Trauma Responses

Our bodies give us a lot of important information about what we’re experiencing, what we’ve been through, and what we need to survive. Paying attention to our physical and emotional sensations is essential if we hope to function in the world effectively. Our survival relies on our ability to tune into the body’s signals that let us know when we’re tired, happy, afraid, hungry, angry, hurt, etc.

Whenever we sense danger, our nervous systems automatically set off little alarm signals to let us know that we’re not safe. This internal alarm prompts a stress response that's known as the “Fight-or-Flight” response. These threat responses come in very handy when there’s danger. Without needing to stop and think, our bodies automatically jump into action to protect us. 

As research on stress responses has grown, we’ve come to recognize at least two additional responses: Freeze and Fawn. Let's explore each one briefly.

• The Fight Response helps you deal with the danger head-on by attacking the threat (verbally or physically) before it hurts you. In non-physical forms, fight responses can look like blaming, insulting, threatening, or shaming someone who seems threatening.

• The Flight Response helps you get away from the threat as fast as possible by running away physically, mentally, or emotionally. Less overt forms of the flight response are avoidance, procrastination, overworking, and distraction.

• The Freeze Response is like "playing dead" or avoiding detection by staying still and quiet until the threat passes. Freeze responses include feeling overwhelmed and unable to move, think, or speak clearly. A freeze response can sometimes override other options even if we'd prefer to fight, flee, or fawn.

• The Fawn Response is a strategy of trying to placate or appease the threat in order to earn temporary safety. Some common forms of fawning include extreme hospitality, people-pleasing, flattering, apologizing, etc.

Most people can experience threat responses in healthy and adaptive ways. When someone has PTSD, however, they perceive that threats are happening all around them all the time. This traps their nervous system in a miserable cycle of triggers and threat responses. When someone spends a long period of time in an unsafe environment, it gets harder and harder for them to respond appropriately to the threat.

When the body experiences trauma, the nervous system goes into overdrive to protect us from danger. You can think of PTSD as a nervous system that's stuck in “survival mode” even after the threat has ended. These are the common symptoms associated with PTSD:

• Hypervigilance: a state of anxiety and tension due to compulsively monitoring for danger or any potential threats.
• Exaggerated Startle Response: intense physical reactions to unexpected stimuli or changes in one's environment.
• Flashbacks: an involuntary reliving of a traumatic experience, often including the connected emotional or physical responses.
• Avoidance: repeated efforts to reduce exposure to reminders of the traumatic experience.
• Social Withdrawal: increased isolation and difficulty connecting with social supports.
• Depression: hopelessness, irritability, excessive guilt, or shame (a negative view of one's own worth).
• Sleep Disturbance: difficulty falling or staying asleep (insomnia), nightmares, or night terrors.
• Dissociation: mental or emotional detachment or disconnection from one's current circumstances.
• Self-Harm or Neglect: intentional or unintentional acts that increase one's risk of injury or deterioration.

"The bodies of child-abuse victims are tense and defensive until they find a way to relax and feel safe. In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.” – Bessell Van Der Kolk

Reframing a Trauma Narrative

Any story comes with implied meanings, morals, or lessons. For example, the obvious lesson of the story about the boy who cried wolf is that people won’t believe someone who makes too many false cries for help. Trauma narratives are simply the stories that we repeat to ourselves about our traumatic past experiences and why they happened. Trauma narratives usually contain deeper messages too.

In the wake of a traumatic event, we all automatically make unconscious interpretations about why it happened to us and what “lesson” we learned from it. Unfortunately, trauma narratives that are born in fear, hurt, and blame are rarely helpful or even accurate.

When we’ve retold and reinforced our trauma narrative for long enough, it’s easy to accept it as the truth, even if it’s completely inaccurate or illogical. When we base our thoughts and choices on the distorted “lessons” of our trauma narrative, dysfunction, confusion, and powerlessness start stacking up.

An essential part of trauma recovery is investigating and challenging the harmful interpretations we took with us after our traumatic experience. Otherwise, an unexamined trauma narrative will keep reinforcing harmful beliefs and misplaced blame. Below are three main steps for identifying, challenging, and reframing a trauma narrative.

Step 1: Identify the Trauma Narrative

Identifying your negative trauma narrative is like cleaning out an infected wound to finally get rid of the stubborn infection. The first step is to reflect on the old narrative you’ve been telling yourself and investigate the unconscious “lessons” you’ve been believing.

Below is a list of common beliefs that trauma survivors internalize due to their trauma narrative. Take note of any statements that reflect your own feelings about what you experienced. If none of the statements in the inventory seem to fit, is there another negative belief that seems to represent your trauma narrative better?

• My experience doesn’t count as trauma; it could have been much worse.
• Other people will assume that I think my trauma is worse than theirs.
• I must have done something to deserve what happened to me.
• The person/people who hurt me had good reasons or good intentions.
• The person/people who hurt me couldn’t control their actions.
• The person/people who hurt me had a reason for picking me out.
• I should expect everyone in my life to treat me the same way in the future.
• My experience proves something shameful about me.
• It’s immature that I’m still upset about what happened to me.
• The physical and emotional reactions I’ve had are irrational.
• If I were stronger this wouldn’t have impacted me so much.
• If I were stronger it wouldn’t have happened in the first place.
• Pretending that It didn’t happen is proof that I’ve moved on.
• Calling it trauma would be admitting that I’m permanently broken.
• There’s nothing I can do about it now except try to forget.
• I’m not the only one it happened to so it must not be a big deal.
• If no one else remembers it happening, I must have made it up.
• If I tell other people what happened, they will blame me.
• If I tell other people what happened, they won’t believe me.
• If I tell other people what happened, they will see me as broken.
• If I speak up about what happened it will ruin someone else’s life.
• My experience made me stronger so I should be grateful for it.

Step 2: Challenge the Trauma Narrative

Now that you’ve identified the “moral of the story” for your trauma narrative, it’s time to reassess it from a different perspective. It’s often helpful to imagine that a loved one of yours is telling you the story and you are hearing the details for the first time. Instead of taking your old interpretations for granted, examine and question them. Negative core beliefs need to be debunked before you can look at your story in a new light.

Things to be on the lookout for include:

• Automatic feelings of shame or self-blame
• Outdated assumptions that you no longer believe are true
• Thinking errors (negative interpretations) that are common for you
• Placing unfair blame or responsibility on yourself
• Unrealistic expectations of your past self
• Mind reading what other’s thoughts or intentions were
• Jumping to conclusions about what it all means

If you notice any inaccurate or unrealistic interpretations, write them down and imagine how you would respond to a loved one if they said those things. Gently address each problematic interpretation with the same amount of grace you would offer your loved one. Even if you’re not sure you really believe it yet, start practicing reminding yourself of the alternative perspective.

Step 3: Practice the New Narrative

With practice, telling yourself a more empathetic and validating version of your trauma narrative can lead to incredible relief. It won’t erase the reality of what happened, but it WILL clear out the unnecessary clutter of shame, blame, and self-hate that often accompany our trauma narratives.

This reframing takes time and practice, though. You won’t be perfect at it immediately but don’t give up. Every time you’re reminded of the old, self-defeating trauma narrative, you have an opportunity to practice. Try taking a deep breath and intentionally repeating the new story from your new perspective.

Replacing old blame-based beliefs with empathy-based beliefs makes it much easier to accept and love ourselves. Any shame about our past reactions and choices will be much easier to understand and forgive. Once you’ve reframed and practiced your new trauma narrative, it should feel much more natural to care for and be kind to yourself.

Emotions: What's the point?

Deconstructing emotions is a recurring theme in my therapy practice. A lot of people, especially those of us who consider ourselves "thinkers" rather than "feelers", have an uncomfortable relationship with our emotions. To further complicate it, society often tells us that some feelings are "good" and others are "bad", prompting us to avoid or seek them out accordingly.

Unfortunately, when we attach unnecessary moral value to our emotions or try to dispense with them completely, we end up making our feelings even harder to understand and accept. It also yields some surprising barriers to healthy functioning. 

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the language we use to describe having emotions is the exact same language we use to describe physical sensations: we “feel” emotions in much the same way that we “feel” things like heat, tension, or pain. Just like physical sensations, our feelings only have meaning when looked at in context. Feelings might seem unhelpful, inconvenient, or overwhelming based on the circumstances, but that doesn't make them unimportant.

It would be strange to think of a physical sensation as “wrong” because our body sensations always have some kind of value that helps us survive. If I accidentally stepped into a bear trap, I would experience pain. Even though the pain would be unpleasant, it would be very useful. Without it, how would I know that I had a nasty wound on my food that needed attention?

Emotions offer us equally relevant information. We need to pay attention to them if we want to function effectively. If someone tried to live life ignoring their emotions (and many people have), they would be doomed to eventually suffer the consequences of overlooking the crucial information their emotions had to offer.

So what exactly do our feelings tell us? Each emotion has a specific function, giving us unique information about what we’re experiencing and how we can choose to respond. Just like we would want to collect as much data as possible before developing a scientific theory, knowing what our feelings are telling us allows us to make more informed decisions. 

I like to ask two main questions when investigating emotions:

1) What information is this giving me?
2) What is this motivating me to do?

Fortunately for us, each of the basic emotions occurs under specific circumstances, making them easier to identify. Additionally, they each have a purpose: to give us energy and motivation to do something necessary. Here's my breakdown of some of the most common emotions and the information and motivations they give us.

Anger informs me there has been a perceived injustice to myself or others.
Anger motivates me to speak up, defend myself or others, or do what I can to stop continued injustice.

Disgust informs me that something I'm exposed to seems repulsive to toxic me.
Disgust motivates me to either get away from the source of my repulsion OR evaluate my bias against it.

Fear informs me that there has been a perceived threat to one of my needs.
Fear motivates me to find a way to fight, flee, or play dead (freeze) to defend myself from the threat.

Guilt informs me that I have done something that is incongruent with my core values.
Guilt motivates me to stop the incongruent behavior, make amends, or reassess my values.

Hurt informs me that I have been wounded.
Hurt motivates me to take adequate time to heal and set protective boundaries to prevent future wounds.

Enjoyment informs me that I am appreciating something that's here and now.
Enjoyment motivates me to notice my gratitude, savor the moment, and seek it out again.

Loneliness informs me that I am lacking meaningful connections with others.
Loneliness motivates me to be vulnerable enough to seek genuine connections with other people.

Sadness informs me that I have experienced a loss.
Sadness motivates me to take adequate time to grieve and accept that the loss occurred and evaluate if I want to risk that kind of loss again.

Shame informs me that I am confronting my human limitations and imperfection.
Shame motivates me to accept my humanity and set realistic expectations and boundaries for myself.

That's all I have for now.

Thoughts? Feelings? Moral objections? Personally, I think living is a lot easier and more effective when we actually listen to our emotions and take action in a constructive way. If you've tried the alternative, you already know the consequences. 

Progress + Equality

It struck me recently how important progress is to our continued human existence. Not only does progress save us from despair by giving us hope for a better future (and hopefully one where we don't destroy the planet); but it also acts as a strong motivator to make the changes that are most difficult. Dedicating our efforts to making the world a better place is investing in our own well-being AND the well-being of future generations. Win-win, right?

Oddly, there seems to always be a subset of the population who are anti-progress. Remember back when America abolished slavery? There was an embarrassingly large group of folks who DIDN'T want slavery to end. There was a whole war about it. Remember when women were given the right to vote? There were protests and moral outrage from those who thought the very idea of an autonomous woman was unnatural. These not-so-long-ago examples are uncomfortably similar to some of our current-day debates.

Since empathy is a high value for me, when I feel myself starting to villainize another person or group, I try to take a step back and consider what the situation looks like from their perspective. I doubt that many people would actually say that they are against progress, so I wonder why so many political, social, and religious talking points seem to suggest otherwise.

From an evolutionary perspective, every living being on the planet is taking part in the slow but irresistible momentum toward adaptation and survival. No organic being is stagnant because we're constantly making adaptive adjustments as our understanding of the world increases. As humans, we're exceptional at learning, imagining, and creating new ways to adapt and progress. Modern medicine, automobiles, and the internet are just of few examples. 

Thanks to this progress, humanity is *finally* at a stage when nearly all of us agree that humans should be treated equally and no one should be enslaved. We're less tribalistic, less racist, less sexist, and much better at protecting vulnerable populations from being exploited. Good job, humans!

Fundamentalists, whether religious or political, seem to have a different perspective, however. It seems that the preservation of their own truths and traditions is a higher priority for them. While I typically endorse letting people choose and pursue their own core values, this quintessential difference in priorities is really getting in our way. In centuries past, this clash was the source of significant frustration and stagnation. Today, it's threatening our very survival as a species.

Instead of giving into panic, I think there's an important discourse we need to have. It begins with some big questions: What does progress look like for humanity right now? Is the old way of operating really worth preserving? What would we be sacrificing if we stopped fighting our own evolution? 

Some of the most important forms of progress that we could choose to embrace right now are seen as threats to many who identify as conservative. A prime example is our evolving understanding of systemic inequity based on race, gender, sexuality, and other factors. Research, empathy, and science have offered us new insight into the unjust nature of our old systems. If you talk to a politically conservative or religiously fundamentalist person on these topics, however, they are very likely to respond with disgust, anger, and even fear. 

This crazy-making predicament honestly makes me hope that we're just having an epic misunderstanding. Because how could any human who values all other humans equally be AGAINST initiatives that increase equity? The problem seems to lie in our basic view of what EQUALITY means. 

If you believe that being transexual is not a legitimate identity, does that mean you're no longer obligated to treat people who say they are trans as equals? If you believe that women were designed to be submissive to men and feminism is wrong, does that mean that you have the right to deny women the opportunity to thrive independently? If you believe that people of other races are just "different" and that's why they have historically experienced more hardships, does that justify your choice not to change ongoing systems that disadvantage them? 

If you believe in Equality, you believe in progress. If you value empathy, you value the well-being of people you disagree with. As individual members of the human race, we don't get to choose which types of equality we feel like supporting. I know that the inevitable slippery slope, family values, and individual freedoms arguments are primed and ready, but ultimately those are excuses to put off making changes that would make all people equal. Maybe then we could focus on saving the planet we all share.

Am I wrong? I often am. If you have a differing opinion that still rests on the assumption that all human beings are equal, I would love to discuss it.