Do these need to be lumped in together?
For example - avoiding triggers, could be rebalanced to choosing our exposure to known triggers, so that we can recover from them, rather than flood ourselves and suffer a setback. Trauma therapists are often very helpful in deciding where that balance is, and giving us coping skills to make sure it goes well.
I’m not sure what you mean by the ‘addiction to thinking’. My brain does what it does, and when I sleep it still does its own thing. It’s not an addiction, or something I could really avoid in any real sense. I personally found mindfulness incredibly helpful with learning how to direct what my brain did with its waking hours, which was incredibly helpful to manage a lot of cognitive-based distress. Very different to what’s going on with my triggers, and reminders of my abuse, requiring very different management.
The last one? I’m not gonna buy into. It’s part and parcel of mental illness to be focused on our own suffering. That’s different from narcissism, it’s suffering. And I don’t avoid it, I work on recovering from the mental illness causing it.
Thank you. I like your idea of not lumping things together.
Choosing which triggers to have exposure to. I'd be curious to know what sort of coping skills a therapist might give us. Because I've had relatively little experience of therapy, a few starter sessions while trying out two or three therapists. So maybe 10 in total and it didn't involve being given skills.
'Addiction to thinking' I can explain. It's a phrase I came up with to explain my problem, which was extreme rumination and extreme intrusive thoughts. I would literally be zoning out while say walking in the park with my girlfriend, my mind completely taken over not exactly by the flashbacks but by cognitive
analysis of flashbacks. Like the proverbial soldier who turned left instead of right, she lost her leg on a mine and ever since she obsessively, addictively asks herself over again why she didn't turn right. Eventually that analysis kicks in involuntarily, there is no answer and just a compulsive rush of debilitating thinking: much like an addiction.
I had the same, but with my life experiences of course. The way I improved myself was to think about it like an addiction, and I was able to draw down the doses of my post-traumatic analysing of why everything got so f*cked up in my life. As an experiment I treated it like an addiction, and forced myself to refocus on the park, the leaves, the sunshine, the birds, my girlfriend's hand in mine. It really helped. After some years of this, I have been able to go back and look at why everything got so f*cked up without it taking over my brain. Metaphorically, like having a nice glass of wine instead of an entire bottle. It's what worked for me.
I take your point about narcissism. For me, and likely not for everyone, it was simply a way of helping me get over my problem, to look inside myself for narcissistic traits that I believe we all have to a lesser or greater degree. "I was severely emotionally abused as a child, I have CPTSD, I am not in a wheelchair and the sun is shining," became one of many helpful prayers. I told myself that despite having been through such horrors that I was driven to suicidal ideation, I can perceive that I am not the centre of the universe, which is not all about me; things could be much worse, and in many ways I have it better than many others despite having it much worse in many other ways too. That's not denying my hardships, that's getting some perspective on them. There was so much to be grateful for in life. And the little things in life are so wonderful: like a leaf in the sun that makes you smile, and a joke that makes you laugh.
Not saying that approach is the only way to do it. It's what worked for me. Thank you again.