Psychological Trauma: The Essence Of The Phenomenon And Defense Mechanisms

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Video: Psychological Trauma: The Essence Of The Phenomenon And Defense Mechanisms

Video: Psychological Trauma: The Essence Of The Phenomenon And Defense Mechanisms
Video: 10 Psychological Defense Mechanisms 2024, March
Psychological Trauma: The Essence Of The Phenomenon And Defense Mechanisms
Psychological Trauma: The Essence Of The Phenomenon And Defense Mechanisms
Anonim

My professional path is so arranged that I do not often have inquiries with everyday problems. There are, of course, relationship problems and a personal crisis, but more often people who have faced the consequences of old or recent psychological trauma come to me. Today we will talk about what it is, how to recognize psychological trauma and how our psyche protects itself from it.

Why do I once again talk about sad things in my blog? Because each of us has experience. And experience is often mistakes, disappointments, and pain. And ranting about how you need to live today and think about the good - they do not work if there is a wound and it hurts. Thinking positively doesn't help if you've been hungry for years. It can be compared to physical hunger. Is it from reasonable assurances about the possibility of food in the future or from talking about how you just need to not think about food - your stomach will stop hurting? No. There will be anger and resentment. That is why we are talking about pain. Therefore, I am not writing about the wonders of positive thinking.

What is psychological trauma

Often, psychological trauma is considered an event that is caused by shock information, an internal catastrophe and is, if not an isolated, then at least episodic experience. But this is only half the truth. The other half is that trauma is any experience that has brought us emotional pain, that has negatively affected your life in some way and continues to be reflected for a long time.

Such psychological trauma can be a single event, for example, in the case of social, physical or emotional abuse, which runs counter to your entire past life.

Trauma can be of two types:

1. Shock - as the name implies, this is a stressful event of tremendous emotional intensity, which happened once and has very specific time boundaries. It is easy to define such an injury. A person usually remembers the time of the beginning of the traumatic event, can approximately or accurately describe the nature of the event, and determines the moment of the end. An example of such a trauma is terracotta, exclusion, the death of a loved one. Usually, there is a lot of specifics in dealing with shock trauma, which makes working with it much clearer than the following.

2. Cumulative trauma is a much more complex mechanism of injury. This is a prolonged stay under stress. The first episode may have the character of shock trauma, but more often the person says "it has always been." This can include domestic violence, devaluation, being in a situation of bullying or other form of psychological abuse. Each individual element is not that powerful on its own. But “water wears away the stone,” and when the injury “drips” into the same place, a wound is formed. The worst thing about this type of trauma is that it is often the only human norm. And dealing with cumulative trauma takes longer.

Basically, an injury is an open wound that bleeds constantly and heals up from time to time. But at the slightest "push" it opens again.

When a person comes to me whose wound hurts so much that he is ready to do anything to root out the pain - I understand that we have a long and difficult path ahead of us. To be honest, not every client is ready to take this path. Every time I meet with the client's willingness to go deep into himself, to take out pain and transform it into experience, I rejoice in the transformations that will occur with sufficient patience.

Defense mechanisms

Why is this work often time-consuming? The fact is that our psyche is designed in such a way that when faced with intolerable feelings, it forms a powerful defense against them. This helps us to cope in the very first stages - at the stage of denial and shock. In a state of stress, our psyche is not able to understand, realize and cope with such severe pain. This defense mechanism can be in the nature of denial, repression, depreciation, replacement, fading. During this period, we seem to ourselves incredibly efficient and kind of coping well. This is because shock acts as a pain reliever. You can compare this effect with the absence of pain in the first seconds after a severe car accident, loss of a limb. Only there certain substances work in the brain, and defense mechanisms work in the psyche.

Time passes, the shock and the defense mechanism becomes more permeable. It still works, but the crisis is slowly starting to pass, but information that we are able to withstand without strong energy expenditure. Simply put, over time, we become susceptible to new mental pain. When we feel the thinning of this protection, we are in pain. This is how we understand that we have been traumatized.

Much has been written about defense mechanisms. I will talk about those that I meet most often at work.

Repression is a reaction to unbearable feelings. When there is no opportunity to realize and endure, accept and live on, the psyche chooses not to remember. It is like a wall between your intelligent life and the pain that deprives you of your mind. Sometimes this is good. And I do not even remove such protection if this experience does not bother you today. If it interferes with your peace of mind, we will slowly but surely strengthen your resources and shoot brick by brick from the wall until you are able to face the trauma and say goodbye to pain.

Identification (sometimes in the form of symbiosis or loss of self-awareness). It is a mechanism where your feelings are so heavy that it is easier and safer to feel like another, to connect emotionally. In fact, a psychologist does the same thing, but there is a huge difference - your feelings that I empathize - I analyze them. There is a part watching them. What happens in the protective mechanism of identification is an unconscious process of giving up one's personality and this is bad.

Cleavage is one of the most interesting and deepest defense mechanisms. It consists in the fact that the wounded part is separated from the personality and goes deep inside. Unlike displacement, this part is not wall-separated. It is very felt and regularly makes itself felt. Pain, anxiety, loneliness. This is how the schizoid process is formed. You can learn more about it here. The split off part is always the part that is capable of deep feelings and closeness. And while she is wounded, there will be loneliness and there will be pain. The therapy will then consist in soft work with the split-off part, so that it recovers and can return to integrity.

Rationalization is an excessive withdrawal from feelings into thinking and analysis. Why are we using it? Because feelings in trauma are painful. Part of this pain is the result of not understanding why. And in order to relieve the anxiety a little and calm the desperate soul, we explain everything to ourselves. And we choose to believe this explanation. But how rarely does it coincide with reality. Most often, this is a way to get away from pain. And since this is impossible, turning off only one pain - the ability to experience joy, be angry, or even feel satisfaction is gone. To be able to become happy, you need to acquire the ability to think and feel in parallel.

We usually get used to living in this protection. This is understandable, because it was they who helped us cope. But more often than not, we live with a background feeling of discontent. Feelings pushed to the periphery are reflected in our life as very unpleasant "symptoms":

- Panic attacks - bodily memory of trauma. Shock fear - when there are no words to ask for help and the body reacts sharply.

- Failure to build relationships - walking in circles in personal failures, inappropriate partners. This also includes loneliness or vice versa, spontaneous relationships.

- Constant anxiety and anxiety is an itchy feeling from which you cannot stop inside. And this tiresome even in inaction.

- Withdrawing into oneself is a way to escape reality, going inside one's spiritual "bunker". The method is correct, but does not leave a chance for a relationship and a sense of security in them.

You can list a dozen more consequences. The meaning is the same - suffering or numbness of feelings.

Let's summarize briefly. Trauma is a wound resulting from exposure to a strong irritant. Not necessarily disastrous, but strong enough to leave an imprint on your personality and life. Sometimes, in order to change your life, you need to go into this trauma and work with it. But in some cases it is worth learning to live with it consciously. What exactly you need will become known after a few sessions of research therapy.

Finally, I will tell you about the duration of trauma therapy. It usually takes from six months to several years. Why? Because injured makes us wary and builds many defenses. If you break into this experience with your feet, it will become one more wound. Therefore, you have to move at the speed of the client. Sometimes faster, sometimes longer. Most importantly, the trauma is healed and you can live differently. In my own way. To look at the world not through a window of pain, but purely and consciously.

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