Here’s a video about moving on from trauma. Melissa Moore invited me to talk about dealing with trauma on the podcast, Faith Hope Love in the Momentum Series. Scroll down for a transcript. And follow Faith Hope Love on Youtube.
Defining “Trauma”
My definition of “trauma” is broader than how it’s formally utilized in the mental health spaces, and part of that is because a lot of the people I work with haven’t necessarily experienced what people consider to be “big traumas” like car accidents or parents divorcing. Since many of these individuals are internally oriented, a lot of them are Highly Sensitive People, etc.
I define “trauma” more openly, so it’s not just the big “T” “Trauma” like those really big, observable events on the outside, but also it could be a LONG, EXTENDED PERIOD OF IRRITATION OR AGITATION. So for example, someone grows up in a home where nobody really acknowledges emotions, or where there’s a lot of criticism. If a person has grown up living and breathing that as the norm, they just assume that that is the normal experience. It’s not until they interact with someone who’s grown up in an entirely different environment where they’re like, “Oh, wait.” Then they look back on their own experiences and redefine or redescribe what they’ve been through.
If I have a formalized definition of trauma that I use with my own clients, I would say that it’s any experience— either OBJECTIVE (being on the outside or observable from the outside) or SUBJECTIVE (meaning felt on the inside) that stirs up HEIGHTENED, intense feelings of feeling OUT OF CONTROL, TRAPPED, OR ASHAMED.
Different Reactions, Same Event
This definition I use is not according to the bible for therapists, the DSM, so it’s not a mental health diagnosis definition, but the reason I expanded the definition is because two people can go through the same event and have very different takeaways. For example, two people can be in the same car when there’s a car accident, and one person will have a really hard time and that’s going to mark how they move forward for the rest of their lives where they feel really guilty or really afraid, whereas the other person in the car is like, “Oh, I’m so thankful I’m still alive!”
That’s one example. Another is, let’s say for a non-intense event, someone who is called out in the middle of a classroom by their teacher in fifth grade and asked to answer a question on the board. Some kids will be like, “Alright, I’ll rise to the challenge and show off what I can do!” Whereas another kid is going to go bright red, fumble over their words and shut down, and that is what might be driving a lot of the things they do as an adult—working really hard so they are never caught in that position again.
I hope that my definition makes it so that a lot people can consider their own experiences and be like, “Oh, yeah that was a hard experience for me, maybe I do need some more support for that, I’m not the only one.”
Symptoms of Trauma
In terms of trauma symptoms, I can use what the DSM uses as indicators. The four main indicators are:
Re-experiencing
Avoidance
Negative cognitions and feelings
Heightened reactivity
Re-experiencing
With re-experiencing, a person in the present is going through a brand new situation with new people, new details, etc., but the situation reminds them or reminds their body of this scary thing that happened in the past. So, this can come in the form of intrusive thoughts, memories, sometimes people may re-experience similar situations in their dreams when they’re sleeping, or they’re in the middle of their workday, and they have a very sudden shift in their thoughts and emotions.
Avoidance
Because it’s so uncomfortable to feel those feelings, people try really hard to avoid anything that remotely reminds them or their body of that situation. So for example, a person experiences a really harsh breakup, and they try really hard to never even drive down the street that they drove down with their previous partner. They are spending a lot of energy and effort trying to not engage with that scary experience or anything that reminds them of it.
Negative Cognitions and Feelings
Understandably, if a person spends a lot of their energy trying to avoid these difficult experiences (even perceived ones), then it’s going to shape how they feel about themselves, how they feel about others, the world, etc. Things like “I’m always going to be in these kinds of relationships,” or “I just can’t trust other people because other people are untrustworthy,” or “the state of the world is not great and it’s always going to be this gloom and doom out there.” Most people who’ve had at least one big trauma or multiple small traumas can live in a way where their perception is colored by their experiences, not reflective of what’s actually happening in front of them.
Heightened Reactivity
With heightened reactivity, the person is generally very irritable, they can be jumpy at different sounds, their moods can change very rapidly. On a nervous system level, their bodies are in this heightened sense of something is going to happen and they have to be extra cautious, which is exhausting to live like that. Even when things are actually okay on the outside, when a person’s body is always tense, even small things may be enough to tip the scale.
Finding Relief for Trauma
It’s helpful for people to know that their well-intended efforts to avoid negative feelings or experiences usually backfire. It’s like trying to stick a beachball underwater. The further down the ball gets stuffed down, the more pressure buildup there is. Eventually, you lose control of it, and it will just pop back up, make a huge splash, everything gets wet and messy.
So, with trauma’s heightened sense of feeling out of control, trapped, or ashamed, our bodies are designed to heal themselves, and triggers are actually attempts for the body to try to heal itself. It’s just that the way by which it’s trying to do so doesn’t always happen at the most convenient moments or in the most helpful ways.
Let’s say a person gets triggered by a word that a friend says. The friend didn’t do anything to cause the pain, but the body is like, “Uh, oh, we’re going to that place again.” When the person gets triggered, if we label that as a bad thing, then yeah, the person should avoid the situation at all costs, but if we re-interpret that as the body’s attempt to try to heal, we get the memo, take it and say, “okay, something inside of me is trying to get my attention. I need to attend to this as soon as possible. It might not be while I’m in the middle of a conversation with my friend or doing work, but I still need to give space to this. Otherwise, it’s going to be that beach ball underwater.”
So part of the way to help oneself heal from trauma is to give more space to the uncomfortable experience, not less. It’s kind of like being on a roller coaster. It’s really intense, there are lots of loops and lots of dizziness, and it seems like it’s going to last a long time, but really it’s two minutes long. The issue is that when people’s bodies get triggered, it’s like being a roller coaster, but the roller coaster gets stuck at the top of the ride. It doesn’t actually make it through to the other side. Because that experience is so intense, people try to get really hard to get off the rollercoaster in the middle of the ride, and it’s just not going to go down well.
Things like brainspotting as a type of therapy is one way for people to get to the other side of resolving the difficult intensity of experience, but there could be many other ways of doing so as well, like performance arts, bodywork like yoga, any kind of journaling exercise where the person is giving intentional space to it. It’s important to manage how much intensity they’re giving to it at a given time, but it’s still important to give more space to it than less. It’s a little bit counterintuitive than what people may expect.
Re-Training our Bodies
The thing is that with trauma, the worst thing has already happened. It’s in the past, it’s one and done. Now, if a person is still in a triggering or traumatic situation, yeah, get out of it as soon as possible. But for most people who’ve had trauma, the trauma is a past event. The worst part has already happened; it’s just that the triggers that our bodies engage in say, “we’re not sure whether that bad thing has actually come to an end.” And so, what’s more likely is that what’s happening right now, the current relationship you’re in, the current work relationship you’ve gotten yourself into, is more likely to be technically better than what’s happened back then, but your body just doesn’t know how to tell the difference.
It’s really hard to make sound decisions when we’re in a lot of confusion. Connecting with a therapist is one way we can have other frames of reference to retrain our bodies to know that what’s happening in front of us should be considered a brand new event, not as an exact replica of what’s happened back then.
I work with a lot of people who are in romantic relationships and their partner has a way about them that ignores emotions. Yeah, the partner has to do their own work for sure. But the way the body interprets what’s happening is as if it’s the same as when they’re getting criticized growing up. Back then, when they were really vulnerable, they really didn’t have any way of soothing themselves. And that’s hard to expect the partner to be able to do the heavy lifting on behalf of those old relationships and previous people.
Body, Mind, and Emotions in Scripture
There’s such intricacy in how our bodies are meant to work together. It’s not just about thinking soundly, addressing emotions, or doing the right thing, all of these are very much interconnected. That’s even reflected in several parts of scripture.
One of my favorite parts is in Romans 12. People have memorized parts 1 and 2. First, it says something like, “Therefore, brothers in view of God’s mercy, offer your bodies as holy sacrifices.” And then verse 2 is like, “make sure to renew your minds so that you don’t align with the way the world operates.” The first 2 verses are talking about the body and the mind, and the emotions kind of come in at the end in verses 5 and 6. But even then, it’d be doing a great disservice to us, and in a way, a dishonor to God, to consider that only one part of us is important by ignoring the rest.
So it’s kind of like splitting hair sometimes to think about our thoughts, our emotions, and our body experiences as being distinct. They definitely have different roles, but there’s so much interconnection and so much order to them that I think it does highlight the majestic work that God does. It’s not just about memorizing and reciting the proper verses. It’s not about giving full control and full reigns to our emotions, but that we’re supposed to heal in a very intricate way.
An example of that is Jesus with the Bleeding Woman. There’s a lot of layers of healing in that one particular experience. Jesus could’ve just fixed the physical ailment of it; she probably would’ve been happy with that portion of healing. But there’s this whole interaction with making sure she hangs out a little bit longer in a huge crowd of people—that’s healing for the soul portion.
She has been pushed to the side on the outskirts of society and is now given center stage for everyone to see that she is a beloved daughter. That is retraining the mind on how she sees herself and retraining everyone else’s mind on how they should consider her. It’s also a very heightened, emotional, intense experience.
One of the things I mentioned as a marker for when an event is traumatic is heightened, emotional, intense experiences of feeling ashamed. Well, Jesus put this woman front and center saying, you are beloved, you are worthy. It’s not because your bleeding problem has been resolved, but it’s because she is who she is. If you read through parts of the Bible through that lens that our thoughts, emotions, bodies are CONNECTED, then you won’t just see physical feelings for people. When Jesus interacts with different people, you’ll see that there are so many other aspects of pain that Jesus also healed.
Healing Inside and Outside
God wants our healing more than we want our own healing. It’s not just like, God changing our citizenship status to being citizens of heaven. That’s easy. But it’s us about catching up with what our status really means. Not just technically having access to His kingdom and some perks that go with it, but really being inhabitant.
I think the language around adoption is another example of that. I’ve heard a story of adoptees who technically became sons and daughters of a family. But it took a long time before they were able to live knowing that they’re sons and daughters. It’s an entirely different experience altogether. I don’t think it’s just about having a technical change in one’s status or getting enough trauma therapy that you no longer have a mental health diagnosis of PTSD. There are so many needs that are really important beyond just symptom management. God really wants people to receive His powerful healing from the inside out in all areas of our lives.
Healing with the Enneagram and Brainspotting
One of my favorite techniques is the enneagram. As I mentioned earlier, two people can go through the same event and have very different takeaways because their personalities are very different. They’re focusing on different themes, different needs, different fears. So unless we attune to each person for who they actually are, it’s going to be hard for them to find the deep healing that they need.
They both have anxiety, but for different reasons. One person is because they’re comparing themselves to an unbelievably high standard and they will never find themselves able to hit the mark, whereas another has anxiety because they’re super self-conscious of how other people see them. Unless we really know what is going on internally with a person’s personality—which is the way that the person has coped through life—it’s going to take a while. Otherwise, it’s kind of like throwing a bunch of things at them and hoping something sticks.
The metaphor that I use with the enneagram is that you go to the massage therapist and they ask a bunch of questions like, “what would you like attention around today? Are there any areas you want to avoid? Let’s look for some knots that are built into your body and let’s massage them now so you can full access to your whole body all over.” Otherwise, those knots are just pulling away at different areas for extended periods of time.
Brainspotting, which is a form of trauma therapy, is the actual massaging out those knots. It’s a type of trauma therapy that our bodies naturally know how to do. Imagine having a hard experience, and then you go to sleep, and then in the deep, dreaming process, your brain is coming up with all kinds of weird details and scenarios that don’t really make sense, but then that’s kind of how your body metabolizes and works through a lot of those difficult emotions and situations. Brainspotting is when a person does that while they’re awake in therapy.
Instead of falling into the deep end, the therapist is able to pull them out of the deep water when the session is about to end because time’s run out or when things get really intense. So, those are the main two resources that I use when supporting people with different kinds of traumas—brainspotting and the enneagram. A lot of the work that I do is around relationships and difficult emotions. I also do a lot of teaching too about what each emotion means about the person needs. They aren’t as chaotic and random as people think they are. There is a logic to it; it' just doesn’t follow the same rules as intellectual logic.
Borrowing Hope on the Road to Healing
As I mentioned earlier, the worst part has already happened, so even when we experience reminders of that, they are short. They can be overcome, but a lot of it involves courage and encouragement. We were never meant to heal from our experiences alone. So, really connecting with a lot of safe people where you can take off all your masks, and you can show up as yourself, and you know you’re not going to be judged. It’s a really important, essential factor that people need to do the healing work.
Aside from a therapist, friends, or sometimes a family member, our partners might be a huge agent of healing for us. It’s definitely is possible to work through these super scary experiences, and it’s so worth doing the work, and until then, it might be hard to imagine it. So until that time, your safe people—including your therapist or pastor or whoever—you may borrow the hope they have on your behalf. It’s okay if you feel scared or unsure.
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© Copyright 2021 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.
JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT
Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Therapist in San Jose, CA, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.
Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect
The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:
“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”
“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”
The three Enneagram instincts (Self-Preservation, Social, and Sexual) instincts show up in the way we engage our lives and creative endeavors. Check out this conversation with Rim from The Empowered Sensitive and Creative Podcast!