What Does "processing Trauma" Really Mean?

[Abstract]

Wish I could believe that those feelings/beliefs of worthlessness were not real.

Me too MovinOn. I talk the talk but I can't feel it. I hope we can both feel it and believe it sometime.

 

[Changing4Best]

Sheila are you doing processing and reprocessing?tb

My therapist does not know how to do EMDR, and I really do like her and don't do well when I change therapists, so I am remaining with her. I think I just may have had the wrong age in my recall, as I am not a good judge of age to begin with, having never had any of my own children. I know there are many traumas back there that finally stopped when I was 6 years old, as I think my parents discovered it them and stopped it. It was my father's father who was so awful to me....

 

[Abstract]

Just wanted to add that compassion is often way to far out of reach for me and I have almost zero connection to it. Almost all the progress I have made to do with it has been to do with Acceptance.

The word "compassion" is almost in the same bracket as the word "happiness" for me. All it tends to do is highlight how far away they feel. I find it much better to accept what is in the present and then work for change. If I have something such as "happiness" as a goal it makes me feel despondent as I automatically compare the present against it. Or worse my real feelings go under ground and I have no awareness of them and that is when I am the most self destructive. Sorry if this is off topic. I know it is not really about processing trauma and is more about self hatred and shame. Hope that is OK.

 

[ms spock]

This thread is full of so much food for thought.

 

[shell]

It has really taken me a long time to get to the place where I really got what processing trauma was all about, to stop distancing myself from the emotions and to over come the fear that I would destroy myself if I actually sat with those emotions rather than numbing and dissociating.

Processing why I am so angry when it is not reasonable, and why I really hated myself with such conviction, has helped me reduce many of my symptoms and stopped me from continuing to allow trauma to dictate how I live now. Accepting that I can never change the past, but I can change how I feel about the role I played, and stop living a fear based life, has made a major difference in my life.

This would have to be the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, and for someone who learns very easily, it has been really demoralizing to accept that I was really struggling to make any progress for a very long time. Slowly and carefully seems to have accomplished a lot more than trying to leap in and being overwhelmed.

 

[maddog]

I agree with Ms Spock, this thread is far more food for thought than I can digest at the moment, but it's good food... very good food!!

Abstract, actually I think that talking about shame and hatred as absolutely relevant to the issue of trauma processing. As you've said in your absolutely amazing post from yesterday (that I was tempted to quote in its entirety), the beliefs and indoctrinations that plant and cement the shame are enormous blockages to trauma processing, and apportioning the responsibility where it belongs, and matching the appropriate emotions to the appropriate events and learnings, absolutely has to be one of the key steps in coming to terms with what happened, what it meant at the time, and what it all now means. I talk the talk too, about compassion and acceptance and all of those other buzz words that I alternately embrace and then condemn... but I struggle to do more than talk.

Actually, it's reading that is my emotional hiding place thesedays - I seem to think that if I can read enough good stuff about all of this, something will miraculously shift in my thinking and understanding, and hence in my feeling. I know of course that that won't happen, but feel so powerless and lost to know what else to do.. because knowing isn't worth much without feeling.

I'm very very afraid to acknowledge that I think I am in a very stuck place with processing, and with therapy and life and healing and coping in general at the moment. And while current life challenges are no doubt contributing to that, I know instinctively that it runs deeper. I think we've reached the parts of me that are the most deeply stuck and ingrained, the parts of my beliefs and concepts of meaning of the world and myself that are more immune to change than anything that came before them. It's almost like the first few layers of the onion, if I can reuse that old analogy, were able to be peeled relatively easily, not that I thought so at the time... but the deeper layers are tighter, unyielding, and so the skills and tools and levels of motivation and determination that removed the outer layers just aren't cutting it anymore.

Gosh, it's hard... I feel like there's so much more I want to say, but am at some sort of saturation to even know what it is.

Maddog

 

[therapybankrupt]

It was my father's father who was so awful to me....

I am sorry you also had to endure abuse at such a young age. I am glad you have found any way to process the trauma. The point is to get it out and find a way to distance yourself from it. How does that work for you?

 

[therapybankrupt]

I don't know if I see it as stopping all movement but rather that it is like attempting to drive with the brakes on.

Abstract you post is excellent and I really can relate to your analogy.
tb

 

[Changing4Best]

How does that work for you?

I just talk about the memories as they come up in therapy, telling things that I can recall. Sometimes, like last session, I don't know what age I was during that trauma, but I mention what I can about it. We were talking about how I don't like to brush my teeth and she asked me if there was any other hygene issue that I also didn't like, and I mentioned that I've always hated taking a bath. My parents used to even bribe me with bath toys to get me into the tub. Then I got a vague memory of being "on display" while in the tub, and mentioned it (I said I felt I was molested then too). She said to me, "Yes, in the tub you are very vulnerable," and I surely agreed! I realized just now as well that one can be threatened with being held under the water, to be drowned in there. It seems to me, though the memory is vague, that he threatened this by using one of my toys as an example. UGH! My first thought is "My poor toy!" When we were young, our toys seemed to be alive to us, didn't they? I just remembered!

This website is amazing, but I know too that my mind is wide open to me for some reason, the memories, when triggered at are very available to me, and it does not take much. I know that seeing them even, takes away some of their power, so thanks!

I'll email her and tell her. She lets me email her, which is nice. I can get the whole memory off to her and she acknowledges somehow. It helps us both that way, I think. It does not all have to happen in the session that way, which let's face it, life can trigger it any time! Better for it to be triggered in this safe environment here than in the outside world. Everyone here understands at least, which is what is so wonderful about this site.

 

[ms spock]

Abstract, actually I think that talking about shame and hatred as absolutely relevant to the issue of trauma processing... the beliefs and indoctrinations that plant and cement the shame are enormous blockages to trauma processing, and apportioning the responsibility where it belongs, and matching the appropriate emotions to the appropriate events and learnings, absolutely has to be one of the key steps in coming to terms with what happened, what it meant at the time, and what it all now means.

I am finding it hard to manager the shame and self hatred. I am comforted to know that I am not the only one.

I am very very afraid to acknowledge that I think I am in a very stuck place with processing, and with therapy and life and healing and coping in general at the moment... I think we've reached the parts of me that are the most deeply stuck and ingrained, the parts of my beliefs and concepts of meaning of the world and myself that are more immune to change than anything that came before them. I

I am feeling very stuck and frozen at the moment too, Maddog, I feel like since going off the medication that all this stuff has come up. I feel like everything is either a stressor, trigger or almost impossible to tackle. Eating is hard. Moving through the day is hard. Being around people is hard. I can almost not function in my house. It is hard. I am struggling on a basic functioning level.

I can see how the avoidance and dissociation have so shaped my life. It is sobering.

 

[ms spock]

I am concerned whether I have really processed the traumas or whether I have been lost in a fog of dissociation and avoidance. But better to work that out now and start to address it.

 

[maddog]

One thing I do have to say about processing is that I believe that in many cases, it doesn't happen in one single process. What I mean is that we process what we can, based on where we're at at that particular time. Our brains are amazingly good at titrating the pace and intensity of processing, as long as they have the space and control to do so, and so sometimes a trauma we might think is sufficiently dealt with, actually can re-emerge for further processing on a different, deeper level, when our brains are stronger and more able to go there.

At the time, for me, that's an awful and disillusioning experience. It makes me feel as though I'm never getting anywhere, as though I have to keep going back over the same things over and over again. But each time I do there is greater depth and significance, each time I do I see the trauma and myself in relation to it in a slightly different, hopefully more insightful way. It reminds me of the old analogy of the spiral staircase... you feel as though you just keep going around and around in circles, but as you climb, each time you reach the same place, you're in a slightly different, higher position, and the world looks a little bit different each time.

What's more important than the timing or speed of the processing is its quality. A good, safe, structured, reliable environment in which to work on trauma is the thing we can't do without... I do truly believe that.

Maddog