Traumatized Person Or Person With A Container

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-15 16:05

In this article, we will consider the personality of a person who has experienced acute stress and unable to cope with it psychologically correctly, i.e. so that he does not have a negative impact on his future life.

Not coping psychologically means not being able to handle strong negative emotions such as fear, anger, guilt, shame. These emotions have already arisen, and they have a strong charge of energy, but there has been no discharge. Not lived, i.e. unconscious emotions represent a psychological formation - a "container". The container is split off from the conscious part of the personality and is protected by the psyche from being introduced into consciousness.

Outwardly, a person can look quite successful, calm, but when an incentive arises, he can lose control of himself and, depending on the charge, the strength of suppressed emotions, react in the most inappropriate way. A stimulus can be a smell, another person reminiscent of the experience, a sound, a place, etc.

One and the same event can be traumatic for one person, for another it can remain just a memory.

Such terrible events as war, catastrophes, undoubtedly, affect any person, but depending on the individual characteristics and conditions of development, a person can cope with them or not. For some people, divorce or cheating can be just as traumatic as a car accident and can get in the way of building new relationships.

Here I will formulate the concept traumatized person, I will describe the conditions for the formation of such a personality, how it manifests itself in relations with others, what kind of worldview it forms. In this context, it becomes traumatized if it fails to transform pain into experience, i.e. to come to terms with her as inevitable.

Sometimes, having experienced acute stress, disappointment, a traumatic situation, a person believes that he has not changed at all. The World has changed. Or he finally opened his eyes to his environment, situation, loved one. This worldview often leads to feelings of isolation and loneliness, disappointment in life and people. In all. This is the main sign that a person could not or did not want to analyze WHAT did happen to him, and instead of some, destroyed basic illusions, he built others

What can be considered signs of a traumatized personality

Romanticism, is considered here in the worst sense of the word.

It can manifest itself in:

- idealization of relationships and inevitable further disappointment, subsequently explaining loneliness;

- fanatical devotion to any idea or community.

Such people know what the happiness of humanity is, and for this they are ready to sacrifice everyone who has other ideas about happiness.

2. The prevalence of group values over individual.

A person puts the life of a group, a community, and not his own in the first place. Globally, this idea manifests itself in the sacrifice of oneself or another for the sake of one's group. A group can also be a family of its own, in which the grandmother or mother of the family is most often the leading victim, and subsequently the accuser of ungrateful offspring, but there is also a father or grandfather. Their children also learn the same and begin to live for the sake of their children. If they protest against such a prospect, they may refuse to continue the race altogether. They don't want to have children of their own.

All for the sake of the family! Or for business!

This view is directly related to the illusion of immortality. The basic principle is that a person will live as long as the group with which he identifies is alive. Thus, they seem to acquire immortality.

3. Commitment to self-destruction

The traumatic event or funnel of trauma tightens and does not let go. The person is "stuck" in the past. At that age, in that setting, in that period of time. He continues to act and think in the categories that were applicable in that situations, thus denying Reality. “My grandfather was quiet and sweet, he still bombed Berlin,” as Agatha Christie sings.

Many ATO fighters were never able to adapt to a peaceful life, hence the desire for mass suicide, alcoholism, illegal actions, etc.

Striving for self-destruction is like taking control of death into your own hands. Self-destruction is manifested in alcoholism, drug addiction, and being in a toxic relationship. Most alcoholics, "novice" drug addicts sacredly try to convince themselves that they can quit at any moment. Addictions are the road to death and addicts as if can control this path.

4. The illusion of justice in the world.

Good always wins, you cannot betray your principles, you must always be honest and fair, etc.

Some people believe that all evil is necessarily punished, and good will certainly triumph. These, as a rule, are too honest, noble, principled and fair people. True, their honesty and nobility apply only to the members of their community, and for the sake of principle they are ready to sacrifice both their lives and the lives of their loved ones. It is noteworthy that such people most often play the game “Nobody can be trusted” by E. Bern. Such a person will deliberately run into trouble in order to prove the correctness of his motto and receive reinforcement of his own position: "I'm okay - they're not okay." Therefore, the player in NNV will look for unreliable people, conclude ambiguous contracts with them and with pleasure, even with joy, receive confirmation, that nobody can be trusted - only me. Such a person may even feel entitled to commit murder justified by numerous betrayals on the part of people whom he himself once brought closer precisely because of their unreliability. *

5. The illusion of simplicity of the device, the world.

As it was already written in the article "Three illusions …" - this is a black and white world of perfectionists, rather regular personalities, as well as those people who were physically abused or betrayed. It's simple: there are “ours” who need to be protected and “not ours” who must be exterminated or punished, or they must be avoided. For example, a woman who has been raped will claim that all men are rapists and women are victims. A man who has been cheated on by a woman will divide people into cunning lustful women and deceived, noble men. And this “baggage of experience” is being used by caring parents for their children. In fact, there are many other options for relationships.

Most of these traits can be found in a teenager. For adolescence, this is a normal stage of socialization, "youthful maximalism."

If such an image of the world remains with an adult, then it can be called a traumatized person

I want to repeat that not every person becomes traumatized under equal traumatic conditions.

Unfortunately, most often the most innocent and pure-hearted people who are brought up on bookish ideals, carefully guarded by their parents from any life difficulties, will be more painfully traumatized by Reality, due to poor adaptation to reality.

What if you agree with many of the statements and comments in this article? You can find ways to heal in the following article, “Traumatized Personality. How to be healed."

* E. Bern "Beyond Games and Scenarios"

E. Bern An Introduction to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis for the Uninitiated"

EAT. Cherepanova "Psychological stress: Help yourself and your child."

Art by Ivan Slavinsky