Promicarus
Silver Member
Recent prevailing research and newest perspectives on treatment of trauma, as a discipline, are in almost unanimous assent that trauma is, in fact stored in the body.
I think what you're referring to comes under the rather large, and therefore, ambiguous to not be so helpful, term of "self-calming".
The irony is, as most of us will attest, that the initial form of "self-calming" we resort to is "repression"...blocking out feeling, entirely.
I've heard it said that if one blocks out one feeling, one blocks out them all. So it's no surprise that with our protective "numbing" of our fears, which is necessary to basic functioning...we at the same time block out, "numb" to the positive feelings that are essential to relationships. Love, affection, openness, etc.
It's difficult to see the "breakdown" that most of us experience, when these "blocking/repression" systems finally give way, under a burden of blocked sensations finally mounting too high to withstand, and contain.
And after so long of associating feeling NOTHING with feeling "good"---good as in the absence of fear/pain, after all...
It's extraordinarily difficult to see all of this pent up, repressed emotion, which finally floods over and through us as in any way good. Our basic orientation, heretofore, has been that "success" was equated with "successfully blocking it"...and as it is necessarily mostly negative, after all (we wouldn't have started blocking it in the first place otherwise)....the experience of this flood, alone, is understandably impossible to EXPERIENCE as positive. It feels anything but positive.
But until we're actually working with the feelings, we can't make a beginning on controlling them...feeling them, and working through/around them...and incorporating them into our lives.
Blocking is not managing...and it's not really self-calming. It's like keeping the door to life closed, so as not to have to deal with it. And that's not really dealing with it.
This has been my experience. And I've heard it echoed, restated in many ways here, and many better ways, in fact.
I found that the first step for me was flipping my definition of "success"...from being defined in terms of "successful repression"
to "successful release, and management"...which often involved just sitting with it, and experiencing it...and no longer defining that as "failing" to "keep it together"...but as success, in that I was "doing the work necessary" to really, actually deal with it, in a constructive way which not only was reoriented towards long-term results...but altogether more in line with maturity, in general.
For me, this reorientation resulted from lots of reading related to trauma. I recommend it, therefore. It's always been hard for me to sit and listen to someone telling me what to do, and "how it is". Maybe some can relate. But there's an implicit if unconscious agreement on the part of the reader that the information is completely at his/her control, rather than a matter of being under the control of someone else "feeding it to you"...plus it takes the whole personal dynamic out of it by removing...well...the other person.
It was also necessary for me to incorporate actual steps, "techniques" and formalized approaches...ie meditation, "grounding techniques", writing (freewriting, etc). I was long of the "if I just know it intellecutally, then that should be enough, right?"
Reading finally brought home to me, personally, that this is not at all the case. Trauma, especially, is about engaging through definite, practical methods....not least of all, due to the fact that, as was mentioned earlier...it's become understood as much more of a body-related issue than a purely intellectual/philosophical one.
And having someone around who's become accustomed to "the old you", when these floodgates finally open....well...that can be an understandably disconcerting, and not necessarily edifying, display to behold, for their part.
Some relationships can weather it. Others can't. Many decide that during this early period, being alone, so as to be able to focus all attentions and concerns solely on their "own work" is far better for all involved.
Working on trauma is nothing less than a change of life. Reorientation. Breakdown/Breakthrough. I've found. And I've only made a beginning, myself. But I've elected towards the last option myself--keeping others at a safe distance--in order to get through the first grind. I think the important thing for me to recognize would be the larger picture...sometimes it's just not time to work on a relationship...it's time to work on our selves first. Even if that intimacy doesn't "work out", for whatever reason...it's not only not the end of the world...it's fairly common, for PTSD sufferers who haven't really begun to do the work involved yet. And the thing, then, to keep in mind, is that there is "another side"...a 'through' that you can eventually move towards, productively, and emerge from. Healthier, and more capable of that intimacy in the future.
To give you an idea...for a significant period of time, I was unable to appear in or visit public places...almost completely. At all. Not because of Agoraphobia. Not because of Panic (I'd been living with both since age 8, so they weren't even the issue anymore, by a long shot)...but because employees would literally ask me to leave. Not because I was unruly. Not because I was stealing, or bothering other patrons, etc. Because of what I've learned are referred to as "trauma discharges"...all of that ugly coming back out. People can sense that. One manager approached me and simply said, quietly...."We don't need your presence here". Not "you can't do that/act like that/say that here"...but "we don't need your presence here". In other words, I had quite a bit to "get out".
If anyone had tried to convince me that I would be writing the above as recently as 6 years ago, I would have scoffed at them, completely. But it is possible.
Best wishes
I think what you're referring to comes under the rather large, and therefore, ambiguous to not be so helpful, term of "self-calming".
The irony is, as most of us will attest, that the initial form of "self-calming" we resort to is "repression"...blocking out feeling, entirely.
I've heard it said that if one blocks out one feeling, one blocks out them all. So it's no surprise that with our protective "numbing" of our fears, which is necessary to basic functioning...we at the same time block out, "numb" to the positive feelings that are essential to relationships. Love, affection, openness, etc.
It's difficult to see the "breakdown" that most of us experience, when these "blocking/repression" systems finally give way, under a burden of blocked sensations finally mounting too high to withstand, and contain.
And after so long of associating feeling NOTHING with feeling "good"---good as in the absence of fear/pain, after all...
It's extraordinarily difficult to see all of this pent up, repressed emotion, which finally floods over and through us as in any way good. Our basic orientation, heretofore, has been that "success" was equated with "successfully blocking it"...and as it is necessarily mostly negative, after all (we wouldn't have started blocking it in the first place otherwise)....the experience of this flood, alone, is understandably impossible to EXPERIENCE as positive. It feels anything but positive.
But until we're actually working with the feelings, we can't make a beginning on controlling them...feeling them, and working through/around them...and incorporating them into our lives.
Blocking is not managing...and it's not really self-calming. It's like keeping the door to life closed, so as not to have to deal with it. And that's not really dealing with it.
This has been my experience. And I've heard it echoed, restated in many ways here, and many better ways, in fact.
I found that the first step for me was flipping my definition of "success"...from being defined in terms of "successful repression"
to "successful release, and management"...which often involved just sitting with it, and experiencing it...and no longer defining that as "failing" to "keep it together"...but as success, in that I was "doing the work necessary" to really, actually deal with it, in a constructive way which not only was reoriented towards long-term results...but altogether more in line with maturity, in general.
For me, this reorientation resulted from lots of reading related to trauma. I recommend it, therefore. It's always been hard for me to sit and listen to someone telling me what to do, and "how it is". Maybe some can relate. But there's an implicit if unconscious agreement on the part of the reader that the information is completely at his/her control, rather than a matter of being under the control of someone else "feeding it to you"...plus it takes the whole personal dynamic out of it by removing...well...the other person.
It was also necessary for me to incorporate actual steps, "techniques" and formalized approaches...ie meditation, "grounding techniques", writing (freewriting, etc). I was long of the "if I just know it intellecutally, then that should be enough, right?"
Reading finally brought home to me, personally, that this is not at all the case. Trauma, especially, is about engaging through definite, practical methods....not least of all, due to the fact that, as was mentioned earlier...it's become understood as much more of a body-related issue than a purely intellectual/philosophical one.
And having someone around who's become accustomed to "the old you", when these floodgates finally open....well...that can be an understandably disconcerting, and not necessarily edifying, display to behold, for their part.
Some relationships can weather it. Others can't. Many decide that during this early period, being alone, so as to be able to focus all attentions and concerns solely on their "own work" is far better for all involved.
Working on trauma is nothing less than a change of life. Reorientation. Breakdown/Breakthrough. I've found. And I've only made a beginning, myself. But I've elected towards the last option myself--keeping others at a safe distance--in order to get through the first grind. I think the important thing for me to recognize would be the larger picture...sometimes it's just not time to work on a relationship...it's time to work on our selves first. Even if that intimacy doesn't "work out", for whatever reason...it's not only not the end of the world...it's fairly common, for PTSD sufferers who haven't really begun to do the work involved yet. And the thing, then, to keep in mind, is that there is "another side"...a 'through' that you can eventually move towards, productively, and emerge from. Healthier, and more capable of that intimacy in the future.
To give you an idea...for a significant period of time, I was unable to appear in or visit public places...almost completely. At all. Not because of Agoraphobia. Not because of Panic (I'd been living with both since age 8, so they weren't even the issue anymore, by a long shot)...but because employees would literally ask me to leave. Not because I was unruly. Not because I was stealing, or bothering other patrons, etc. Because of what I've learned are referred to as "trauma discharges"...all of that ugly coming back out. People can sense that. One manager approached me and simply said, quietly...."We don't need your presence here". Not "you can't do that/act like that/say that here"...but "we don't need your presence here". In other words, I had quite a bit to "get out".
If anyone had tried to convince me that I would be writing the above as recently as 6 years ago, I would have scoffed at them, completely. But it is possible.
Best wishes
