Eating something spoiled makes digestion difficult. The body rejects it but, since we have already ingested it, the only thing we can do is try to move it through the digestive system through various back and forth movements that, by the way, cause a lot of discomfort. Likewise, chewing well can also help to better digest certain heavy foods, so that it is possible to send them a little more processed to the stomach.
And the same thing happens with life experiences. Some are too big or in “bad condition.” Our body is not prepared for them. That is why one of the most common symptoms after traumatic experiences is to have intrusive memories (known as ‘flashbacks’). They are very vivid, as if it were a movie. The brain throws back again and again those events that it cannot assimilate.
He Post Traumatic Stress Disorderwhich was already being investigated after the First and Second World Wars, was finally included in the 1980s in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III), after the Vietnam War. It had previously been known as “war neurosis.” The ex-combatants presented symptoms such as low mood, agitation, intrusive memories or nightmares.
It should be added that, despite having been initially recognized in the world of war, to a greater or lesser extent we can all have unprocessed or difficult to assimilate experiences in our lives, without meeting all the diagnostic criteria.
Among the scientifically validated tools for the treatment of trauma techniques focused on exposure to traumatic memories. For example, memories or sensory stimuli associated with them are selected and work is done so that the person inhibits the emotional response that conditioned (associated) with those elements and that now appears even in their absence.
It could be said that the memory cannot forget as such and that the only way he can achieve something similar is through new learning that replace the previous one. For this reason, psychologists use the habituation principles either systematic desensitization. This means that if the aversive event is evoked in a safe environment where emotions can be regulated, little by little we will be less reactive to said memory and it will even be paired with a new emotional response safer and more controlled, making it incompatible for the previous discomfort response to appear.
Furthermore, many authors have highlighted the importance of accompany to exposure treatment with a cognitive reprocessing. That is, work on alternative interpretations of the story of what happened. Not everything that we commonly consider “traumatic” generates trauma in the person.
In the same way, the experiences that leave their mark on us are not always those that we would commonly imagine (deaths, accidents, bad sexual experiences). Only the person, in introspection (and/or with the help of someone) has access to the magnitude of the wound that some experiences cause us. Wherever I have one woundany friction can involve a reaction that would seem disproportionate in the eyes of those who are unaware that there is actually damage there.
In short, finding safe spaces where you feel validated and accompanied is crucial to building narratives that help us redefine and place painful events in our life history that allow us to (co)live with them in the best possible way.
#Trauma #heal #wounds #bodys #memory
