Some of our viewers have been asking how to heal from a traumatic experience.
I think it's because it's really common.
And I've got some help for you today.
I said that it's common.
I may have just as well said that it's universal because I think we all deal with this, right?
Have you noticed that stuff happens and it's not always stuff that we had planned and things
just come out of field sometimes and hit us upside the head?
Now we didn't plan on it, we didn't ask for it.
We didn't sign up for it.
And it traumatizes us.
It hurts us.
There's a lot of reasons for this you guys.
And part of it is because we live in the world where that's stuff just happens.
But also, we're human beings who have flaws and weaknesses.
And because of those weaknesses, we end up hurting each other.
Even if we don't intend to.
And then there's all of those experiences where somebody did intend it.
And they committed a crime or some kind of a felony against us where we got hurt.
Okay.
So, I'm acknowledging right upfront it's going to happen.
Alright?
In different degrees and in different ways.
I think it's important also to acknowledge that we don't have all of the information.
And I don't think we're in a position where we can judge someone else's journey.
Like saying, "Oh, that shouldn't have been a traumatic thing for them."
Well, if it was traumatic for them, then it was traumatic, okay?
So, let's get off of the judgement thing and acknowledge everybody has their own experience
with this.
I'm interested at looking at what we can do to heal from a trauma.
So, from all of my training as a psychologist, here's some of the things that we're finding
about healing from trauma.
One of the reasons that traumatic experiences cause psychological disturbances is because
of our avoidance or fear of feelings.
You're never wrong about how you feel.
When you experience the traumatic event, how are you supposed to feel?
Well, welcome to earth!
You are a human being and you've get feelings that are real.
You're never wrong about how you feel.
How you feel is 100% consistent with the way you're mind is processing your experience.
And when we have incident that occurs, it gets into us at a feeling level.
And then as we remember that..
Now, you've heard of post traumatic stress disorder.
This is diagnosis that came up as a result of how we were dealing with veterans who are
returning from war.
And they had witnessed some of the tremendous things and even participated in that activities
that are unthinkable.
Our they unthinkable?
Well then why do we keep thinking about them?
And this was the problem because those events would come back in the memories and the thinking
and then the recollections of those soldiers that were returning from war in this example
that I share.
When we experience a traumatic event, our mind starts play with it and replay it.
We'll have flashbacks where we'll think through what happened again.
We we'll do all the Coulda-Woulda-Shouldas.
Our avoidance or fear of the feelings that are associated with those events sometimes
has also avoiding the things that could be helpful in healing from these traumas.
So, the very nature of the problem creates a problem with the healing.
I got some training early on on my career around critical incidents stress debris things,
CISD.
And it's one of the things that we did to help people to heal from trauma.
It's simply putting words around this experience that is unthinkable.
Well, if it's unthinkable, why do we think about it?
And it's unmentionable.
Well, if it's unmentionable, how do we put words around it?
You know, over the last weekend, I was able to see a movie with my family called It's
A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood.
And it's a story around Mr. Rogers and some of hos philosophies and tied into a story
about a man who was going through some traumatic incidents in his own life.
And Mr. Rogers, the character Mr. Rogers played by Tom Hanks said this at one point on the
movie.
He said, "If it's human, it's mentionable.
And if it's mentionable, it's manageable."
I really like that.
And that's been true of my experience with trauma too and working with people who have
experienced trauma.
Trauma is a human thing.
We all get to experience it in someway and sometime in our life.
Then if it's human, it's mentionable.
And if it's mentionable, it's manageable.
The way and our body encodes traumatic experience is typically not in the cognitive way where
we can describe it in words.
It comes more in feelings and impressions.
And those are harder to put words around.
So, having an opportunity to put some words around it will help you to heal from it.
And that's where a lot of cognitive therapies go in their approaches to healing from trauma.
The other thing that I like about putting in words around it, is it?
It creates a handle that you can get a hold of that allows you to share it with other
people.
And then in sharing of it, you'll find out that you're not alone.
And you can find support.
And usually the traumas that occurred, occurred in the time that we didn't have much power
of control over what was happening.
This is specially true in the cases of child abuse where young vulnerable children experience
trauma at the hands of sometimes people that they love and trust.
And that should be keeping them safe in the first place.
As an adult, they can out words around that story that allow them to share it in a way
where adult mind now can let it go.
And see that they're no longer in that vulnerable position.
So, there's a lot of powerful things about telling the story.
Anything that I say about trauma would be incomplete if I didn't acknowledge some of
the work that's been done by Doctor Bessel van der Kolk and some of his colleagues in
the area of body and how our body encodes trauma.
He wrote a book called The Body Keeps The Score.
And it's a pretty heavy book but it's got a lot of really good information about how
our body encodes trauma.
Now, I mention that because a lot of the traditional therapies missed the mark a little bit.
Remember I said that sometimes we encode trauma in ways that are not intellectual?
They're not stories that we can easily tell even though telling this story is therapeutic.
Sometimes we can get there immediately.
So there are some other treatment approaches that involved the body and movement and physical
things that can help people to heal from trauma.
And there's remarkably good track record for some of these therapies in helping people
to heal.
EMDR for example.
Which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Restructuring.
It has to do with the movement of your eyes typically from side to side.
There are also forms of the EMDR that involve tapping or vibrations that go from one hand
to the other, for example.
I'm just giving you couple of examples of a type of therapy that seems to be helping
people to release some of the traumas that they have.
There's also yoga and practices in martial arts.
And tai-chi is an example where the body gets involved in the work that needs to be done
to process and let go of the trauma and start that healing process.
I would encourage you, if you're looking into treatment approaches that you don't get to
exclusive.
Because there's a lot of good support out there for the different treatments that are
available.
And there is healing available for this traumas.
The good news is there's a lot of hope out there.
And I'm glad that you connected to the resources here on the channel.
Another resource I hope that you take advantage of is a free copy of my book which you can
get at drpauljenkins.com.
There's a big orange button that it would be really clear what you need to do.
Fill out the form.
You pay for the shipping, I'll pay for the book.
Let's get this in your hands as part of your personal development library.