Adult Trauma

I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become. Carl Jung

People who have experienced trauma will often answer “yes” to some of these questions.

• Do you often find you have difficulty concentrating or remembering things?
• Do you wonder if you will ever “get over” things that happened to you in the past?
• Have you unexplained nightmares or night terrors?
• Feel like you cannot trust anyone, even yourself, which results in difficulties having healthy relationships.
• Feel unsafe, even in moments when you intellectually know that nothing bad can happen?
• Become easily upset by events and interactions with people, such that you feel like fleeing, fighting back, or completely shutting down?
• Have difficulty controlling your emotional reactions and feel they are “overblown” or feel yourself “numbing out” in response to them?

We are both qualified trauma professions, and the various therapies we utilize rest on a similar theoretical understanding. Just as our body has natural ways to protect itself from injury and has healing abilities that resolve wounds, our brain and nervous system has evolved to help us heal naturally from painful experiences. In EMDR, this is called Adaptive Information Processing.

For example, if you have a distressful day at work, over time your brain makes sense of that day by seeing it within the big picture of your life. You have probably noticed that good REM sleep can help with this. Refreshed the next morning, as you bring the previous day back into conscious awareness, you are not so overwhelmed. You may have called yourself “incompetent” or worse after your boss criticized your work or when a coworker or customer treated you with disrespect. You may have felt shocked or sad, and experienced unpleasant sensations in your body, your gut or heart, tension in your shoulders etc. But, as a new day arises, you wake better able to affirm that you are capable. You are lovable. You can more clearly recall how you demonstrated positive traits in the past. You wake knowing what happened occurred yesterday, and it does not define you. And this is a new day.

You arrive at a more “adaptive” story about the incident and a more “integrated” experience of yourself.

But “trauma, by definition, is unbearable and intolerable.” (van der Kolk, 2014), and can inflict a mental injury that lasts. When your life is threatened or you are overcome, stuck in a frightening circumstance you cannot escape, your stress reaction and the dumping of adrenaline dampens  the parts of your brain that would normally help you cope. As a result, traumatic memories can remain unintegrated, experienced as isolated vivid images, disparaging thoughts (cognitive flashbacks), body sensations.

When something in the present moment reminds your nervous system of the past, you get “triggered.” The present gets contaminated by the past. The problem seems to be about what is in front of you, but the intensity and reactivity is energy that comes from beyond this moment.

The approaches we use are structured to help your brain/body do what it was designed to do. But we also endeavor to keep you within a tolerable emotional window, so you do not get re-traumatized. We want to help you resolve the wounds, but we also want to you to stay settled enough and “present” enough to be able to manage your life outside of the therapy office. As a result, each treatment plan and the pace of treatment is designed uniquely because there is nothing more unique than your life situation, your specific history, and memories.

Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.  David Richo

Impact of attachment difficulties in adult relationships:

Our childhood experiences can disturb our ability to self-soothe and may create a state of hyper-vigilance and hypersensitivity.

We may be easily triggered into fears, self-doubt, and frustrations when faced with change and uncertainty or ambiguity. This can feel “crazy,” but it is best understood as a symptom of an over-active defensive system. We benefit from taking care of our self with daily restorative practices, and from creating a circle of people, places and things that help us stay grounded.

Attachment research tells us that, in efforts to survive, we adapt to adverse childhood experiences. These adaptive patterns are wired into parts of the brain that cannot be easily influenced by our thinking brain. We benefit from becoming aware of self-sabotaging patterns and from finding active ways to interrupt them.

We may not have a strong ability to recognize danger, as if our radar is broken. We may slip into relationships that are burdensome or abusive. If this is so, we benefit from learning how to stay safe and how to set boundaries and recognize our limits.

Even the most lovingly intimate relationship can trigger us into unresolved relational trauma from childhood. As we become increasingly aware of what has happened to us and how we have adapted to protect ourselves, we and our partners can benefit from discussing what we have come to understand.

Couple’s work is not about behavior change. It is about transformation of the childhood attachment experience in a way that enables us to live in harmony (the ability to have conflict and to recover from it).   Janina Fisher PhD.

Do you:

• Wonder if you will ever “get over” things that happened to you in the past?
• Have unexplained nightmares or night terrors?
• Feel like you cannot trust anyone, even yourself, which results in difficulties having healthy relationships.
• Feel unsafe, even in moments when you intellectually know that nothing bad can happen?
• Become easily upset by events and interactions with people, such that you feel like fleeing, fighting back, or completely shutting down?
• Have difficulty controlling your emotional reactions and feel they are “overblown” or feel yourself “numbing out” in response to them?
• Do you often find you have difficulty concentrating or remembering things?

If you have answered “yes” to any or all of these questions, you have likely experienced a traumatic event at some point in your life.

All of the therapies we use rest on the same basic understanding—or model—sometimes called Adaptive Information Processing. Just as our body has natural ways to protect itself from injury and healing abilities to resolve our wounds without medical assistance, our brain and nervous system is designed to help us heal painful experiences naturally. If you have a distressful day at work, over time your brain makes sense of that day by organizing it into the big picture of your life. The next morning, as you bring the previous day back into conscious awareness, you are not so overwhelmed. You had thoughts that you were incompetent when your boss treated you with disrespect;you felt shocked or sad, felt these feelings as unpleasant sensations in your body. But. as a new day arises, you wake knowing you are capable. You are lovable. You recall how you demonstrated these traits in the past. You come to some affirming (adaptive) stories about yourself.

Most importantly, you wake knowing what happened occurred yesterday, and this is a new day.

But “trauma, by definition, is unbearable and intolerable.” (van der Kolk, 2014).

When you are threatened or overwhelmed, your stress reaction and the dumping of adrenaline turns off the parts of your brain that would normally help you cope and allow you to make sense of it. So the memory remains unintegrated, isolated with vivid images, disparaging thoughts, body sensations as if they exist in a separate basin, cut off from everything you normally understand. Things in the present moment can remind you of the past, putting you back there, with the result that your reactions are exaggerated or muted. You don’t just remember. You live it.

The approaches we use help your nervous system do what it was designed to do. We want you to stay within a tolerable emotional window, so you can remain present and settled enough to live your life outside of the therapy office. Each treatment plan is designed uniquely because there is nothing more unique than your life situation, your specific history and memories.

Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.  David Richo

 

Impact of attachment difficulties in adult relationships:

Our childhood experiences can disturb our ability to self-soothe and create a state of hyper-vigilance and hypersensitivity. Our most intimate relationships especially can be triggers for unresolved relational trauma from childhood.

Two biological drives can be in conflict (what Siegel calls a biological paradox) the drives to protect our self from threat and the equally powerful need to connect and attach to others. We benefit from learning how to separate (differentiate) these drives; this requires gaining awareness over time and learning as we grow. It is not simply a matter of medicating the issue or learning how to talk to our self differently.

High levels of reactivity can result in being very self-absorbed;so, if we have experienced chaotic or even terrifying events as a child, we benefit from learning to calm ourselves and reinforce a relaxation-response and focus.

We may be easily triggered into fears, self-doubt, and frustrations when faced with change and uncertainty or ambiguity. This can feel “crazy” but it is a symptom of an over-active defensive system. We benefit from taking care of our self especially during times of change and heightened stress, and from surrounding our self with people, places and things that help us stay grounded. We learn to move from a self-centered preoccupation to self-care.

We have learned our parent’s patterns in relationships in a part of the brain that is beneath our thinking brain, indeed remembered within our own physical body. Because of these stored patterns (traits), in our relationships we can be triggered into extreme reactions. We benefit from becoming aware of these patterns and practicing interrupting them.

We may not have the best defenses for danger, as if our radar is broken, and slip into relationships that create more burdens or may even be abusive. We benefit from learning how to stay safe and learning self-compassion.

As we become aware, if we determine that our relationship is safe enough, our partner also benefits from learning about these powerful influences from our past, so they can weather the storms more easily. Partners can also help us find new ways to connect, when we are open to their influence.

 

We believe in self-healing, but if you find yourself emotionally triggered by any of the information on this site, it may be a sign that you would benefit from therapy.

We are not a crisis service. In an emergency, call 911 or get to the nearest hospital emergency room. Call the toll free 24 hour hotline of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

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