Feelings and Trauma Survivors
The process of healing is dependent on understanding your feelings and learning to manage them in ways that do not isolate you from others or otherwise harm you. But you cannot feel those feelings unless you first identify them. This process takes time, and you'll need to be patient.
Very few people learn about feelings unless someone in their lives took the time to teach them. But such a teacher would have first identified the feeling by putting a name or a label on it. In addition, this teacher would have distinguished different levels of the same feeling.
Regardless of the kind of trauma you have survived, it is critical that you learn what a feeling is and be able to give it a name.
What is a Feeling?
A feeling is neither a thought nor an action, "I should have. . ." is not a feeling; it is a thought. Feeling angry at a friend or thinking about hitting, cursing, or stealing from a friend. . .is not the same as actually acting on those feelings.
Feelings vs. Thoughts
Although feelings and thoughts are not the same, they are often intimately related. Some feelings arise out of the way you perceive things and the thoughts you have as a result. As you slowly acquire a more accurate, more concrete, and more rational view of what happened during the trauma, and why those events occurred, some of the more negative feelings you have about yourself, others, and the trauma itself may change. However, certain feelings will remain. You cannot "think away" the trauma entirely by changing the way you think. But you can considerably reduce unnecessary and unfounded self-blame, guilt, and anger at others by learning how to distinguish your thoughts from your feelings regarding the trauma.
The Characteristics of Feelings
Unlike thoughts, feelings involve a physical reaction. Whatever the feeling, it is not "all in your head." Feelings often appear in combination-they are more often complex than simple. For trauma survivors, anger and grief tend to go hand in hand. Often guilt is involved as well. Humiliation, which is caused all too often by the reactions of others who do not understand the trauma survivor's plight, can be a mixed feeling, involving anger, hurt, and sadness. Feelings can also be contagious. Friends' happiness can be infectious. Unfortunately, it is just as easy to "catch" emotions that you are less than joyous.
Tuning into Your Feelings
Some of your feelings may be at the surface of your awareness and thus easy to identify. Others you may have to dig for. Some signs of suppressed feelings are muscle tension, physical pain with no medical cause, depression, ennui or boredom, agitation or anxiety, dizziness, and involuntary urges to overeat, overspend, abuse alcohol or drugs, or hurt yourself. It is important to keep the following in mind: Feelings are neither good nor bad, right nor wrong; feelings just are, they exist. You need not, and should not, judge yourself negatively just because you have or don't have a particular feeling.
A very good thing to remember is: Feelings don't last forever. No matter what you are feeling, eventually it will lift and another emotion will take its place. When a strong feeling comes, you do not have to act on it. All you have to do is recognize it and feel it.
The process of getting at your feelings is important. Try not to block it with excessive self-judgement; save that for your behavior, not your feelings and thoughts. Your actions affect other people. How you feel and what you think is no one's business but your own.
Words associated with sadness:
defeated___inhibited___sorry
dejected___insecure___stupid
depressed___isolated___tired
despairing___lonely___trapped
desperate___melancholy___troubled
devastated___miserable___unappreciated
disappointed__misunderstood__unattractive
embarrassed__needy___uncertain
guilty___pessimistic___unfulfilled
helpless___preoccupied__useless
hopeless___pressured___victimized
hurt___regretful___violated
ignored___rejected___vulnerable
inadequate___remorseful___weary
incompetent__self-conscious__worn-out
inferior___shy___worried.
Words associated with joy:
affectionate__forgiving__relaxed__alive
friendly__ relieved__amused__fulfilled
respected__beautiful__generous__safe
brave__giving__supportive__calm
good__sympathetic__capable__grateful
tender__caring__happy__thankful
cheerful__hopeful__thrilled__cherished
humorous__trusted__comfortable
joyful__understanding__competent
lovable__understood__concerned__loved
unique__confident__loving__valuable
content__loyal__warm__courageous
passionate__witty__curious__peaceful
wonderful__delighted__playful
worthwhile__desirable__pleased__youthful
eager__proud__excited__quiet
Words associated with anger:
annoyed___hateful___overwhelmed
bitter___hostile___provoked
contemptuousss___humiliated___resentful
hurt___stubborn___enraged___impatient
touchy___exasperated___irritated
unappreciated___furious___outraged.
Words associated with fear
uneasy___afraid___distrustful
horrified___timid___apprehensive
insecure___trapped___ashamed
panicked___uncertain___desperate
pressured___uncomfortable___fearful
scared___victimized___frantic
self-destructive___violated___indecisive
self-hating___vulnerable___helpless
terrified___hopeless___threatened
Remembering the Trauma
In the same way that it is necessary to feel your emotions to be able to have a fully realized life, you will need to remember your trauma in order to heal from it. You may already remember more than you want to of the experience, or you may remember very little of the actual event.
In either case, one of the principal tools is to reconstruct what happened. What you will find is that, as the healing process progresses, your perceptions of the event change as you discover and learn more about the factors that make up your PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). You need to record what you currently remember about the trauma. It's important to be as detailed as you can. Include as many graphic and sensual details as you can remember, including sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and how things felt when you touched them. The details are important not because they are or were traumatic in themselves, but because similar details in your present life may be triggers that produce intense emotional-and even physical-reactions. You may even be organizing your life to avoid confronting similar details in the present.
Self-Blame and Survivor Guilt
The devastating event that occurred to you is important in itself. Also important, however, are your attitudes toward that event. Whether you have survived one trauma or several, your beliefs about why the trauma occurred and the way you judge your behavior during and after the traumatic episode are going to heavily influence the degree to which you continue to suffer.
Do you blame yourself for the traumatic event? Or do you fault yourself for some of the ways you reacted, or did not react, while the trauma was occurring? If you do, once again, you are not alone. It is not uncommon for trauma survivors to blame themselves in some way, large or small, for the event itself, its negative outcome, or both.
Origins of Self-Blame and Survivor Guilt
Self-blame arises in part from the fact that powerlessness and helplessness are two of the worst feelings any human being can experience. Yet being and feeling powerless or helpless in the face of great danger is the very definition of trauma. However, people prefer to think that they are able to control their lives, so it is easier to blame themselves for negative events than to acknowledge that sometimes life is unfair or arbitrary and innocent people can be victimized for no reason. Consequently, to maintain a sense of being in control you may view yourself, rather than chance, as responsible for one or more aspects of the trauma--perhaps for all of it. In this way, self-blame can be a means of regaining the power that was lost during the traumatic event. Survivor guilt is something other than just compassion for those who have suffered more than you. It is also a way of saying. "If I had suffered more, you would have suffered less." Such thinking is not logical, but it makes sense emotionally. It can be a defense against the pain you feel at seeing others hurt.
With survivor guilt, the idea is that by punishing yourself, you can undo the damage, or at least keep bad things from happening again. It has one additional aspect--gratitude. It is difficult to accept being grateful
that it was someone else who suffered. However hard this feeling is to face, it is nothing more than expression of the natural and vital instinct for self-preservation.
Accepting Guilt Feelings
If you suffer from self-blame, respect it. Even if you yourself or others can easily see that the self-blame is irrational, you need to respect your feelings. When you feel guilty, others may open their mouths wide with disbelief. But your task, at least for the moment, is to simply recognize your own emotion and not disparage it.
Eventually, you will need to examine any guilt you feel, both to see how closely
it matches objective reality and to determine exactly where the responsibility for the event truly lies. Either in a journal or with sympathetic family members or friends, discuss the ways in which you feel responsible for the traumatic event and/or its outcome . . try not to blame yourself for blaming yourself. Self-blame and guilt are entirely normal following any type of disaster or loss.
You might state with some legitimacy that your actions contributed to the trauma's taking place or to its negative outcome. You may, in fact, have made a mistake, perhaps several mistakes. However, you need to view your behavior from a trauma perspective.
Looking at the Bigger Picture
In trying to understand your trauma, you cannot look solely at your own behavior; you need a wider, more complete perspective. For example, like many trauma survivors, you may have forgotten or dismissed the conditions that existed at the time. If you feel partly, or entirely, responsible for what happened to you, discuss it with understanding others. They should be able to help you get a better perspective on your role in what happened.
"I Just Couldn't Think"
Some trauma survivors report that during the time of the traumatic event, they made decisions that, in retrospect, were not the wisest. During a traumatic event, you were probably thinking to the best of your ability under the circumstances. However, the turbulent emotions and high anxiety levels that traumatic situations create sometimes interfere with calm, rational thinking. In contrast, during a traumatic event, most people's judgment is affected, to one degree or another, by the very real dangers involved in the situation and the strong fears such dangers can produce. Furthermore, there may be biological basis for this "inability to think" under stress.
Perceptual Distortions
Because trauma is, by its very nature, sudden and overwhelming, people are often unable to adequately assess the situation, no matter how intelligent, brave, or physically fit they are. In addition, it is often difficult for trauma victims to even realize that the trauma is occurring.
Some individuals report perceptual changes in which time is altered and events seem to be happening in slow motion. Visual perceptions may be modified so that people sometimes have a derealized "out of body" experience, or at least feel that they are simply observing themselves from the outside rather than participating in the traumatic event. Another frequent perceptual alteration is a hysterical-like tunnel vision that focuses on the trauma scene itself to the exclusion of the rest of the environment.
In this initial state of denial and shock, it is easy to make "mistakes" or to act in a manner that later confuses you and causes you to doubt and criticize yourself.
False Guilt
Under traumatic conditions, errors in judgment are to be expected. Even people who make remarkably reasonable decisions under conditions of great stress later judge themselves at fault when an unexpected event occurred that causes a negative outcome. The original decision may have been the best decision that could have been made, given the information and resources available, yet because of an unpredictable turn of events-which frequently happens in trauma-people judge themselves as guilty. This false guilt stems from the mistaken notion that people believe they could have known better and predicted the negative outcome(s). This "20-20 hindsight" is deceptive since no one can predict the future, and you have to make the best decision you can, giving the information at hand. "Catch 22" Guilt occurs when none of the choices is acceptable because all available courses of action have repugnant consequences and involve repudiation of some important value.
A Closer Look at Self-Blame
Some of the explanations that people use that lead to self blame are:
I lack the ability to make good decisions.
I am not intelligent enough to make good decisions.
I am careless and fail to take adequate precautions.
I am impulsive and emotionally immature.
I am unable to learn.
I am sinful or bad.
Having such negative feelings toward yourself can be very painful. However, no one is "together" all of the time. Eventually all of us, no matter how competent or fortunate we may be, encounter situations that exceed our coping abilities. At that time, we just have t___0o do the best we can under the circumstances. Sometimes self-blame and low self-esteem stem from "victim thinking" or seeing your self as having been totally helpless or ineffectual during the traumatic event. You may have been victimized during the trauma, but that does not mean that you were totally passive or blameworthy. Nor does it mean that you are totally unable to meet some of your present-day goals. It is important to begin to "reframe" your perception of the traumatic event to see that you did the best you could under the circumstances and that any negative outcomes were beyond your control.
1. Matsakis, A. "Thoughts, Feelings, and Traumatic Events."
I Can't Get Over It: A handbook for Trauma Survivors (2nd Ed.)
Oakland, CA: New Harginger Publications, Inc., 1996, p.65-84
Background by Neh'ada
