““Nothing fixes a thing in the memory
as the wish to forget it” ”
Living a traumatic experience can be felt for some people as if something has broken inside them. There is a “before” and “after” in the person’s life, leaving an imprint full of pain, fear, at times anger, guilt, and even shame. Sometimes, it’s a series of repeated and long-standing events what causes the breach in the person’s life and development.
Trauma is the Greek word for injury, physical and emotional, therefore it’s not a coincidence that we use the term trauma to refer to a “wound in the soul”, a wound in the person’s biography, an open wound that doesn’t heal and keeps bleeding despite of the time.
Not every person who has gone through a traumatic experience will suffer from a trauma, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, those who do suffer from PTSD have something in common: the attempted solutions or coping strategies they have carried out in order to manage pain, and other negative emotions associated to the traumatic experience/s.
If remembering hurts, then I have to forget.
Trying to forget the traumatic event/s is the most common and recurrent coping strategy. And in some way, it’s common sense. If recalling the traumatic event is painful, then I have to forget it, to bury it deep down. However, the desperate attempt of forgetting and suppressing thoughts and emotions associated to the painful experience, brings about the paradox of thinking even more about it.
This unconscious but wicked battle between the person and their memories, leaves them exhausted, vulnerable, scared and hopeless about their future. A future that can’t exist while they are still dragging the chain and ball from their past, while their past is still haunting them.
The consequence of this recurrent coping strategy can be in the form of flashbacks (the person relives again the traumatic event, or experiences intrusive thoughts or images of the event), or nightmares (bad dreams whilst sleeping). These two are manifestations and indicatives that the person is not processing the pain, and the other emotions associated to those memories, effectively and the result: the wound starts to bleed again as if they had got hurt for the very first time.
If remembering hurts, then I will avoid what triggers my memories.
Avoiding can be in the form of avoiding people, places or situations that remind the person of the traumatic event. I have talked about the trap of avoidance in a previous post (Help! I can't breathe! Fear and anxiety). Long story short, although avoiding what it’s feared or in this case, what causes pain, can be relieving in the short term, this behaviour will lead to a gradual increase of avoidant behaviour leading the person to eventually believe that they are incapable of getting out of the trap.
These are the most common ineffective coping strategies of those who have suffered from a traumatic experience; however, the long-standing implementation of other unhelpful coping strategies might lead to developing other complex mental health problems including panic attacks, OCD, substance abuse, and depression.
At this point, and if I have been good enough to explain how a traumatic event can develop into a PTSD, you might figure out what the solution to the problem should be. Vast research and my own experience working with a number of people who had suffered from PTSD, have proved that the most effective intervention to effectively treating this complex presentation is helping and guiding the person to revisit the traumatic experience.
From a brief strategic therapy perspective, it will be by accompanying the person to revisit their past, and process the pain differently, helping to wash and heal the wound, that will eventually turn into a scar. A scar that doesn’t bleed anymore, that doesn’t hurt anymore, but that will remind them what the person has been through. Because as Robert Frost said: “The only way out is going through”, and if you want to get out of the tunnel, you have to keep walking.
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