Talking about the trauma can be important Allow the person to talk about what happened, even if they become upset. Just be calm yourself and listen carefully – getting upset too doesn't help. Don't insist on talking if the person doesn't want to. They may need time to be alone with their thoughts.
Although talking about trauma is extremely difficult, it is also necessary for the healing process. This doesn't mean that you need to relive the details, what's more, important is opening about the effect it's had.
Whether it's validation, understanding, being seen, or empathy, talking with someone (or many someones) who gets it rids survivors of feelings of isolation. To “process” a trauma essentially means to make sense of it. Trauma doesn't make sense—it's a mess of emotions and reactions and questions.
Talking about personal trauma can force you to revisit painful memories. Forming coherent thoughts about traumatic experiences can trigger flashbacks, nightmares, and panic. Talking about it has got to be so much worse. You can heal from PTSD.
Typically people who are at their worst have suffered trauma, particularly trauma that has not been addressed or acknowledged. Your mental health will most certainly decline if you don't have a place to put it. Here's the truth about anxiety, depression, PTSD: it won't kill you, but not talking about it might.
Using avoidance as your main way of coping with traumatic memories can make PTSD symptoms worse and make it harder to move on with your life.
There are absolutely health impacts from unresolved trauma. Unresolved trauma puts people at increased risk for mental health diagnoses, which run the gamut of anxiety, depression and PTSD. There are physical manifestations as well, such as cardiovascular problems like high blood pressure, stroke or heart attacks.
When in recovery from trauma, however, being vulnerable can play a key part in the healing process. You have to not only talk about the things that happened to you, but you have to talk about the feelings you now experience. Learning to be vulnerable and to open up to others will advance your healing process.
Communicating about distressing emotions and experiences with supportive and attuned therapists and others helps clients organize memories in a meaningful way, make sense of their past, and create a logical story.
Revisiting the site of a trauma is not something that should be undertaken without careful preparation. Even more important is finding the right time to do it, if it is to be done at all. A few days after the trauma is often the wrong time, as the person is usually still suffering physical and/or psychological effects.
Van der Kolk shares how understanding and feeling are located in different parts of the brain. People may understand their trauma, but their feelings need to emerge in treatment to get results. This is why just talking, and reviewing events, does not seem to help people very much.
Trauma dumping refers to sharing a traumatic story without thinking about how it will affect the listener, or oversharing in an inappropriate context.
Smiling when discussing trauma is a way to minimize the traumatic experience. It communicates the notion that what happened “wasn't so bad.” This is a common strategy that trauma survivors use in an attempt to maintain a connection to caretakers who were their perpetrators.
Many people benefit from talking about past trauma, and several cultures and professions encourage such sharing. Some people choose not to discuss trauma. Instead, they focus on other people's issues or more pleasant topics, keeping traumas hidden. Some think it is defensive not to talk about trauma.
It is believed that repeatedly thinking about the event will help the mind understand what happened and eventually process it. Over time, it seems the memory becomes more integrated and most people can then move on with their lives.
Trauma, obstacles and adversity are not only a fact of life, they're how people grow stronger. It's estimated that 90% of people who experience adversity also experience some form of personal growth in the following months and years.
Talk therapy helps people with PTSD in many ways. Talking about the traumatic memories with a trained therapist can provide the patient with education about their symptoms so they don't feel so alone and out of control.
Improved relationships.
These are often born of the need to give and receive support through trying times. Trauma can help forge new relationships and make people more grateful for the ones they already have. Coming through a crisis together is a bonding experience.
No, but with effective evidence-based treatment, symptoms can be managed well and can remain dormant for years, even decades. But because the trauma that evokes the symptoms will never go away, there is a possibility for those symptoms to be “triggered” again in the future.
Everything. Talking about the trauma, even just trying to put what happened into words, can actually worsen a victim's trauma by re-activating it in the brain, and embedding it deeper.
There are degrees of trauma. It can be emotional, mental, physical or sexual. It can occur once, or repeatedly. However, it is possible to fully recover from any traumatic experience or event; it may take a long time, but in the end, living free from the symptoms of trauma is worth every step of the journey.
People who have unprocessed trauma often report having commonly known symptoms, such as intrusive thoughts of the event(s), mood swings, loss of memory and more. However, some people may be struggling with unresolved trauma without even realizing it.
Emotional trauma is recognizable by a persistent sense of unsafety and other challenging emotions such as fear and/or anxiety. It is often accompanied by other physical symptoms as well, such as chronic insomnia, nightmares, and other health issues.
Intrusive memories
Recurrent, unwanted distressing memories of the traumatic event. Reliving the traumatic event as if it were happening again (flashbacks) Upsetting dreams or nightmares about the traumatic event. Severe emotional distress or physical reactions to something that reminds you of the traumatic event.