in the same place." This happens because there is no personal resource for living in an emotionally tense situation, there is not enough strength, and there is no support from others - they either do not know that the traumatic person needs it, or he cannot accept it, does not know how to do this, and unconsciously rejects it. The situation is aggravated by the fact that most of the experiences are not only not voiced, but also not realized, not internally recognized. And it seems that events are a set of unfortunate accidents.

What can you do about it?

The injury needs to be worked out. And in a professional one.

In this work, it is important to take into account one more feature of the traumatic. It doesn't hurt him! More precisely, it seems that he is not in pain, but in fact the pain is so well packaged. Such clients open up easily, boldly meet their pain, seem to be very persistent and unperturbed. If the psychologist's sensitivity and experience are not enough to recognize this, then the client, in contact with his traumatic experience, is left alone, without support and resources. The resource was spent on the story, on gathering strength, reaching the psychologist, sitting down on a chair and just explaining everything. Everything! The reserves are depleted. And from the outside it may seem that he is normal and strong enough. Taking into account the fact that the traumatist has a reduced sensitivity to his own pain, the feelings are blocked, there is a possibility of getting into re-trauma right in the psychologist's office.

How to overcome this?

In trauma therapy, the pace of convergence and the gradual development of trust between the client and the psychologist are important, which takes time and patience. Don't dive deep right away - it can be painful.

If the approach to trauma is too intense, the client will lose his old ways of protecting himself from trauma, but he will not have time to build up new ones. Despite the fact that the blocking of experiences, emotional anesthesia, allowed me to keep myself within the framework, not to fall apart. She protected from unnecessary attention and unnecessary questions. For additional pain. It is like a crust on a wound - it protects what is tender inside. First, you need to get stronger inside, so that the wounds heal, they overgrow with new skin, and then get rid of the crust.

If, in intensive work, you sharply deprive an injured person of his "wrong" defenses, even from the best intentions, then you can get a new injury in the old place. Yes, sometimes an approach aimed at "open your eyes", "understand that you yourself are evil Pinocchio" and other shock therapy can work. But not in the case of psychological trauma. In trauma, only carefully, carefully and gradually.

To immerse yourself in trauma requires accumulated resources. One of these resources is trust in the psychologist, confidence in his competence and stability. That he will not be afraid, will not run away, will not give up and will understand correctly. That will not shame or blame. As a rule, such confidence is gained not by one conversation, but in the course of a number of "checks". Without forcing events, you can first gain strength, and then come into contact with complex topics. In my experience, the more painful a topic is, the deeper it is, the more time and attention a relationship needs, security, and trust. This does not mean at all that all meetings are devoted to getting to know each other and getting used to each other. You can start work with less significant topics - they are used to test the relationship, the work style of the psychologist, his pace, his attention to the client.

I will add that it would be good for the client to feel, listen to himself, focus on his feelings, and learn to trust them when working with a psychologist. Talk about them and your desires to another. Not just to complete tasks, but with an eye on yourself - what they are for me, what they give, what I learn about myself. Listen to yourself at least at the level of your own comfort or discomfort - how tolerable it is.

Living a traumatic experience with the support of a psychologist, a person frees a huge piece of his soul, gains integrity. And along with this, a significant amount of vital energy. I want to live, love, create, do what I love. New ideas, ideas and forces for their implementation appear. Sensitivity reappears, the ability to experience emotions, to live them without running away from their own feelings in all their diversity. Relations with people are qualitatively different, deeper and more interesting.

Your own body is felt in a new way - strong, beautiful and harmonious. This can be compared to the feeling when you go out of a stuffy room with stale air into a pine forest after a summer thunderstorm. The sense of self changes so dramatically when experiencing trauma.

Perhaps these acquisitions are worth the effort that goes with working with yourself? It seems to me they are!