Healing Trauma Memories – The Effects of Trauma (Part II).

Please read Part 1 here. 

Overcoming negative thoughts and emotions of a trauma narrative are linked to deliberately, repeatedly, and gradually revisiting the painful, upsetting, and oftentimes distressing memories associated with the trauma. A new conceptual framework for the study of stress and its related effects upon the human body emerged in the last three decades called allostasis. This stress-response process is when the brain exerts control over the body’s internal regulation system to match physical and behavioral responses to the environment. In this perspective, the brain becomes the primary interface between the body’s stress-related responses and the given stressor. Many research studies have confirmed that, when experiencing the trauma-related stressor (whether triggered through a related event, location, relationship, or similar experience) it can become extremely difficult to escape the traumatic memories despite efforts in avoiding them, pushing them away, or dismissing them altogether. The more mental effort exerted, the more these memories have strength and power over the body according to the process of allostasis.

Our natural, instinctual response to push away dangerous, scary, unpleasant, and unwanted negative thoughts out of our mind can be unsuccessful. In this process, called thought suppression, unwanted information is seen to become deliberately forced out of our awareness. Over the decades, researchers have confirmed in numerous studies and anecdotal evidence that thought suppression is highly ineffective and has a paradoxical effect: suppression produces the very thoughts that were meant to be minimized, stifled, and controlled. Noted as the rebound effect, the individual’s thoughts that were meant to be suppressed had even more preoccupation with those exact thoughts. Thought-stopping, a discarded behavioral technique, has been associated with greater depression and anxiety and leads to the suppressed thoughts persisting with greater thought-rebounding effects.

It becomes necessary to navigate traumatic memories when understanding allostasis and thought suppression as part of the journey toward post-traumatic growth, resilience, and health. When not dealt with accordingly, these problematic traumatic memories can result in more dysregulation of emotion, increased distress, and accumulated ill health outcomes. Dr. Mark Powers, Clinical Psychologist and Director of Trauma Research at Baylor Scott & White Health Medical Center reflects that trauma survivors can create meaning out of a senseless experience and states, “As humans we gravitate toward processing and making sense of our experience. That’s why treatment is often geared toward finding a sense of meaning.” After a trauma, the human brain has a more pronounced desire to make sense of the experience. Here are several benefits in sharing traumatic memories with trusted individuals who can respond with compassion and understanding:

• Unprocessed traumatic memories are typically fragmented and without organized meaning from the broader context of an individual’s life narrative. Sharing and processing the trauma can introduce organization, structure, and meaning for the brain with a real beginning, middle, and end to the storyline. This type of meaning-making with a narrative makes the trauma more understandable, manageable, and less threatening.
• Many trauma survivors highlight a sense of mastery when sharing their trauma story with others. Seeds of hope and a genuine sense of optimism sprout when trauma survivors recount their stories and witness their own courage to continue moving forward as a whole individual.
• Sharing and re-telling the traumatic memories will lessen the power of its negative emotions and physiological reactions, and trauma survivors typically find that these memories no longer control or negatively grip them as they once did. Recounting and re-telling them may be upsetting and overwhelming at first, but the distress and intensity will lessen over time even though it might remain an unpleasant memory.
• Simply retelling and sharing the traumatic memories can expose and correct distorted beliefs about the individual, the world, and other people. When kept shut inside, these traumatic memories maintain and reinforce negative emotions and beliefs about the individual; yet, sharing them shifts these thoughts and cultivates a more healthier belief system.
• Recounting the trauma narrative combats feelings of shame. You can read more about shame’s crippling effects and dethroning its voice here.

When reflecting on post-traumatic growth, resilience, and healing it becomes important to consider how trauma survivors have been able to overcome their past challenges and develop awareness of their inherent grit. Transitioning from a one-dimensional narrative of hopelessness and helplessness to that of courage, hope, and confidence requires the powerful cumulative effect of validating the small steps forward toward healing. Seeds of hope and faith in the trauma survivors’ ability to grow, recover, and heal eventually become tiny green sprouts that allow them to emerge into strong and tall oaks.

Recommended Resources:

• Healing the Wounded Heart: The Heartache of Sexual Abuse and the Hope of Transformation by Dan Allender
• Restoring the Shattered Self  by Heather Davidiuk Gingrich
• Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence–From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror by Judith Herman
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk M.D.
• It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered by Lysa Terkeurst
• White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts: Suppression, Obsession, and the Psychology of Mental Control by Daniel Wegner

“When not dealt with accordingly, these problematic traumatic memories can result in more dysregulation of emotion, increased distress, and accumulated ill health outcomes.