Trauma: Best Friend And Worst Enemy Rolled Into One

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

I say trauma, although I do not mean it as an event, but its consequences. Various injuries happen to a person throughout his life from the very beginning, long-term consequences from an injury arise if there are two conditions:

1. To digest the trauma for the psyche turned out to be an overwhelming task.

2. No one helped the person / child to cope with it.

Children can go through very difficult things if there is an adult nearby who will provide help and psychological support. However, many children live in families with an atmosphere of violence and abandonment, and in such families the impact and consequences of violence and abandonment are either ignored or significantly downplayed.

The legacy of trauma, its consequences include the following:

1. The shock itself from the events experienced. Destruction of the picture of the world, in which the world is a good, safe, prosperous place, in which justice reigns.

2. Feelings of helplessness and powerlessness to protect yourself.

3. A feeling of total, crushing loneliness.

4. A new image of your own self, which is built on the basis of the trauma and which answers the question "Why did this happen to me?" The answer to this question is: "Because you are bad, ugly, unworthy, useless and worthless."

5. New rules of life that are formed on the basis of a traumatic experience and answer the question "How should one live so that the trauma does not repeat itself." Usually the rules include items such as "Avoid proximity", "Do not show your emotions", "Move less and do not attract attention", "Hide from people and life."

The last points are the action of the defense mechanism. The same Guardian (according to Kalshed).

The main task of this mechanism is to protect a person. In this sense, he acts like a best friend. She tries to give him a sense of control in the chaos, convincing him that it's all about him. He is bad, therefore something terrible has been done to him, therefore, you have to become good - and then the terrible will not happen again. She tries to protect him from pain in the future, suggesting that close relationships should be avoided, because it is the loved ones who abandon, rape, ignore, there will be no close relationship - there will never be pain again.

Unfortunately, both the conclusions about oneself drawn from the trauma and the new rules of life contain fatal logical errors, and as a result, in the long term, they lead to the opposite effect: the more a person relies on these rules, the more often he finds himself in the situation that he is trying to avoid with all his might. If he is afraid that he will be abandoned again, he behaves this way and chooses such partners for himself, which ultimately ends up being abandoned. If he was physically abused, he will again and again find himself in a situation of violence, following the rules that in essence try to save him from violence.

Why don't the rules work? Because:

1. They are created taking into account the knowledge about the world and life that the child had at that time. That is, these are the rules deduced by an infant, two-year-old, preschooler, and you cannot build your adult life on their basis.

2. They are based on false assumptions. The trauma did not happen because the child was bad and unworthy. He could have been anything, it would have happened anyway. It is not intimacy itself that brings pain, but intimacy with dangerous and unreliable people. Etc.

3. They are derived on the basis of relationships with specific people at a specific point in time, and then they are transferred to the whole world and all people without exception.

Indeed, it was necessary to hide from a drunk father or a crazy mother as quickly as possible and in no case show them my feelings, because this is all a child can do. An adult can do much more to protect himself, but by continuing to hide from everyone, continuing to hide his feelings and isolate himself from the world, he is not safe, but alone, without help and support.

Traumatized people very often isolate themselves from everyone, do not maintain contact with people, run away from those who try to be friends with them and love them. They often say that they prefer being alone, when in fact they do not want to be alone. They want to avoid pain. But isolating themselves from the world and refusing relationships, from help and support, from the feeling of their connection with people and the world, they live in a state of chronic pain of loneliness and helplessness. That is, exactly what they would like to avoid by all means.

So the trauma that tries to become the best friend becomes the worst enemy. It cuts off a person's path to healing, closing off relationships with people, contact with the world and the opportunity to give their wounded part enough love and support to heal it. She, the wounded part, remains a prisoner inside, lives there without light and heat, without access to help. As much as a person wants to be healed, as much as he is afraid of the repetition of pain, and as much as he tries to avoid pain, just as much he continues to get into situations where over and over again he experiences it again.

This is scary, because it looks like when you shoot back from the enemy, and all the bullets at the same time fly into your heart.

From my own experience, I know that every traumatic person believes their trauma more than they believe anyone else. He doesn't trust other people, he doesn't trust himself, he doesn't even trust God - but he firmly, religiously believes in trauma. To such an extent that he is literally ready to die, to lay down his whole life in order to stay true to his trauma, his convictions ("I am bad and unworthy") and his rules of life ("No one can be trusted, enemies are everywhere"). He remains faithful to these postulates to such an extent that he can create enemies for himself and the proof of his own unworthiness literally out of thin air

There are times when his head and soul become a little clearer, and he realizes that it is impossible to live like this, that he drives himself into a coffin and deprives himself of the opportunity to build a good, safe life, which has everything you need. Very often traumatics are well aware of what is happening to them, they understand the cause-and-effect relationships with their heads and, on a purely intellectual level, see what they are doing wrong. They can thoroughly know everything, everything, everything about their injury. Unfortunately, understanding alone is not enough. Trauma is experience, and the legacy of trauma is that which grows out of experience. The legacy of experience can only be healed by new experience, lived in detail and felt many, many, many times.

Those who tried to save traumatics and warm them with their love know very well: you can love him as much as you never did, you can take care of him and support him, and do it for years. Only this will almost never change anything. He will continue to feel abandoned and unloved, and believe that there are enemies around. All the love given to him, all the warmth will fly away as into a black hole, into a bottomless well, even without touching his pain and comforting it.

You cannot save someone who has not made the decision to save himself and be saved. A person can save himself only himself, while other people can only help him on this path and support him, but they cannot do his work for him. He is the only one who can do this inner work and walk this healing path, step by step

Usually people ask two questions:

1. How can we help a traumatic person?

I would say that the best way to help him is to go to therapy on your own or by yourself. You are not just in this relationship. In them it is very easy to convince yourself that the sick and the broken is him, and the normal and strong are you who are saving him. In fact, you most likely have the same problems. So by starting to work on yours, you can inspire him to heal by your example, your strengthening healthy part of the personality. This is the best you can do for him.

2. How to heal your trauma?

I don’t know other ways besides therapy. Almost all trauma occurs in the context of a relationship, so it can only be healed by a relationship, which is what happens in therapy, within the therapeutic framework. Ordinary human - hardly. As I said above, the same traumatic person usually gets in a pair with a traumatic person, and one blind man lost in the forest will not lead the blind man out of the forest. They can only wander together and get lost even more. In addition, working with a traumatic person is hard, exhausting work. It should be left to specialists.

3. Why be healed at all?

Ask yourself what is most important to you? All my life, the most important thing was to avoid pain, you are used to that this is your main motivation. But behind her, under her, in your heart of hearts, you do not want this at all. You want your injured part to be better, so that it does not feel so painful and lonely. Then ask yourself how much support and love did she receive while you were living with your trauma and not trying to heal it? Do you want it to be this way forever? Is it worth the opportunity to give your wounded part the long-awaited warmth and care of the risks that will have to be taken in order to heal?

In my opinion, it's worth it.