About Cumulative Trauma, Or There Seems To Be No Problem, But It Feels Like It Is

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

Working for a long time with traumatics of various types, the most difficult and most important thing is to detect the injury. More precisely, to make this trauma obvious to the client.

Most often, one has to deal with the lack of mentalization of the traumatic experience, despite the fact that this topic is affectively extremely painful, and in order to avoid contact and immersion in his own traumatic experiences, the client for the millionth time, seeing the trauma on the horizon, successfully does not notice it. Of course, he does this unconsciously (well, or consciously not to the end), in a situation of approaching a traumatic experience at a reception or in a life "similar" to a traumatic situation, the client does not want to re-experience that horror, impotence and devastation that has already happened with him at the moment of trauma, fully includes the typical mechanisms of psychological defense: dissociation, depreciation, denial.

The earlier the injury was received, the more coarse, primitive defenses were fixed as "habitual", because at an early age, especially the pre-verbal one, there were simply no others. These defenses "turn on" almost automatically, again because in conditions of limited mental resources, the body switches to the economy mode, and turns to the usual ones, because they have already proven themselves to be able to save, it feels safer than looking for other ways to respond to the obviously unbearably difficult situation without 100% guarantee that the new coping method will be better.

Meanwhile, "similar" situations all happen and happen, because the unresolved trauma, while remaining actual, is close enough, in preconsciousness, and strives for actualization and resolution.

And if an acute trauma is most often "forgotten" by a traumatic person, then in a focused study of a traumatic experience, it is recalled, its brightness and severity does not allow to ignore it, then "minor" but regular injuries are simply not taken into account.

Well, think about it, my mother did not buy me a dress, saying that like me, dresses do not fit. And then that my hair is thin and thin. And then, that my breasts have grown huge and now I need to be more modest, otherwise everyone will think that I am of easy virtue. Well, she discussed me with all her girlfriends on the phone in front of me, discussing my personal information. Well, I bought me a doll for my birthday, although I begged her for a bicycle. Well, she made me eat an unbearably tasteless and fatty soup, after which my stomach ached. And a million more "so what." "It can't be that it's all because of the doll" - say such clients.

Indeed, a separate doll by itself is not able to cause that suffering, and cause the level of decompensation that a traumatic person is experiencing. But when there are many such examples, each subsequent one only confirms the conviction of one's own powerlessness.

When you are small, the real opportunities to interact with the world are limited by the parental figure, and when it is necessary to protect their own interests from the parent himself, the child remains helpless. Now I'm not even talking about abuse, not about toxic parents, not about "bad" ignoring and devaluing moms and absent dads, about ordinary, prosperous, loving parents. Most often it is not some action or inaction of the parent that traumatizes, but the child's experience of his own helplessness, the inability to control some aspect of his life. He is faced with his own limited abilities, the illusion of omnipotence is shattered, and he has nothing to oppose to the will of loved ones. With repeated repetition of such an experience, as in the syndrome of learned helplessness, in a situation of stress, a person seems to fall into a state of existential horror and the feeling that he cannot do anything, subsequently dissociates, devalues, denies or completely forgets about it.

Cumulative trauma is allowed, like any other, by re-living this experience with the recognition and awareness of all the feelings caused by the situation, their own limitations and difficulties, as well as resources that help to cope with the situation. But in the case of cumulative trauma, first you need to admit that that birthday doll, an offensive phrase thrown in an attempt, uneaten soup, etc. were important, and these situations need to be relived as well as "truly" traumatic events.