What Counts as Trauma? Understanding the Hidden Wounds
Experiencing a traumatic event is horrible. No one will ever truly know or understand what you experienced or how it affected you. A traumatic event can change how you feel about life, and it can change who you think you are. Trauma ruins lives and ruins relationships.
While taking all that into consideration, though, we have to acknowledge that some people come out of traumatic experiences just fine. Some people come out stronger, even, while others never recover. That experience shapes their entire life, despite them having many other experiences that offer better ways to understand themselves and the world.
There is extensive reading available on how trauma affects the brain and the body. As a therapist, though, I am not earning my pay by confirming with you how terrible it all is. You know that already.
I have seen clients in the past who are so well educated in how bad trauma has affected them that it is hard to lead them out of it. I focus on teaching my clients how their mind works rather than how the trauma works. I want to help you understand your mind at its best and worst. How it creates problems and, therefore, how to use it to create solutions.
An essential part of treating trauma is changing your understanding of trauma. If we focus on everything that I said in the first paragraph, then we are building an all-powerful enemy – not a great way to start. We need to start by changing your understanding of trauma, to see it for what it really is, to disempower it in your mind, so that you can move on.
What is trauma?
Something horrible happened to you, maybe it was a single but brief event or a period of your life that left you feeling powerless, helpless, scared or terrified. It was horrible while it was happening, but it is not happening anymore. It is over.
Trauma is not what happened; it is the meaning that your mind has made of the event(s), made of your life, the world, the meaning your mind has made of you. Trauma is the story running automatically in your mind as a result of what has happened. You may be consciously aware of it, but there is a good chance that a significant part of that story is subconscious, and it is controlling you without you knowing it.
What’s the difference between trauma and PTSD?
If trauma is the meaning your mind has made of a traumatic event, PTSD is the collection of symptoms that are keeping you stuck.
Let's remove the D, though. The D in PTSD is keeping us stuck in the first paragraph of this blog. The D disempowers you and empowers the events that are now over, and the resulting uncomfortable activity in your mind. It is not a Disorder. Your mind is working perfectly, but your relationship with your mind needs adjusting.
Your mind learns by remembering, and it tends to remember important things more clearly. The traumatic events were important at the time, and so intrusive memories, flashbacks, and nightmares are the mind working as it should. The problem is that these memories are being experienced as real and therefore harmful, which keeps you stuck in a fear response. There's nothing wrong with you.
It is natural to feel cautious, anxious or even hypervigilant after a traumatic experience – your mind does not want to have the same experience again. You need to learn from what happened. But when you respond to that hypervigilance with stress, every little thing becomes scary, and you remain stuck in that heightened state of awareness. There's nothing wrong with you.
Negative mood and thoughts are a natural reaction to being stuck in this level of discomfort and not knowing what to do about it. It sucks! There's nothing wrong with you.
Places or experiences that remind you of the original traumatic event (s) are likely to create a level of discomfort, and of course, you may want to avoid them for that reason. Your mind learns by association, and it’s natural to avoid unnecessary discomfort. There's nothing wrong with you.
If you've turned to alcohol, drugs or some other addictive behaviour to try to numb or escape these feelings you do not understand, you are just trying to not feel pain. There is nothing wrong with wanting that for yourself, but there are other ways to deal.
PTSD is driven by the meaning your mind has made. So if we can change that meaning, your experience will change.
How does therapy help you heal from trauma?
Therapy with me will work on three fronts:
We will use thought experiments and hypnotic phenomena to help you see the trauma as a story, and help you out of the fear loops with the associated memories, thoughts and feelings. We teach your brain that, although the traumatic event was dangerous, the thoughts about it are harmless.
We will use these same techniques to disempower the symptoms of the hypervigilance so that they feel safer until they fade.
We will use hypnosis to change the trauma story in your mind so that you can have a better experience once again of yourself, your life and the world.
Some people ask me if hypnosis can make them forget trauma, but that’s not an effective trauma treatment.
What’s the role of hypnosis in trauma treatment?
My three favourite hypnotic techniques for helping people with Post Traumatic Stress are:
Uncovering the subconscious story of the trauma that they may not be aware of.
Allowing the older mind, who knows they survived the event, to go back and rescue the younger part of their mind that is still living 'trapped' in the event and show them that life has moved on and is safe now.
Guiding the mind to recognise and let go of thoughts, feelings and memories tied to the event that are no longer useful.
Is it normal to feel worse before you feel better in trauma work?
Looking the uncomfortable thoughts, feelings and memories in the eye can be very uncomfortable at first, but as you learn to teach your brain to be more comfortable with the uncomfortable, they feel less threatening, and so it gets easier.
If you have repressed or suppressed thoughts and feelings, then this process is about helping you trust yourself to become more consciously aware of that which you have locked away. This can feel like things are getting worse before they get better, but it is a good sign, as resolution may well not happen without it.
Trauma’s Hidden Wounds
'Traumatic wounds' is a metaphor. Just like 'it broke me' or a reference to ‘my demons'. All these things are metaphors that can dramatise trauma recovery in the mind and make it harder. They are disempowering to you and empowering to the symptoms of trauma. These metaphors quickly become part of the meaning your mind makes of what happened.
Once the event is over, all you have are thoughts and feelings about what happened, and they are far less exciting, far less dramatic, and far easier to deal with the wounds, demons or broken selves.
If you’re ready to resolve your trauma and would like support grounded in psychology and compassion, then please get in touch.