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
Such a well written and effective post , Marcelo ! Appreciate your time and efforts in making this ❤ @WelcomeToChat
Thank you very much for your compliments! Particularly coming from such an active and knowledgeable leader, who knows and works in every corner of 7 Cups!
Your comments mean a lot to me.
Thank you!
Marcelo.
Made my day , thanks alot for the appreciation ❤ @WelcomeToChat
@WelcomeToChat Another brilliant post! :)
How do you feel about the change from avoiding, to going to the deliberate encounter of your traumatic memories, in order to heal PTSD?
It's scary tbh - I know we need to do it in order to fully heal but it is scary. You have to confront the past in order to be able to move forward - even just to be in the present really. Being locked in the past is tiring and just as scary at times because of the flashbacks and the nightmares - it's draining and we're not really living life are we? Constantly vigilant of everything is stressful which is harmful too. We're still stuck in survival mode weighted down by trauma's. There are so many repressed things here on my end - that it's terrifying at times knowing that they need to faced - we can keep things locked down forever
Wonderful post Marcelo - thank you so much!
Take care :)
@mytwistedsoul I agree another brilliant post! Marcelo has put so much hard work into this week for us!
@adventurousBranch3786 He has put in alot of hard work this week. He gives so much to everyone here! *not to talk about you like you're not here Marcelo lol * We all appreciate all that you do! :)
Thank you very much for your warm and generous words !
They mean a lot to me.
Thank you so much !
I am very glad and honored that you find useful my work !
Hi! Thank you for your participation, your detailed and honest contribution, and your kind words!
Yes, PTSD healing is inherently scary and painful.
Your description of the situation is extremely accurate The "S" in PTSD is exhausting. The tougher the memories, the more we would need to heal, but it makes it much more difficult.
However, there are approaches to healing that are not as tough as others.
Some take a very direct route like "prolonged exposure therapy", in which you narrate your trauma during the session, record it, and then you listen at home to the recording as "homework".
On the other side of the spectrum, some therapies use symbols in the form of drawings, paintings, drama, body movements, or visualizations, to express and process the repressed traumatic contents. The therapy might be done almost without speaking about the trauma.
Finally, there is the very valid option of avoiding this work in the case of extremely painful memories. Like a surgeon that decides to leave a bullet inside your body, because taking it out would be so traumatic, that it would do more harm than good.
This might be the best decision, a valid, sound, healthy choice for some very specific situation.
Thank you again for your kind words !
All the best !
Marcelo.
@WelcomeToChat You're welcome! :) You've got alot of really good suggestions that we'll have to discuss with the therapist. Art therapy was pretty awesome but then when everything locked down due to the virus - so much stopped and everything got put on hold. There had been some talk about EMDR - so Idk. It's been hard doing therapy through facetime and zoom calls and email but they finally lifted allmost everything in our state so after this weekend therapy goes back to face to face. I never thought I'd say that I'm thankful for that but - lol - I am actually looking forward to it and I figure the Art therapy will soon start again too - which I'm hoping that that will lead me towards some motivation to start building and working with wood again
Thank you! Stay awesome Marcelo :)
@WelcomeToChat Wow! Thanks for all that you have put into the events for this week! Question:How do you feel about the change from avoiding to going to the deliberate encounter of traumatic memories in order to heal PTSD? I spent my life since my teenage years avoiding triggers for flasbacks and intrusive thoughts. They were just to painful to face and I was filled with guilt and shame even after some therapy. I am older now and have some health problems so I watch more tv than I used to. However I found that one of my abusers had a name that was commonly used in many programs. which made me feel tortured. I almost gave up watching my favorite programs. I decided to give therapy another try. When I mentioned all of this the therapist actually recomended that I continue watching these programs with the triggering name if possible! Which I did, We worked on all the guilt and shame I had especially from body memories that I would get from hearing that name and this was very helpful to me. I stlll don't avoid triggers (non dangerous ones). I stll get body memories but I am not tortured by them anymore, I feel it more an inconvinence. Having said all this I did this with a therapist and it was very, very hard!!! Wishing healing and peace to anyone suffrring with traumatic memories
.
@adventurousBranch3786 *suffering
Hi !
I am glad to know that, after so many ordeals, you could do the hard and painful work that brought you such excellent results.
The story about your (wise) therapist exposing you to your triggers in order to reveal and treat traumatic memories in your body and mind, is a wonderful example of a good therapy, I think.
Its successful outcome is a reassurance to those who doubt about facing their worst fears in the context of therapy with the purpose of healing. That this tough effort can really help them live much better afterward.
Also, the process of changing from feeling tortured to feeling just an inconvenience from triggers, is very informative about what realistically to expect from doing genuinely good therapy,
Thank you for sharing such a very valuable experience !
All the best !
Marcelo.
@WelcomeToChat
Couldn't agree more with the others. Indeed another well written brilliant post! Well done Marcelo 💜
Not all trauma turn into PTSD, but we all have trauma at some point in life and I suppose we can use this to heal as well?
To answer the question, I've tried this to face a phobia from a traumatic event. It was a lot of anxiety to stay and stayed calm. Not completely over it but the anxiety getting lower and lower every time.
Thank uou very much Cherie !
Sure ! A main principle of therapy (at least of those with some relation to Psychoanalysis) is the need to bring to light repressed traumatic memories of every sort, and make them conscious, let them express themselves, and put them to rest.
Phobias, in particular, are healed through a process of "desensitization", exposing yourself in a very gradual and controlled manner to the feared object or situation, until you get used to it, and it loses its threatening character. Very similar to PTSD healing. It is used to treat phobias from spiders, to social anxiety, closed spaces, you name it...
Thank you again for your kind words !
I hope the text might be useful for your work.
All the best !
Marcelo.
this is an amazing post marcelo, thank you for sharing! i've been feeling nervous and hesitant to approach my memories in detail because it is definitely scary but i know that it will be for the best that i do. i know that i just need to be brave and confront it head on in order to heal and that's what i want for myself, so i'll be following the trauma self-help guide and writing what happened in detail while practicing diaphragmatic breathing. wish me luck ❤️
Hi !
You are very brave in facing this challenging task head-on by yourself. But the gains will be enormous.
You will not only heal PTSD symptoms, but become a stronger and wiser person in the process.
Remember to go slow, adjust the pace according to how you are feeling, and pause it at any moment if you feel overwhelmed.
Only small chunks of traumatic memories should be processed at each step.
Make sure to do it in an environment where you feel very safe, and ideally having near someone you trust. Someone in another room of your house while you do your exercises, will be reassuring.
Besides the 7 Cups Self-Help guide, I suggest you to do the exercises in "The PTSD Workbook". You can download it from HERE
I wish you all the luck in the world, and don't hesitate to come back to us at any point.
All the best !
Marcelo.
@WelcomeToChat thank you so so much marcelo, i appreciate your support and the workbook you've provided that i can do along with the self-help guide!! i'll keep your words in mind when i'm going through the process and your kind words mean so much to me. best of wishes to you ❤️
Hello, Marcelo. As always, this is so interesting and eye opening. The fact that the mind tries to block the traumatic experience behind a wall makes perfect sense now. That explains why some memories are forgotten and they awake later. I understand that. But it is still frightening to have new memories awaken all of a sudden and it has become a fear itself, fearing that I will remember things that I didn't remember; fearing to get new triggers; fearing to go back where I was before. And, honestly, I prefer to keep hiding.
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 definitely do not accept to encounter it. I understand some things now, like why my therapist says I should accept the things that happened. I constantly thought "why should I accept it? I think the things that happened are unacceptable and none of that should have happened. Accepting it is like validating the reasons my abuser had to hurt me, like accepting it was ok to be hurt". But I understand now, it is not accepting that the things he did were right, but accepting that it happened and that I need to move on. However, this is so complicated and scary, and I prefer to keep avoiding it. It has worked decently so far, ignoring and keeping my mind focused on something else so I don't have any intrusive thought or flashback or nightmare or whatever. It has worked and I don't plan to change that.
@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'll be honest - I really struggle with this. I don't like encountering my memories let alone deliberating doing it. I prefer to avoid it. In reality though there are some times where I do need to face those memories to heal. It isn't easy but it is needed to heal.
Hi !
The bare truth is that healing PTSD is very tough. It's like jumping through a ring of fire.
When, and even "if" to do it (or not), is a very personal decision, that depends on your specific circumstances.
For example, on how disturbing are your current symptoms, and how skillful you are in dealing with them.
Many people decide to do tough therapeutic "memory work" because their lives have become unbearable. They feel they don't have any other option.
Therapy is not a moral obligation, but a matter of convenience and wellbeing
If you feel that you can keep intrusions to acceptable levels, and you are able to block them from escalating, so your life is mostly under your control, skipping therapy is then an option. At least for the moment.
In any case, to the extent of your possibilities, do therapy (the "standard" one), and consult from time to time with your therapist the convenience of starting hardcore trauma memory work.
I wish you all the best !
Marcelo
@WelcomeToChat
Wow!, great content. As a person who has suffered from CPTSD for 50 years or more without the Medical Profession having much knowledge back then on how to treat this condition except to keep people medicated which was not helpful because this just added to the brain being more dysfunctional or delusional. I had used unknowledgeable services that just made me feel worse. I am glad that there are new studies going on to give more direct and helpful information to everyone. Maybe I would still not be dealing with this for so long. I have been in EMDR therapy for about a year, but because of an unwillingness to dig into the hardcore trauma stuff. I have not made much progress. Avoidance is definitely not good. nor productive.
Looking foreward to reading more and thanks
@scarletPear1945
Sorry you have been dealing with this for so long. You are right that the treatmens of now did not exist in any way back then. I am also older and have also dealt with CPTSD and also have DID, for over 5 decades. I know what you mean about it being so hard to not aviod it all. I am still there also. Nice to meet you.
@Amelia2324
Thank you and it is nice to meet you
Thank you for your compliments ! They mean a lot to me, coming from a very active, thoughtful, and a prominent member of this community, who has read hundreds of posts here, and are in the best position to judge the quality of our work. I take it very seriously and encourages me a lot to continue working for the good of this community.
You are right that CPTSD has only very recently been identified, studied, and given treatment options, compared with other conditions like depression, anxiety, etc. And the work is still in progress.
EMDR is tough. Go slow. Don't force yourself into an "ideal" pace. Be patient with yourself and reward yourself for your acts of courage during therapy.
Avoidance is the basic, natural response to trauma, not a weakness or a fault.
You are brave to face those memories through such a direct route as EMDR. You should be proud of it.
Always aim for improvement, never for perfection.
Celebrate each small advance, indulge yourself with a small gift or a pleasant experience. You deserve it.
I wish you all the best
Thank you again for your kind words!
Marcelo.
@WelcomeToChat
Marcelo,
Thank you so very much for you!
Thank you also for all and everything you have put into all of this. You do a lot and give a lot to all of us. I wish I could do somethings for you also.
I wanted to thank you now and let you know how much we appreciate you very much. The timing of this and with things in our life has been off. I/we will reply to you more at a better time. ....just wanted to let you know that you are recognized and are not forgotten---and are much appreciated. 
Dear Amelia:
Thank you for your wonderful words!
I always feel your warmth and kindness here.
Your love and support have been some of the most encouraging and rewarding things that keep me giving volunteer time to this community.
You have always been very clear and expressive in your support of my work here. This is the kind of "emotional food" I need to keep going, and you have provided me a huge lot of it,
You have already done a lot to help me, and I thank you greatly for that.
I will be always grateful to you for your kindness, support, and appreciation.
All the best!
Marcelo.
Awe Marcelo, I would be happy to do anything to be good to you and to help you. You are such a kind soul and a wonderful person. Thank YOU Marcelo.
@Amelia2324 I humbly and graciously thank you. Again great job
@WelcomeToChat
Amazing post! Thank you❤️.
Thank you, Elizabeth !
All the best !
Marcelo.
