Do You Feel Emotions When Discussing Trauma?

[Panda Bear]

At first there were no reactions what so ever. T was shocked....

When we first started I couldn't tell you one feeling from another, I lived in a constant state of disconnect. Saw my dad commit suicide? Eh...no biggie. Hey, I'm hungry....

Then as we worked more, all I had were intense physical responses to the trauma. But no real emotions like sadness or crying.

More work and I then began to develop actual emotions. Sadness, fear, abandonment, anger, hurt, and yes, crying. Now I can cry at the drop of a hat, but it took years to express emotions in the form of tears. Much farther down the road after we got threw the body/physical memories.

Now there is a balanced mix of all the feelings, both physical and emotional. Some 85% of the time it's all in perfect harmony and I can cycle through the physical pain, emotional pain and tears and not get sucked under.

 

[Deleted member 35429]

At first there were no reactions what so ever. T was shocked....

When we first started I couldn't t...

That's amazing. I hope I can get there some day. Thank you for sharing. God, I'm sorry about your dad. That's unimaginably painful. No one deserves to see that.

 

[Panda Bear]

@Orion

Thank you. I can say with complete honesty, I am okay! His death is/was sad and hard to see. But I made it through and celebrated his death this year with out a freak out. So, you can have this too! Keep working, working hard and you'll get there. I promise! It's possible and I want you to have the same peace too.

You can do this!

 

[recoveringfromptsd]

feeling no emotion is common, I believe its another way our mind protects us from trauma so we can cope, i know from my own experience that it will happen, like in my case short spurts of emotion.

 

[Slh64]

I understand that disassociation is the brains way to keep trauma at bay. I also feel many motions at once and so many of those contradict each other. I love you I hate you I want to go out oh god I can't imagine being around others. I feel so many at once and I can't always pin point what they are other than being an emotional message trying to appear normal. It's like my mind thinks thoughts but my body overrides the ability to complete anything.

And when I'm in this state of hyper emotions I start the dissassosiation in a different way. Instead of feeling them or responding to them I study objects around me. It happened in my last session, I stumbled over my words lost track of topics became a huge rant and I'm not sure if any of it made sense to T all the while my heart was pounding head spinning voice cracks tears. When she responds I stare at this table with a mug and a clock. I study the cords the grain of the wood. It's like I can't absorb the situation even though I'm listening and responding.

 

[katz]

The most - and first - physical memory is one that I had in a therapy session long, long ago. It startled me, since it was my first. It was just trembling, but very intense to me.

I now know to watch for others - an listen to them. In some ways, it helped to convince me that all I was remembering was really true. Sad.

 

[aut555]

I don't in the telling then usually realize afterward it was "too much". It is kinda perplexing....

Me too, it hits afterwards, when l dream that night. I guess l was really good at suppressing things. We need a meter to show how we repress, and at what level we do it at.

 

[recoveringfromptsd]

I have gotten to the point where I can't keep the trauma stuff at bay, there are days where I can't get rid of it no matter what skills I use, but I have learned how to use skill to manage it so I can be safe from self harm. Sometimes this means I may have days where I may have to urge to self harm to get relief from the pain, but I don't act on the urges.

 

[barefoot]

In general, no - I recount quite factually, as though I'm telling a very familiar story but it hasn't really got anything to do with me. No emotional connection.
Lately, I have been feeling emotional in sessions and have actually shed some (fairly short-lived!) tears. But that has been more due to therapeutic ruptures, not talking about trauma.

As some others have said, many of us "split off" the emotions from our trauma as the dissociation creates distance between us and the trauma. Self-protection.

My therapist said from the start that our aim was to get me to connect emotionally to the trauma. It hasn't happened yet in session.

 

[barefoot]

@Slh64 - I so relate to what you've described. When I get hit by a load of feelings and it becomes confusing and overwhelming, I stumble over my words, lose track of what I'm saying and become very disorientated too. And I also do the studying objects and staring at certain things in the room too. You stare at the table with the mug on the clock.,.I tend to stare at the same spot on the door or often the light shining through under the door. It can be a powerful draw and feel endlessly fascinating to just keep staring. I think it is a way of trying to self-regulate when feelings feel too much?

 

[recoveringfromptsd]

I can't really say whether I show now emotion or not, I think it depends on whether I stuff it, and get release from S/H, or whether I just let it out. But since being at SP TDU I have been using the latter. One thing that has changed is I am brutally honest with my thoughts with clinicians even if they have elements of thoughts of S/H, and such. I believe they have gotten to know this enough that if I became unsafe I would be brutally honest about.

 

[MisterCatLady]

For me it is like I go rigid when my therapist brings up trauma topics. Like "you can't make me crack" kind of sternness. I would like to cry and let go but instinctually I wall off the feelings when they begin to arise.