Traumatic Experience: Relive And Accept

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

“In order to heal suffering,

a person must experience it in its entirety."

Marcel Proust

The traumatic experience, whatever it may be, leaves a serious imprint on the life of every person, and sometimes radically changes it. Many people who have experienced, for example, violence (physical, psychological or sexual), divorce or difficult separation, the loss of a loved one, any natural disasters, etc., try to quickly plunge into their old life or start a new one as soon as possible.

I know people who, after difficult events in their lives, enroll in any courses, go to get a second education, lead an active lifestyle, while others go on dangerous adventures, start using alcohol and drugs. This article is about why such actions do not give positive results, and if they do, why unpleasant emotions come back again and again in similar situations and new relationships.

Each person runs away from unpleasant emotions and memories associated with a traumatic event, wants to switch to something else, displacing or denying the negative experience. It seems that everything has been forgotten, that everything is in the past, a new life has begun. But something is wrong. A girl survivor of violence has been unable to build relationships with men for many years.

A person who was robbed on the street or beaten can see a thief or a hooligan in every passer-by and look back for a long time.

A mother who has lost her child does not want to have children anymore.

A divorced man who, after a divorce, begins to lead a "riotous" lifestyle, considers this to be normal. Children in the family who saw their parents as drinkers, drug users, victims of incest or beatings create the same families …

The list of situations is endless, but there is something that unites all these people. This is an unfinished situation in the past, which, like a pebble, gives circles on the water surface in the present.

Sometimes difficult situations that happen to people, according to the people themselves, cause a lot of shame and rejection. Some hide the event that happened to them from close friends, parents, husband / wife in order to isolate their loved ones from unpleasant experiences, or, tormented by shame, or simply afraid to get approval for the expression of feelings. It can be difficult when there is no understanding of the situation and what happened to you, and approval for expressing negative feelings. Here is one example: “When I was beaten by a young man with whom I was living, my mother first hugged and consoled me, and her second phrase was:“Don't tell anyone what happened to you.” I felt terrible, as if they had poured icy water over me.

All my thoughts and feelings rushed out, not wanting to "freeze" there, I wanted to shout about it, about my pain, about my anger. I wanted to cry everything. " The mother of this girl simply gave a ban on those feelings that she is afraid of, which she herself forbids to express (anger, shame, anger), and the simplest way was to devalue these feelings so that her daughter would not feel them either.

Indeed, it is difficult, especially the first time after the event that happened to you, to be silent, to hide feelings in yourself, without receiving support from other people. Some, on the contrary, become isolated, holding in themselves a lump of resentment, anger, guilt, anger, powerlessness. All these feelings go side by side with feelings of injustice, humiliation. The longer a person “cooks in this cauldron” of unpleasant sensations, the more difficult it is for him to survive this situation. He seems to be fixated on her, and his whole life is reduced only to this experience of the event. The paradox is that the opposite behavior, let's call it "active", does not bring the desired results. Such behavior only temporarily "freezes" unpleasant sensations in the body, thoughts about a traumatic event and emotions associated with it. All this is waiting for the right moment to pour out, and the moment may be the most unexpected. For some people, it is enough to watch a scene from a movie or program, similar to the events of their life, and feelings will not be long in coming. Or meet a random passer-by on the street who will look like an offender, and a person may notice how his body contracts, as if he remembers all the pain that was caused to him. Just like a cut scar, there can be a trace of trauma in the body. Reality is observed in posture, in gait, in habitual movements resembling compression. "Compression" can be subjected to speech, while stuttering, difficulty in pronunciation, stuttering occur. The trauma mark is always compression.

The first thought that comes to mind after an event has occurred is “this is not happening to me”, “this could not happen to me” (shock stage), followed by a natural desire that this event never happened. Unfortunately, many people act as if there was no traumatic event in their life. We talked about this above when a person starts a new life and begins to engage in "overactive", denying trauma, "forgetting" it. But no matter how you deny, the trauma reminds of itself explicitly or covertly, directly or indirectly. Also, trauma is the magnet that attracts new similar events into a person's life. The person acquires post-traumatic patterns of behavior and the attitude "I must avoid repeating the trauma." This leads to overuse, and the injuries are repeated. Since the trauma situation is a situation of excessive intensity, the traumatized person unconsciously seeks experiences of the same intensity in order to get through them and return to normal life.

How to understand if the trauma is still living in your body, in your subconscious mind? If you suffer from overwork and do not refuse to help other people. If, some time after the traumatic event, you continue to feel overwhelmed, numb, and empty.

If you have nightmares, you have become especially vulnerable and feel the tension in your body and the inability to cope with it. If your relationship at work or your personal relationship has deteriorated, or perhaps there are sexual problems. If, finally, accidents happen to you from time to time, all these are signs of a not experienced, not expressed trauma.

When the emotions associated with trauma subside, there is a latent effect of the trauma on the person. By its appearance in life, trauma changes the reality of a person and leads to profound changes in the personality, so that the normal course of life becomes impossible. For this person, the world around him is not only fraught with danger, he feels absolute defenselessness in front of him.

How do you deal with a traumatic event? It is impossible to relive an event that changed your life without walking next to it again. In order to survive the trauma, it is necessary to live it entirely in the safe environment of the psychotherapeutic relationship. Recognize the trauma as actually happened.

Find the strength to meet the event. Live the pain and powerlessness that prevent you from leading a normal life. Incorporate this event into your past and learn not to divide your life into “before” and “after” the trauma. Give vent to feelings associated with the traumatic experience, and recognize them as legal and existing. Experience all the despair that the traumatic situation has plunged you into. Learn from this situation. To mourn the past, that nothing can be changed. Accept yourself for who you are and learn to live with it.

Life confronted me with difficult situations, and from my own life experience I know how difficult it all is, but, believe me, the returned harmony in life and peace of mind are worth it!