Treating PTSD: The Power of Perception

It’s no secret we create our reality. How we perceive something informs our experience of it. The way we take in information, frame it and represent it to ourselves impacts how we feel about every experience we have, which decides how we react to the memory of it, plus any situation that reminds us of a particular event.

My trauma involved a horrific hospital event. For years afterward any trip to the doctor, any test in the hospital had me shaking so much the doctors would halt everything, take my parents aside, and ask what was wrong with me.

But the truth is, events themselves don’t have any power – it’s the meaning and interpretation we give them that makes them become what they are. Two people can go through the same experience and come out of it with differing accounts. Take my brother and I for example:

Bret owns a 35-foot sport fishing boat. We travel on it often as a family. A couple of years ago we took the boat down the west coast of Florida from Sanibel Island to Naples. A storm came. Bret speeded up the boat and we rocked and swayed and pitched on the waves for an hour before we got to our destination. Bret had the time of his life. I fought waves of nausea the whole way. Bret thought it was a terrific and exciting trip. I swore I’d never get on the boat again.

What’s the difference here? Purely, my perspective. Because my experience of the trip was negative whenever I think about it all I remember is the nausea. I don’t remember the fun of the family being together, the beauty of the ocean in a storm, the sense of adventure as we tried to outrace the clouds, or the victory of pulling into the Naples marina knowing we had beaten Mother Nature’s challenge. No, I didn’t feel any of that. Bret felt all of that. I just felt nausea.

Perception is defined as ”the process by which organisms interpret and organize sensation to produce a meaningful experience of the world.” After we have an experience the brain encodes it by creating neuropathways and our mind creates representational systems that catalogue details and synthesize all of that sensory information into something that makes sense to us. All of these processes build memories that then inform our actions and reactions. The problem is, our categorization can be wrong. Our synthesis can go astray. I can have a bad experience on the boat and decide (erroneously) that such will be the extent of every experience on the boat.

So what happens now? I have an awful memory and yet the family still wants to take boating trips. In fact, today we’re crossing the Atlantic and going from Jupiter, FL, to the Bahamas for the holiday weekend. How do I get on the boat again when I have such an aversion that is both psychological and physical? I’ve had to change my perceptions. I’ve had to stop that stomach churning by actively routing it out.

Every one of us has to do something like this about the negative memories and associations we have related to our traumatic events. For many of the perceptions and associations we have after our Traumas (big ‘T’, not little boating ‘t’) we have to identify what our unhealthy perceptions are and then work to reverse them. Sounds like an oversimplification? Sure it is, but stay with me. Healing doesn’t happen all in one day. It’s a process. It happens in increments. By changing one perception at a time.

BRIDGE THE GAP EXERCISE:

The first step to changing perceptions is noticing we have them! In the previous BTG exercise I suggested you begin paying attention to your thoughts, seeing how many negative thoughts pop up in a day, and how often they are directed at your own self.

Today, carry a small notebook or piece of paper with you. Remain very aware of your thoughts. Every time you think something negative about yourself, write it down. These thoughts can range from ‘I’m so dumb, I forgot to lock the car,’ to ‘I hate that I’m always anxious!’ Every negative thought that relates to you goes on the list. When 24 hours has gone by put the list somewhere you won’t lose it. We’ll need it later…

Tags: Changing Unhealthy Perceptions, heal, posttraumatic, power of perception, ptsd, symptoms, treat