Trauma support check in Wednesday December 30th 2020

Hiya peeps! Welcome to my last check in of the year, and what a year it's been!!🤯

cebreaker: what's one thing you hated about 2020 and what's one thing you loved?

Today's check in is on dealing with guilt after trauma.

While it’s easy to focus on dramatic and tragic trauma stories, there is often a missing piece. Something that many people don’t associate with experiencing trauma—the shame and guilt that at times comes with it.

What is trauma related guilt?

Trauma-related guilt refers to the unpleasant feeling of regret stemming from the belief that you could or should have done something different at the time a traumatic event occurred.

But why would anyone feel guilty or shameful of having gone through a traumatic event?

“Survivor guilt is complicated. [A] lot of the time, people will not even seek counseling because they feel they don’t deserve to feel better or they’re not worthy of getting relief,” Medina-Wolf says.

Understanding the roots of this shame and guilt and the lack of control associated with these issues is very important for trauma recovery.

Trauma survivors may also experience a particular type of trauma-related guilt, called survivor guilt. Survivor guilt is often experienced when a person has made it through some kind of traumatic event while others have not.They may even blame themselves for surviving a traumatic event as if they did something wrong.

Feeling guilt after the experience of a traumatic event is serious,it has been linked to a number of negative consequences. For example, trauma-related guilt has been found to be associated with depression, shame, social anxiety, low self-esteem, and thoughts of suicide.In addition, feeling a lot of trauma-related guilt has been connected to the development of PTSD..

Trauma-related guilt can be treated with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy for trauma-related guilt would focus on helping people become more aware of the thoughts or beliefs that underlie feelings of guilt, such as through self-monitoring. lessen your guilt by realizing that the traumatic event was completely out of your control, and you acted in the best way you could given the situation.

Trauma isn’t a choice. When you experience a traumatic event, you usually feel powerless to prevent it. This lack of control thus creates a strong desire to have control afterward. But often you’re stuck feeling that you have absolutely no power to effect change at all.

How do we take back that power, that control? This boils down to developing skills to regulate the body’s nervous system through mindful breathing, visualization, movement and relaxation practices, and associated body work, including massage, energy healing approaches and yoga therapy,to name a few.

Of course seeking professional help is always a good start, support groups both irl and online can be beneficial as well.

Question: do you feel guilt? If so, what is something that helps?

Has always these questions are optional, feel free to say hi pick up or drop off a hug or 2.

Hang tough stay pawsome ur friend and forum supporter 🔥

A few links!

https://istss.org/about-istss

https://artherapyinternational.org/blog/traumatic-events-coping-with-survivors-guilt-afterwards/

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/publications/impact-traumatic-events-mental-health

The 3rd link has a free pdf download called The impact of traumatic events on mental health.

Quote from Luna L Medina-Wolf

Counselor, LMHC, NCC, MCAP

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