Healing PTSD: What is it?
Healing PTSD is different from just avoiding flashbacks and intrusive thoughts through Grounding.
Healing goes beyond coping with the symptoms, entering the realm of their causes. Instead of avoiding traumatic memories, we move in the opposite direction, to their encounter, to meet them with care and compassion, in a controlled way.
The goal of this unpleasant effort is, first, to reduce all the intrusions, like flashbacks and nightmares, to the minimum possible frequency and intensity, ideally to eliminate them altogether or keep them at a low, bearable level.
Second, is to strengthen yourself as you are now, integrating the trauma, its healing, your life experiences, your new outlook on life, and your new sensibilities, into your now richer personality, in order to move on as a more mature, realistic, and compassionate person.
It’s definitely not about “getting back” to how you were before the trauma, nor to get into the mould of some ideal of “average” personality type, but to consolidate your real personality on a genuine, honest basis that expresses who you are now, after the trauma and the healing process. The goal is to enjoy life on your own terms, without struggling with the permanent aversion to traumatic memories, and the constant fear of flashbacks and nightmares.
In the end, your outlook on life might not be that of the average person. On the positive side, you may develop more appreciation for even the smallest good things in life, and become a very compassionate, humane person.
The memories of the trauma will not vanish but will become manageable. They will keep an important place, now integrated with your other significant memories. But they will lose their overwhelming, constantly hurting, dominant presence.
Mourning
In life, all people suffer from setbacks or losses that impact their lives. The passing away of a loved one, breakups of long relationships, large material losses, ugly fights with friends, etc. All can hurt us greatly and leave scars.
The mind has a mechanism to deal with these, called “mourning”, a sequence of stages that are applied to very hurting events. These are: Denial - Anger - Bargaining - Depression - Acceptance. After these, the event gets out of our conscious, primary focus, and we move on, having incorporated the experience into our self, (it might even have changed us in important ways).
PTSD
In PTSD, on the contrary, the hurting event is so intense and overwhelming, that its memories become a serious threat to our self. So, our mind “encapsulates” immediately and fast these traumatic memories within the short-term memory area where they were created, closing their access to our Consciousness (to protect our Self), but placing just next to it, and blocking the processing mechanism that would allow for “deactivation” and further storage in long-term memory.
The traumatic memories remain in the short-term, active memory area, very close to Consciousness, but repressed behind a “wall”. This wall is far from perfect. Mental repressed material always tries to express itself. In this case, the traumatic memories frequently cross the wall and intrude into Consciousness. As they are very intense, unprocessed, and kept in an “it's-now” form, they can take over Consciousness as being the present reality, in the way of flashbacks and nightmares.
PTSD Healing: processing traumatic memories
To heal from PTSD we have to “deactivate” the "it's now" appearence, the aggressiveness and destructiveness of the repressed traumatic memories, move them to the Long-Term Memory as something already past, and store them safely there, along with all the other “normal” memories of our life. That is, we have to move them from “A” to “C” as shown in the drawing.
The catch is that to do this, we have to go through “B”, that is, Consciousness, becoming fully aware of this extremely hurting material. Before storing the traumatic memory in long-term memory, it has to be processed and “deactivated” in Consciousness. We have to stop avoiding and allow the entry of these painful, even tormenting memories into our Consciousness. This is exactly what in PTSD we fear the most, and what until now we avoided at all costs, all the time.
All therapies for PTSD have at their core some way of doing this movement and processing of memory content, in a slow, controlled and safe manner.
In the next discussion, we will examine different therapeutical approaches to doing this hugely important and challenging work.
Question:
How do you feel about the change from avoiding, to going to the deliberate encounter of your traumatic memories, in order to heal PTSD?
I look forward to your comments.
All the best !
Marcelo
Yer best at explainin' this. Thank you!
Thank you Marcelo for your effort to make this, to help people understand more about PTSD.
@WelcomeToChat
Wow, that is a lot of informative information. You asked how we felt about facing traumatic events in order to heal. I felt an internal war inside as I read the post. To be honest, Yes I want to heal, but I have no desire to go back and drum up that stuff. This is just me and my experiences. I am torn because I want healing but not at that price.
@WorkingitThrough2
It can be done with the use of propranolol. When you take propranolol medication and recall painful memories, they will come back without fear and will be rewritten back in your brain stripped from that fear component. Next time, memories won't be painful . It's so simple and effective, it's amazing that psychologists/psychiatrists are so slow to adopt this powerful tool.
Please look up propranolol and PTSD and you'll see a great deal of info on it and good YouTube videos, too.
Good luck!
@LostTurtle22
Thank you so much for that information. I will do some research on this and I'll let you know how it comes out❤️
@WelcomeToChat
Very informative! I am still healing in my truma and it's been 9 months. I would say I been feeling more depressed of late as in my healing I was asked "what makes me happy" and I remember all of the experiences of "I don't deserve to be happy because I'm a problem due to my disability..." It hurts everyday as I have my family but I don't have anyone else to hang with or cuddle... it just feels like it's replay of my memories of toxic and traumatic experence with other people...
@welcomeToChat I am reading this two years later & I am finally in a safe place in life where I can process those memories. Yesterday, I had a flashback and this morning, I had a hard time moving past that. I thought this was a major setback in my progress, but your post has definitely helped. Thank you
@WelcomeToChat
I would like to ask a question if it is alright.
Can an insider or Alter tell a lie?
The reason I am asking is that the Guardian of the Little Ones said "He could draw and write but could not talk. My problem with that was he was talking to me and telling me this, I don't understand why he said he can't talk, I heard him talk.
@WorkingitThrough2 Hey you :) They can lie. Maybe when he said he couldn't talk maybe he didn't mean it quite so literally? Maybe he can't talk to you? Or can't talk about anything important? If you were asking questions and he meant he can't talk about them? Or maybe he can talk inside but not outside? Maybe someone else was speaking for him? Like relaying a message? Maybe he would go back and forth with you in a journal. It might be something to try
@mytwistedsoul
Thanks, My therapist said almost the same thing. Seems so weird. Then there is a male and female voice that asks me many questions, and I answer them all, but when I return to myself, I can not remember any of the questions I answered or the ones they asked. I can not figure out why. This causes much frustration.
Do you ever see clips of scenes that flash before your eyes as if watching a slide show? I don't recognize scenes but feel as if I may have been there or should know what they are.
@WorkingitThrough2 They might not want you remembering. I call them thought thieves. It happens to me alot. As weird as it might sound they may have wanted you to forget so they can ask them again. To check for consistency. To see if you answered honestly. They could be doing this to see if they can trust you - it could be a step towards communication
@mytwistedsoul
Oh, you are so right. Sometimes it feels like I am losing my mind. Seems I just can't get enough clarity to help or support them when I am in denial and self-doubt. I want to believe them, but my heart is unaccepting. I know they deserve my appreciation but I feel so split in that that they can feel it. I don't know how to change how I feel to make it real.
@WorkingitThrough2 I wish I knew what to tell you so that it would be easier to accept. It does take time to accept though. I know for the longest time I felt the same as you - like I was losing my mind. A lot of it was a little at a time. The therapist saying they talked to the others - finding notes and letters from them. Communication and hey even if they're asking questions and you're answering - even if you don't remember what was said - it's still communication and it's a step. I know it's frustrating but patience is important too. Maybe you could write some questions too? Maybe they would reply back? You could even write a letter explain why you're having a hard time? It might be worth a try ❤️
@WelcomeToChat
Really helpful. Thanks
Wow this post. I honestly think you are the best 7Cups has, Marcelo. Thank you for this article. I'm suffering from flashbacks and panic attacks from my childhood sexual abuse by a schoolmate, I was around 11 years old when it happened. This article definitely helped me understand more what's going on in my head and what I have to do now. This Pandora box has been closed for almost 30 years and now it's craving back up really drastically for me to finally face it and deal with it. Note for anyone suffering with similar: I really don't recommend bottling it up 🙈
How do you feel about the change from avoiding, to going to the deliberate encounter of your traumatic memories, in order to heal PTSD?
This week, I finally shared it openly with my family for the fist time and let myself feel it little by little. I feel like my panic attacks are getting a little bit less frequent. But it's deadly scary to go into the box, I had the worst panic attack of my life while sharing it, my whole face became numb, my hands shaked and I almost fainted. After that it seems I'm no longer afraid to share it but I'm still afraid to go there alone. It takes a lot of time and energy to deal with this. Many times I feel like after a bus hit.
@WelcomeToChat
"How do you feel about the change from avoiding, to going to the deliberate encounter of your traumatic memories, in order to heal PTSD?"
I think just about anyone would be reticent. I have avoided the associative things and currently that's working for me. I was in crisis a month ago but that's been slowly diffused since quitting my job (other repercussions though). I feel like I don't want to recover the feelings from my experience, so I'm avoiding and seeing if it stays quieter emotionally.
I've also analyzed my story a lot out of confusion. It's taken some of the emotional trauma out of it. And being in crisis greatly desensitized me to things. I guess that's a good thing? I'm less afraid of things?
Long answer, but I think it's always layered.