Anyone can look up the DSM definition of trauma and the symptoms that qualify a person to receive a PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) diagnosis. In my opinion standard psychiatric care and DSM only based assessments are basic at best and only provide a very gross, macro look at what a person is going through. In addition, treatment options offered from this perspective are over generalized and mostly ineffective for the majority of people. Most providers will throw CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and SSRI (antidepressant) medications at the symptoms dragging deeply suffering people into years of unnecessarily prolonged treatment with only mediocre results. CBT is excellent for the beginner who needs to learn about Negative Core Beliefs, how those beliefs lead to emotions that then lead to behaviors, how to Reality Test, and how to create Positive Installs. However, CBT does not offer any substantial mode by which the Positive Install anchors itself into the consciousness. Most of the providers I have worked with or had to collaborate with didn’t value EMDR or even bother to understand how it worked even though it’s the current gold standard treatment for trauma. It’s pretty scary how few providers in the field of mental health are actually trauma informed.
Deeper thinkers such as Dr Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score), Dr Gabor Mate (The Myth of Normal), and Dick Schwartz (IFS creator) unpack and teach on the subtle and long-term effects of life experiences that lead to deficits in feelings of safety, satisfaction, and fulfillment in individuals' relationship with their life. I recommend you interview your mental health providers before allowing them to take charge of your treatment. Any provider working in mental health who does not know who these 3 gentlemen are should be fired immediately, in my opinion.
Trauma is tricky. It can be caused by obvious experiences such as combat, violent relationships, car accidents, natural disasters, death of loved ones, divorce, ect. It can also be caused by not so obvious experiences such as repetitively experienced insults, gas lighting and ignoring by care takers. May people convince themself they were not traumatized growing up because no one hit or raped them. Yet, these people struggle with forming healthy bonds in their relationships with appropriate boundary setting and feeling safe in expressing their emotions, needs & requests. They have strange, overreactive outbursts or paranoia that then leads to feelings of guilt and shame because they can’t control these behaviors.
Trauma is complex. There are obvious trauma reactions – rage, nightmares, memory issues, hypervigilance, avoiding, dissociation, ect; and there are also very subtle reactions such as irrational fears, toxic self-loathing, repetitive & unwanted patterns of behavior in relationships. Sometimes trauma effects are so subtle they are the driving force behind choices that one may think are completely sovereign.
Trauma is 100% treatable when the appropriate tools are utilized. We must seek providers who are capable of helping us unpack our experiences, grieve the losses related to the trauma, re develop our sense of safety, anchor new positive installs about our value and capabilities into our subconscious, and help us find the medicine in the wound.
The longer trauma goes untreated, the more its effects both gross and subtle affect our consciousness. Time does not heal all wounds. With time, untreated trauma grows roots into our brain pathways that, eventually, connects everything in our consciousness, whether we are aware of it or not, to the trauma. We live, interact with our experiences, and make choices based on vision tainted by trauma-colored glasses. Our idea of Reality is skewed, and our perspectives and perceptions are limited. In this state we are susceptible to repeating patterns of our trauma experience which only reinforces the brain pathways and leads to more repetition of trauma-based choices.
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