Part of engaging clients is helping them understand their thought processes. As small children, we begin to learn the language as a way to organize information. When we experience any traumatic event in our lives, we form strong emotions connected to our experience. For example, if you’ve witnessed or been in a car accident you may have experienced the feeling of terror, loss of control, memory distortions, and shock. Our minds process and reconcile such feelings associated with the traumatic event. We attempt to figure out this new information that bad things can happen to us. We take these thoughts with us moving forward. One may believe, “Maybe I am cursed, or bad things always seem to follow me”.This negative thought pattern will affect other aspects of our lives as we knew to once be normal to us. We may attempt to avoid these painful memories of the traumatic event. Negative belief systems often are formed as a result of the trauma. Healthy recovery from these traumatic events is crucial to our healing process. Through identification of the negative thought pattern (“Bad things seem to follow me”), and processing such events, we can form new neural pathways(neuroplasticity, our brains’ way of adaptation: physiological changes in the brain that happen as the result of our interactions with our environment. ), thus replacing those negative thoughts with neutral thinking about the trauma. allows us to change the negative belief systems( “Bad things seem to follow me”) about ourselves, forming new belief systems.
Some healthy examples of recovery from trauma include, but are not limited to:
1. Identification of emotions associated with the event.
2. Reaching out to someone for support
3. Learn to implement problem-solving strategies, like cost-benefit analysis and adopting a realistic approach by examining the facts -vs- what we believe to be true.
4. Discuss the emotions associated with the event with family, friends, and other support systems.
5. Identification of stuck points. Such as black and white thinking, overgeneralizations, and all or nothing thinking, etc..
6. Be creative- Adoption of trying alternatives, having a win-win attitude.
7. Meditation and Yoga- Removing ourselves from the physical world.
8. Identifying triggers- This can be words, phrases. Be ready to tackle them at any given moment, even if this is uncomfortable in the beginning.
This can be life-changing for people. We are hardwired to want to avoid painful emotions associated with our experiences. Processing the emotion and challenging assimilated cognitions can give us an improved overall sense of well being, separating the past from the future.
