There is not two ways about it, our brain is always on the look out for us, trying to protect us from harm and pain. And our brains are very “pavlovian” in many ways, hurt once they will start identifying the context of each hurtful event and associate it with hurt.
The problem though is that traumatic events such as sexual abuse or living in warfare can “throw off” our brains, giving exaggerated meaning to a coincidental event for example. Which then continue acting as a trigger in the patient’s life from there on.
Symptoms of PTSD read like a “warning reel” for that event that their brain is trying so hard to avoid re-experiencing: painful and disproportionate suffering at the evocation of a trigger thought, nightmarish dreams, unsettling thoughts. Heightened senses and cardiac activity, hyperventilating, fight or flight activation.
PTSD & Trauma.
Contrary to what the brilliant Shcopenhauer once said (“whatever does not kill me only makes me stronger”) some experiences, overly brutal or random, poorly processed, can cause debilitating, lifelong trauma.
Trauma therapy focuses on helping the patient process the trauma. Memory of traumatic events does not disappear but the emotional pain can be substantially lowered by processing the memory. Trauma therapy often requires patients to re-examine their trauma, relive the event (describing it, remembering it in session) and examine the meaning attached to it. Examine the triggers, the contexts, all the angles and possible interpretations, to start lowering the acuteness of the emotional pain. What is understood and examined as a general principle is less painful.
There is no real “right or wrong” in trauma therapy. The events that caused trauma are obviously on the whole “bad” but the point of trauma therapy is not to engage with moralistic considerations. These will not help much getting over trauma. Trauma therapy works by arming the patient with a different mindset about the event, a different meaning to recall it by, a set of new tools and skills to cope.
Symptoms & Treatments
- Personalised diagnostic: Trauma identification, events and contexts, triggers and responses, current consequences of the trauma, meaning attached to trauma and coping skills.
- Symptoms and Indications: Repetitive arguments, poor problem-solving, low sense of intimacy, low sense of empathy, sexual differences, trust breaches and issues, clashing ideas around fidelity and presence, children’s educations, emotional states.
- Resources & Related: Sexuality and sexology, life models, transactional analysis, parents and adults, physical intimacy, couple communications, compromising, accepting and agreeing.