What Fuels Trauma
Whenever we are treating any mental health disorder, it is essential to identify the patterns of thinking and behaviors that are contributing to those symptoms so that the patient can break away from those patterns. Oftentimes, because trauma is something that is inflicted on us, people feel helpless to work against these patterns. But we are far from powerless and can work against these trends reliably. For trauma, experiential avoidance is the behavior that is typically the gasoline to the flames of trauma symptoms, and self-blame are the thoughts that fuel trauma. These processes are insidious, keeping us mired in a perpetual state of anxiety and panic.
The way avoidance presents can be so subtle that the traumatized person can no longer identify the connection between the activating stimulus and the traumatic event. Imagine that I was in a car crash, and the sound of broken glass activates a trauma reaction that creates intense distress. Now imagine that somebody drops a glass in my kitchen. My system is going to be flooded with stress hormones that will generate a disproportionately intense startle response. But this process can go even deeper than that. If I had heard the cabinet door open before the glass broke, the sound of that door could have become an activating event. So now, when cabinet doors open, my fight-or-flight gets activated.
These frequently disturbing scenarios make it so that individuals with severe PTSD no longer want to leave the house because of how sensitized this stress response becomes. This isolation makes the world smaller and scarier as the symptoms continue to compound on themselves. Breaking these cycles is crucial to healing, but it often feels overwhelming at first. This is where EMDR therapy comes in! EMDR helps people reprocess their trauma using exposure techniques combined with bilateral stimulation that helps people get rapid relief. This is a perfect place to start because it can help desensitize the stress response in a controlled environment, enabling people to break these patterns outside sessions.
EMDR also engages with the cognitive aspects of trauma as it encourages people to examine and change beliefs that emerged as a direct consequence of that trauma. It is common for people to experience significant changes to their self-esteem and regain a sense of comfort they no longer believed was possible. EMDR is versatile and can be performed in person or via telehealth, enabling people to get relief in the comfort of their own homes.