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hey there everybody and welcome back to this video today we're talking about why trauma beliefs are so hard to change I'm your host Dr Donnelly Snipes remember trauma is a
situation that causes you to feel unsafe and Powerless that's the core feature of trauma
trauma beliefs are those beliefs that are formed as a result of that experience to help you predict
and prevent future unsafe situations so if you are driving along and it's pouring down rain and you
get into an accident then you may form the trauma belief that it is unsafe to drive in the rain
okay well to a certain extent that's kind of true but a lot of it is a matter of degrees
but it's important to recognize you formed that belief based on your experience and now you hold
it and your brain says you don't want to get into another accident because it could be worse
next time so your brain's actually trying to protect you by holding on to that belief
when we have a trauma experience it is emotionally powerful and so what we call
emotional salience or the power of the emotion um makes it more or less difficult to get rid
of things that don't have a lot of emotional power to them they're easy to forget things
that have a lot of emotional power on the other hand tend to stick around so think of Boulders
versus Pebbles you can sweep Pebbles out of the way or move step over them or something
and you don't even notice but a boulder you know that's kind of in your way and it's harder to move
unresolved anger is also a reason that we may have difficulty getting rid of trauma beliefs
or changing trauma beliefs because anger remember is a response to a threat and Trauma was a threat
it left us feeling unsafe and Powerless so we may have some anger that is unresolved and we're
Afraid on a subconscious level if we let go of those beliefs we may be vulnerable now anger has a
lot of buddies anger is a kind of a umbrella term guilt is anger at yourself you may have difficulty
letting go of certain trauma beliefs because they are you're angry at yourself for what happened and
right now for whatever reason you're afraid to let that go you're afraid to let go of
that guilt because and I don't know what follows your because but if you're afraid that if you let
go of that guilt fill in the blank it can revolve around shame and shame and guilt are very closely
connected shame is anger at yourself but shame has to do more with who you are not what you did guilt
is about something you did shame is feeling bad as a person and sometimes we have difficulty letting
go of trauma beliefs because we believe that we deserved it for some reason that shame tells us
you're not a good person so you deserve that bad thing to happen to you and it's going to be
important to process that and develop a different understanding of yourself as a human being as a
lovable human being and grief now grief has a lot of emotions denial anger bargaining depression
and acceptance but anger is a part of grief and when we experience a trauma sometimes it creates
a whole Cascade of losses in our life and until we address those losses until we feel safe and
empowered in each one of those areas our brain is going to hold on to that memory and go yeah but
what about this over here I need to keep you safe so that doesn't happen
cognitive accommodation to create a sense of control or safety accommodation is a concept
that Piaget put forth and basically it means changing your understanding of the world to
fit the data and when you experience a trauma that doesn't compute you're thinking to yourself
this isn't supposed to happen to me this wasn't supposed to happen to me or I don't understand why
this is happening to me so the experience does not fit with your current understanding of the
world therefore you change your understanding of the world to fit the experience and that's
your brain's way of kind of bringing that memory in and saying come on in join the join the club
unfortunately since that memory is so strong it tends to be a bully and
downplay some of the non-threatening memories and experiences
changing or letting go of these trauma beliefs may threaten your perceived safety and stability
so if you tend to over generalize it is never safe to drive in the rain for example or every
time there's a thunderstorm there's going to be or tornado that's over generalization and
you may have had multiple experiences where driving in the rain or during a thunderstorm
bad things happened so part of you started to say well it seems like every time x happens y happens
but that's not actually accurate that's based on some cognitive biases that we'll talk about
and all or nothing thinking I'm either all good or all bad it's important to acknowledge that not all
similar situations will be dangerous thinking of exceptions what are times that you were driving in
the rain or riding with somebody who was driving in the rain that there was not a car accident what
are exceptions to the thunderstorm rule you know how many times have you been through thunderstorms
that nothing bad happened and it's important to really start recognizing the facts the traumatic
events are going to seem a lot more frequent because they're bigger and in your mind they're
bigger they're that Bolder but it's also important to recognize the times when it hasn't happened to
get some balance so consider in every situation when you're starting to have those trauma beliefs
triggered consider the facts in context in this context at this time does this trauma belief apply
cognitive biases I already brought those up a little bit the confirmation bias hinders
your ability to consider alternate perspectives confirmation bias means I am going to look for
information that confirms my belief I am going to during a thunderstorm during a rain while
we're driving I'm going to look for people that got into wrecks and that will confirm my belief
or during a thunderstorm I'm going to get on line and I'm going to look to see where the tornadoes
are I'm going to confirm my beliefs and when we do that we tend to do that to the exclusion
of contradictory information we tend to do that to the exclusion of
um data that would tell us hey you're safe and that confirmation bias also goes along with what
I was talking about on the last slide that we tend to remember the traumatic events and not remember
the non-traumatic events so when I'm thinking about thunderstorms the thoughts that come to my
mind are of all of the times there was something bad that happened not of all the times that there
wasn't and that that's that cognitive bias my brain is confirming my expectation that
it's going to be bad instead of looking at all of the data and really getting a big picture
we can also experience the confirmation bias by mind reading when we mind read we think that we
know what somebody's thinking so we can confirm that they're angry with us by look the look
on their face I just knew you were angry with me because I saw that look on your face we're
looking for something to confirm our expectations someone's going to be mad at us or somebody's
going to be unsafe jumping to conclusions same sort of thing if you're anxious worried that
your significant other is cheating on you you're probably going to look for information to support
that maybe they are being withdrawn maybe they are late coming home from work maybe you know there's
a lot of maybes but each one of those things has a variety of different possible explanations but
when you're using the confirmation bias the only explanation you're willing to accept is
they're cheating on me and personalization is another confirmation bias where that happened
because I'm a bad person that happened because of me and looking at and and a lot of times
you do have a part in things if you're driving in the rain and you get into a wreck well yeah
you played a part in it you were driving but it wasn't necessarily your fault and it doesn't mean
necessarily that every time you drive in the rain you're going to get into a car accident
the availability heuristic is the boulder Pebble I was talking about earlier a lot of people for
example think that flying is dangerous because when we hear about airplanes and flights on the
television on the news we're only hearing about the crashes we're not hearing about the 20 30
000 flights a day that go off without a hitch so the information about safe flights we don't
have it the only information we have available to us is about the things that were newsworthy
and the hindsight bias can also cause us to want to hold on to some of those trauma memories and
that's very self-explanatory when you look back and you go I should have known or I
shouldn't have done that and then that should start to inform or that shouldn't starts to
inform what you do in the future so I shouldn't have driven in the rain therefore in the future
I must not ever drive in the rain and you're holding on to that
belief that you formed now there is a kernel of Truth sometimes in trauma beliefs not always but
sometimes and it's important to recognize that trauma beliefs tend to be extreme and use those
All or Nothing words or have extreme consequences to them so I'm not saying that you're necessarily
going to get rid of those trauma beliefs but reframing them can be helpful for example
if I drove in the rain and I got into an accident that was traumatic that was scary
therefore yes it is more dangerous to drive in the rain than it is when it's not raining
and there are steps I can take in order to keep myself safer so I'm learning
from that experience that yeah okay maybe I didn't give enough credit to slippery roads
however I'm not saying that when it rains it is never safe to drive and I can never go out when
it's raining so it's taking it and putting a practical perspective on it if you will
relationships can also cause us to have difficulty letting go of trauma bonds or trauma beliefs I'm
sorry identity and self-concept may be altered by trauma and changing these beliefs may feel
inauthentic or scary so if somebody says I am a survivor I am safe now then there's a little
voice inside them that may say well if I'm able to keep myself safe now what does that mean about
the past did I bring that on myself somehow and so it's important to kind of Silence that critic
and consider things in context when you were four you had much different skills than when you're 24.
and in certain situations that are traumatic what you're doing now is fine and what you
did back then didn't cause the trauma you just happened to unfortunately experience it
if I'm worthwhile why did they do this to me why did they abuse me why did they abandon me
why did they whatever um that can people who have experienced trauma especially abandonment
rejection abuse May really start to think of themselves as unlovable and
if they let go of that then they it totally shakes everything up because this person that
did whatever it was to them they've got to try to start understanding well how could you do
that to a good person you know the only way your behavior makes sense is if I was a bad person
and if I'm not broken as a result of my trauma why do people keep rejecting
me this is another one of those that people sometimes have a hard time letting go of because
in their present they are still adopting that victim stance they're seeing themselves as
broken and they're assuming that other people are rejecting them because of their Brokenness because
of whatever the trauma did to them instead of it might just be you're not a good match or it could
be that because you feel powerless because you feel hopeless and helpless you may be engaging
in for example what we call codependent behaviors and that can be off-putting to other people but
it's not because you're a bad person you want to focus on the behaviors not the person
additionally people who've experienced trauma May surround themselves with people who share
similar beliefs which can create an echo chamber I'm all for support groups don't get me wrong
but being around people that share your belief of unsafeness um and whose support and reinforce that
belief that you are unsafe that you are powerless that there's no hope can be really exhausting and
the more that behavior is reinfo that belief is reinforced the bigger that Boulder grows
and because of your trauma beliefs you may avoid situations that challenge those beliefs and can
prevent what some called traumatic growth going back to driving in the rain again you experienced
a an accident when you were driving in the rain it was traumatic it was terrifying you've recovered
and until you're able to go out and at least ride with somebody who's driving in the rain again
it's going to be difficult to start changing that belief and
restructuring it to be less extreme
trauma-related beliefs will be harder to change if you're not feeling safe and empowered and so
if you find that those trauma-related beliefs are sticky it's important to step back and go how is
this Behavior still somehow protecting me and is it accurate given the facts in the current context
have compassion for yourself when beliefs do not change quickly recognizing their purpose
you can move a pebble out of the way really fast but moving that Boulder you're only going to
move it you know a centimeter at a time maybe but recognizing every little bit of progress
when you notice you're having trauma-related beliefs evaluate them based on the facts in
the current context to decide their accuracy and consider keeping a log
of your trauma-related beliefs to evaluate if they're decreasing in frequency or intensity
so those beliefs that you have that you recognize are related to trauma whether it's about
abandonment or rejection or whatever it is keep a log of how frequently you have beliefs about that
and obviously each time you have that belief you want to try to evaluate it restructure it and then
eventually hopefully you stop having those beliefs so often or when you do have them they're not as
sticky you're like no that's not accurate in this context and it goes away hopefully
that has given you a few tools to understand trauma-related beliefs and start coping with them