I’m not sure who needs to hear this but processing our trauma is not the same as trauma dumping. Nor does it mean we are dwelling on the past, holding onto it, or anything else the toxic positivity (Trauma Glossary 1) thinkers are saying. In fact, the key to releasing the pain of the past is through processing it. The good news is we don’t have to spend our whole lives processing our trauma. We just need to stop running away from the past long enough to turn around and face it. Rip off those band-aids (figuratively speaking) that we had put on those wide-open wounds in the name of “moving on” and “putting it all behind us”. Then dare to get curious.
Having Complex-PTSD means surviving a series of childhood traumas when no one was there to help us. Now is our chance to go back in time and nurture those hurt parts and champion for them. Clarity and validation are the foundation for healing and growth. When we can make sense out of the senselessness that happened to us, we learn how to do a better job being on our side and securing a better future. It gives us a better understanding of who we are and why we do some of the things we do. (For example, our trauma responses and coping mechanisms.)
I’ll be honest. Processing our trauma is the most painful stage of our healing but it’s also the most important. As the cliche goes, “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” This applies double when we are processing the most painful times of our lives. But take comfort in this. The reward is the phenomenal growth that awaits us on the other side of that hell.
Our Experiences Shape Us
Just to piggyback off last week’s article (here) when we explored the science behind the memory keeper of family dysfunction versus those who have huge gaps in their memories, the key takeaway was that those experiences shape our identity, whether we remember them or not.
The memory keeper might feel that processing their trauma is pointless because in their mind, they have been doing this their whole life, whether they want to or not. What the memory keeper doesn’t know is that there’s a big difference between processing our trauma and simply recalling it. One has the power of lowering the pain of those memories drastically.
Some of us may have holes in our memory and are unsure how to process memories that aren’t there. We may even be afraid of finding out what’s behind those locked doors. After all, what we do remember is bad enough. So, we may wonder How do I process my trauma and do I dare? Well, if none of my tools or suggestions at the close of last week’s article were helpful, stay with me to the end for more on what can help you.
Processing Our Trauma via Using the Bad Day Analogy
Since we have all had one of those days where seemingly everything has gone wrong, we also know how we tend to decompress from such days. Most of us have a strong urge to vent about our bad day with others. And it takes more than one time to verbally release it so that we can start calming down. When verbal venting isn’t enough (and it rarely is) we use our bodies in some way to release it. For example, stretches, going for a walk or run, or going to the gym. Then we need to unwind at the end of that bad day. Prove to our system in some way that it is safe because the bad day is over and tomorrow will be a better one.
As adults we have the freedom to do this but as children raised by cluster B disordered (Trauma Glossary 1) parents, we had no such options. We could not verbally vent the injustices that were happening to us. It’s hard to use our bodies to release the stress when more stress is continually added. And we certainly couldn’t prove to our system that it was safe and that tomorrow would be a better day. So, what happens to those painful childhood experiences when we can’t process them as they happen? Well, a lot but for the sake of this article we will stick with how those traumas become stagnant. They are stored in the body and build a higher stress response to life’s stressors.
Not unlike the bad day when each bad thing adds more stress and our tolerance for handling it drops significantly. Childhood trauma is years of bad days without the freedom to release it.
The Benefits of Processing Our Trauma
As I said in this article’s opening, we learn how to nurture and champion for our hurt parts. We develop clarity and a thorough understanding of our past selves and more importantly, how the past has left its mark on our present lives. How are we to see ourselves as deserving of love and success as adults if we can’t see our past selves through a compassionate lens and see all of our hurt parts as the children who are worth fighting for? Here are some more benefits we receive when processing our trauma.
Lowering Our High-Stress Response
Having Complex-PTSD means experiencing multiple bad days without the freedom of releasing them. Think of what happens when we are having one bad day as adults. Our stress levels keep building until we begin the process of releasing it. Now just imagine what years of ongoing stress without release does to our system. It gets our stress response stuck on high. Life is already full of enough stress and one would think that those of us who were raised in high-stress environments would be pros at handling stress. But sadly it’s the reverse. Life’s challenges feel like threats and life’s struggles feel infinite instead of temporary.
So, to lower our stress response, we must release the pain of those old hurt parts of ourselves. The only way to release the pain is to revisit those memories with self-compassion: verbally, somatically, and with self-care.
Stop Thanking Our Childhood for “Building Character”
Some painful memories tend to give us a false narrative about ourselves. This is especially true when comparing ourselves to our abusive parents. We may look at one or more of our traumas as being the only thing that “saved us” from becoming just as bad as our parents. I had three painful memories that I used to “thank” for saving me from turning into a cluster B disorder. But once I began my healing work, I came to understand that I was reflecting on all three of those traumas through a distorted lens. In all three cases, I deserved compassion and validation and until I learned how to see my past selves in this way, I was using that information to hold myself back in life.
And just as a sidenote, let me assure you of something that the internet gaslighters don’t want us to know. [1] [2] [3] [4] New studies are now revealing a genetic link in the personality disorders – not trauma. Those personality disorders who have trauma are also those who were raised by personality disorders and they inherited the disorder. You may wonder – I was raised by a personality disorder but I’m not disordered. That’s because the gene skipped you. In other words, trauma does not turn us into the so-called “hurt people who hurt people”. Nor does it make us stronger. Trauma overloads us with shame, depression, anger, and fear. And we all end up choosing our trauma responses and how we cope.
Ending the Shame which is Self-Hate
We tend to have at least one traumatic memory that fills us with shame. We look back on it with revulsion and call ourselves names. Either we smack ourselves in the forehead and think something like, Oh, I was so stupid then! Or we completely sever our present self from the past so that the “I was” language becomes “you were” instead. Then we really start self-attacking. “You were so stupid,” we say to the painful memory, followed by, “What were you thinking? You deserved what happened to you!” What we don’t understand is that we are speaking to our child self in ways we wouldn’t dream of speaking to other children. We are also using the same language on ourselves that our abuser was using on us at the time.
There’s a difference between learning there are consequences for certain behaviors and being relentlessly attacked over them. Nothing we did as children warrants the latter. I had an age eleven trauma when my teacher, along with a group of five girls verbally attacked me for the entire recess period. My crime had been compulsive lying – not on others but making up lies about myself. The teacher believed the lies from the girls who had been bullying me because I was the liar who had been caught. While I certainly learned the consequences for lying, I carried so much hatred at eleven-year-old me, I told no one about it until age forty-four. It took multiple sessions with my EMDR therapist to finally see eleven-year-old me through a compassionate lens and understand that I did not deserve what my teacher did to me that day.
Understanding What Should Have Never Been Normalized
It’s a fact that when raised in an adverse home, the line between acceptable and unacceptable behaviors is blurred. If we look outward and our community feels in some way similar to our home life, we are at an even greater disadvantage. Whether our perception is that “everyone else” is living in abuse or that “everyone else” makes us feel like we deserve mistreatment, we will never know any better. Read the following affirmations or say them to yourself and be self-honest. How much or how little do the statements feel true to you?
- I deserve to be happy.
- I deserve good things.
- I deserve to be treated with compassion and respect.
If any of those affirmations feel untrue to you, it’s an indication that you endured so many ongoing traumas, they were normalized. It’s also an indication that you were taught to believe many untrue things about yourself. Because the three affirmations above are everyone’s basic human rights. So, there’s multiple incidents in your past that has misled you into believing you don’t deserve it today. Processing our trauma helps us validate who we were then so that we can validate who we are today. Then we can secure a better future for ourselves, knowing that it’s what we deserve.
How Do I Process My Trauma If…
1) I can’t remember much?
This is for those of you I was addressing at the beginning of the article. Look into somatic work because the body remembers what the brain does not. Believe me, though I am the memory keeper, I got a crash course on this very concept when I processed my earliest trauma in EMDR. It was my bladder that helped me remember the rest of that vague memory. I shared that personal story (here).
IFS (Internal Family Systems) is another one that can help. I used IFS as a self-therapy and I unearthed a trauma that happened to me as an infant! So, I am convinced that if IFS can help me remember that far back, it can help anyone retrieve memories. (Here) is a link to my first in a series of four articles on how to use IFS as a self-therapy. Not only does it include links at the very end to the other three articles in the series, but also two books on IFS that helped me use IFS on myself.
2) I don’t have a therapist?
While I will always promote good therapists (and emphasis on good therapists), I also understand that some of us have been once bitten, twice shy by a bad therapist. There’s also consideration for the fact that not everyone’s health insurance covers mental health. That’s why on my site, I will always conclude with what we can do about our various problems without a therapist.
There’s a reason I used the bad day analogy in the opening. That’s because when processing our trauma, it’s not unlike what we do when releasing the stress of a bad day. We almost never fully release the pain in one therapy session. So, the same applies when processing those memories without a therapist. That’s why a good support group is the next best thing. There are multiple support groups on the internet that will hold space for your story, no matter how many times you need to share it to begin transcending the pain. Been burned by one too many bad support groups or you’re just not on social media much? Well, you will need one friend who can understand, hold space, and validate you while you share.
1) Verbal venting
Golden rule when processing our trauma is the same when verbally venting a bad day. We need to talk about it more than once. Each telling and re-telling will bring us more relief, and more clarity and more validation. So yes, even when we feel like we’ve been talking about the same thing over and over. It’s a necessary part of the process.
2) Release from the body
Then check in and see which emotions are coming up. What’s the dominant emotion: anger, sadness, fear, or shame? These are clues as per how to use your body to help release it. Your anger may want a punching bag. Fear wants to go for a run or a mindfulness walk. Sadness needs extra self-care. Shame needs extra verbal processing until it transcends into anger, fear, or sadness.
3) Self-care
Relax, unwind. Self-care is how we remind ourselves that we are safe now and we are on our own side. Each tomorrow will be a better day than the one before because we are committed to our healing journey.
Citations
As per the genetic link in Cluster B personality disorders…
[2] FKBP5 gene variants and borderline personality disorder.