- Most of us want peaceful lives. We want happy lives.
We want connected lives.
What we don't want is lives filled
with traumatic images in our head.
How do we get those out?
This is "Ask a Therapist."
I'm Jonathan Decker with Mended Light
(Jonathan claps)
here to help.
Pew.
(uplifting music)
I really love this question that was submitted.
"How do I get traumatic images out of my head?"
(woman screaming) (door clattering)
Traumatic images often come from what we experience.
I mean, sometimes they comes just from our imagination,
but oftentimes, they come from life,
things that happened to us, things that we witnessed,
things that we witnessed on television,
and sometimes, frankly, from movies and TV shows
that fill our heads with stuff
that keeps us up at night. (chuckles)
- No, no.
No, no, no.
No!
- I've certainly seen things, especially when I was younger,
that had a serious effect on me.
I watched "Psycho"
at a slumber party (water trickling)
when I was like seven or eight.
Big mistake.
That movie traumatized me.
(alarming violin music) (knife chinks)
The shower scene, I stopped taking showers.
I thought I was a big boy.
♪ I'm a big kid now ♪
- I was taking showers now and I was super excited about it.
And then I saw "Psycho" and I went back to taking baths
with like the curtain pulled and I was like
staring at the door, (water splashing)
so like no one would come in and kill me, right?
And then I saw "Arachnophobia" when I was 11 or 12.
And that movie actually gave me arachnophobia.
I'm not even being funny.
I had a legit paralyzing fear of spiders
until my mid-20s because I watched that movie
when I was super young.
"Jaws," I had an intense interest
in sharks because of "Jaws,"
but I was also one of those kids that thought,
if I get in the swimming pool,
there's somehow gonna be a shark
in the pool that's gonna eat me.
And so these images stayed with me
and stayed with me for years
and had a profound effect on me.
And I think a lot of us can relate to the movie thing.
- Can I tell you a secret?
- [Man] Sure, man.
- I see dead people.
- How much worse when it's real life?
How much worse when you've experienced abuse?
How much worse when you've experienced neglect?
How much worse when you've feared for your life
or witnessed something violent
and terrible happen to somebody else?
I know collectively as a nation,
we watched what happened to George Floyd.
And stripping it away of all the politics,
what a terrible thing.
What a terrible, sad thing, scary thing,
triggering thing for a lot of people
who felt unsafe as a result of watching that.
How do we get traumatic images out of our head?
I think the first thing is to recognize,
do they serve a purpose? (chuckles)
Maybe you remember driver's ed, right? Driver's education.
If you're in the United States, at 16, you can drive.
So at 15 1/2, they put you through a class.
And part of that class is they show you actual footage
of car accidents, like gore footage
of people who've been like ripped in half,
or their arm's been knocked off,
or their blood oozing out from under a car as people are...
Like all sorts of terrible stuff
to make you maybe not even wanna drive anymore.
(car thuds)
(tires screeching)
(man screaming)
And they do that presumably because teenagers,
their brains are still developing.
And as teenagers, they take risks
that an adult wouldn't take
because, teenager, you kinda feel invincible.
- Yes! I am invincible!
- So this is like a hard stop. You're not invincible.
Be careful while you're driving.
And I know, for a lot of people, it did the trick.
But for some people, it haunted them for years
and they thought it was unnecessary.
So first, ask yourself if the images serve a purpose.
Do they keep you safe?
Me replaying "Psycho" in my head didn't keep me safe.
The odds of me being stabbed to death in the shower
are next to zero.
That was a traumatic image
or a horrifying image that didn't really serve a purpose,
like holding on to it.
And so for me, what helped me to get it out of my head
was to replace it with something else.
And it was so, (chuckles) I was so bad
that I had, as a child, I had a panic response
when I heard the music from, just hearing the music.
We were at Universal Studios as a family,
and there was some show that you go see,
some special effect show, and the music came on,
(alarming violin music) wee, wee, wee,
and I actually had a panic attack as a child.
They used the music in "The Simpsons" comedically
and I started to freak out.
(alarming violin music)
(Homer screams)
And so replace it with something positive,
and know in advance what it's going to be.
What is something wholesome, happy, or funny,
something hopeful that you can turn to?
Is there a video you can turn on instead, right?
Is there something, a song, that helps soothe you?
Is there something that helps you feel at peace?
Something that helps you feel happy?
Replace the horrifying thought with something more positive,
with something better.
Or you could go completely the other way.
Instead of ridding yourself of the thought, you can face it.
I know I talk about movies a lot.
If you've seen my other channel, Cinema Therapy,
you know I'm a big movie guy.
The movie, "It," and its sequel, "It Part Two,"
the whole thing...
Spoiler alert.
Skip the next 20 seconds if you want if you haven't seen it.
The whole thing culminates
and they defeat the killer psychotic clown
by realizing that he feeds off their fear.
And when they're not afraid of him anymore,
when they face him,
he gets smaller and his power is less and less.
Oftentimes, we give things power by avoiding them.
We give things power by saying, I can't face this.
I can't look under this rock.
I can't look under this memory. It's too big.
It's too scary. It's too painful.
And sometimes, it is on your own.
That's why the good Lord invented therapists. (chuckles)
I think if you are with a qualified therapist
who knows how to help you through trauma,
actually facing things gives you power.
You take the power back.
- I have the power! (triumphant orchestral music)
- When you're afraid to look at something,
you give it power.
You make it more powerful. You make it bigger.
And so sometimes getting rid of thoughts inside your head
requires you to face whatever it is you're scared of.
I dealt with my arachnophobia by going...
My dad bought a cabin in the woods
that had fallen into disrepair.
It belonged to an older couple
and they hadn't taken care of it for years.
And so I went up there to help them clean up the cabin
and get it ready so that we could have a cabin.
And that thing was overrun by hundreds
of spiders inside and out.
And my dad says to me, he gives me a broom and he says,
"All right, go clear out the spiderwebs and the spiders.
You can do that for the next few hours."
And as he hands me the broom,
all the color drained from my face
and I'm just staring straight ahead.
And my dad says to me, I'm 25 years old, 26,
and he says, "I'm sorry. I forgot who I was talking to.
I'll give you something else to do."
And something snapped inside of me
where I was tired of being afraid.
And I said, "No, I got this."
And I went out and the first spider was in its web just...
And I stabbed at it with a broom
and I pulled back and the spider was gone.
And I kid you not,
it was running down the broom handle toward my hand.
So I dropped the broom and screamed like a little girl.
I'm like, "Ah!"
- Ah!
- My dad thought it was hilarious.
And then I just went from I'm tired.
I just thought I'm tired of being afraid.
And I went around,
and instead of screaming like a little girl,
I started out gradually going from that
to screaming like a samurai
to where I was out there, yah!
- Yah!
(army yelling)
- Pow, and I was killing spiders
and I was clearing out cobwebs.
I saved under the porch for last.
That was genuinely terrifying.
But what ended up happening at the end of the day
is I was no longer afraid of spiders.
And even more, I now think they're kinda beautiful.
And if they're in nature, I leave them alone.
If they're in my house...
Even last week, I did something I've never done before,
'cause in my house, I would kill them.
I actually got the nerve to like trap one
and release it outside.
This is the power that comes from facing things.
Black widows are gonna die. I don't care where you are.
I'm sorry. I have kids.
Any black widows watching this, make yourself scarce
around my house. - Bye!
- Replace them, face them,
or honestly, to borrow a page from "Harry Potter,"
give yourself power by making them funny.
This one's more of an outlier.
I think the first two are stronger.
But I have had success with what I call Boggart therapy
(laughs) to borrow an idea from "Harry Potter"
if you haven't seen it.
A Boggart is a magical creature that takes the form
of whatever you fear the most.
And so you're supposed to imagine it,
take whatever you're afraid of and add a comedic element.
So Ron sees a giant spider
and then he puts it in roller skates
and it can't stand up, right?
Neville is afraid of the Professor Snape,
and so he puts Snape, in his mind,
he imagines him wearing his grandma's dress, and it's funny.
This may or may not work with legitimate trauma
that you've been through.
For some people, it's making light of it,
and it's like, don't give me some silly thing
to do with my serious pain.
For other people, it's great.
This person that they're afraid of who abused them,
they now think of them in a dunce cap sitting in the corner,
or they think of them getting pied in the face,
or they think of them drunkenly making a fool of themself
in front of the police while getting escorted off,
and they laugh at it and it helps them.
So it's more of an outlier.
Or you can replace fearful thoughts.
These are just some thoughts
on how to deal with traumatic images.
I wanna know from you, how do you deal with traumatic images
that pop up in your brain?
What success have you had?
We love hearing from you in the comments.
We love seeing what your success stories are,
even if they deviate wildly from what I would say.
I mean, we could always use
and everyone watching can use your experiences, your skills,
the things that are working for you.
Now, I wanna direct you to another video that I've done,
which is, "How Do You Know If You Have Trauma,"
which you can watch right here.
As always, please like,
comment, subscribe. (mouse clicking)
Click the bell. Share with your friends.
(bell dings)
Just get really busy down there in the comments.
Let your fingers
just fly, right? (keyboard clacking)
And until next time, please keep shining.
We need your light.
I'm Jonathan Decker with Mended Light.
This has been "Ask a Therapist."
And I'll see you next time.
Oh, look.
(uplifting music) Here comes that next video
I was telling you about.
Well, now you know what you're doing
with the next 10 minutes of your life.