Dealing with Trauma

The cost of SILENCE  dealing with trauma:

We have a human need to confess and to share our feelings.  

By Maria Pau of Coaching With Substance.

There are examples throughout cultures of the various types of confession - ranging from dream sharing in African tribes to confession rituals in North and South American tribal cultures, as well as confession in the church and a preponderance of support groups in our culture.

According to James Pennebaker, author of 'Opening Up' and researcher on the physical effects of withholding versus expression of emotion, inhibition has three serious effects on us physically. 

Inhibition is physical work: 

when people actively inhibit their thoughts, feelings and behaviour, they have to exert significant effort to restrain and hold back feeling. In the case of emotional inhibition, the work is constant. Inhibition affects short-term biological changes and long-term health. 

Inhibition is a cumulative stressor:

In the short term, inhibiting feelings results in immediate physical changes such as increased

perspiration, which can be measured through methods such as lie detector tests. "Over time, the work of inhibition serves as a cumulative stressed on the body, increasing the probability of illness and other stress related physical and psychological problems. Active inhibition can be viewed as one of many general stressors that affect the mind and body. Obviously, the harder one must work at inhibiting, the greater the stress on the body"

(Pennebaker).

Inhibition Influences Thinking Abilities

When we inhibit parts of our thinking and feeling, we are not able to think through significant events in our lives. Hence, we are prevented from understanding and then integrating that understanding into the larger context of our life pattern. "By not talking about an inhibited event,

for example, we usually do not translate the event into language. This prevents us from understanding and assimilating the event.  Consequently, significant experiences that are inhibited are likely to surface in the forms of

ruminations, dreams and associated thought disturbances" 

(Pennebaker).

The Role of Confrontation

Pennebaker has also found that, "Confrontation reduces the effects of

inhibition," reversing the detrimental physiological problems that result

from inhibition. When we make a lifestyle of openly confronting painful

feelings and we "resolve the trauma, there will be a lowering of the

overall stress on the body." 

Confrontation "forces a rethinking of events.  Confronting a trauma helps 

people understand and, ultimately, assimilate the

event. By talking or writing about previously inhibited experiences, people

translate the event into language. Once it is language-based, they can better

understand the experience and ultimately put it behind them" (Pennebaker).

This is a crucial part of developing the emotional literacy necessary for

recovery.

The Long-Term Effect of Childhood Trauma

Pennebaker's research was done with a research team which examined the progress of people who lost spouses by suicide or suddenly through accidental death—that is, recent traumas—as well as childhood trauma such as sexual abuse that occurred early in life. 

He found that childhood traumas affect overall health more than traumas that occurred within the last three

years, due to the cumulative stress on the body through long-term inhibition of feelings. When traumas are not resolved, they are not converted into

language, thought about and integrated into our overall pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving.

The obvious result of this, as I have observed over years of clinical experience, is that clients arrive at therapy, say in their mid-thirties, feeling as if their lives are puzzles with significant pieces missing. They may have trouble settling on a life's direction. They may be experiencing problems in

intimate relationships, or the thought of a long-term committed relationship overwhelms them.

Intimate relationships trigger unresolved pain from the past. Early childhood traumas such as sexual abuse, physical abuse, divorce - or seemingly lesser traumas such as being ignored or misunderstood by those whom we most wish to understand us and are dependent upon for our sense of healthy

connectedness - lie dormant within us if our coping style has been inhibition rather than confrontation and disclosure. Then the pain gets triggered without the understanding and self-awareness that we would have, had we gradually and over time resolved our feelings related to the trauma. 

The result of this is often a projection of early pain into the current relationship. That is, we see the trigger event or our current intimacy as the problem in and of itself. All too often it follows that our idea of the solution or way out of the pain is to dump or exit the relationship.

The deep excavating work of therapy is to make conscious these early wounds and convert them into words so that they can be felt and understood - to use the skills of emotional literacy. Only then can we place them in their proper perspective, giving them a context (where, when and how), so we can integrate them back into ourselves with understanding as to what happened and what meaning we made out of them, that we currently live by.

In Australia childhood trauma such as sexual and physical abuse and especially emotional abandonment in early development is rampant and for most part untreated. Hence our extremely high rates of Addiction, Codependency, Depression, Suicide, ADHD and ADD, as well as high rates of

relationship and family breakdown. Our true stats are a disgrace. Its time for some serious action. 

If you or someone you love relates to this information call us at  COACHING WITH SUBSTANCE (CWS) INTERVENTIONS  PHONE 07 5606 6315 FOR IMMEDIATE HELP (7days). 

Email: info@coachingwithsubstance.org.au