Meandering Michele’s Mind: To Speak or Not to Speak about Trauma
Thursday, October 15th, 2009 • Meandering Michele's Mind •
Last week I was wondering about how often we speak about our PTSD experience. This week I’m musing about how often we speak about our trauma itself. I meet many survivors who don’t want to reveal the details of their trauma at all. In my clients, all of whom are survivors, most won’t speak about their traumatic experience in detail. They’re much more comfortable speaking about their PTSD symptoms.
And yet, when I went into therapy that’s all we did: talk and talk and talk about what I had survived, how I felt about it, why I felt that way, and … and …. and…. Eight years later I was really sick of talking about it and not any freer from it.
If I go back even further, I remember myself very well in the days before I learned to speak about what had happened to me. I was terrified putting language to it would make it loom too large and overwhelming in my mind. I was already on the brink of insanity and I was afraid going back and describing the past would push me over the edge.
I find out now, all these years later, this sort of aversion to telling our stories is completely normal! Even this morning I went to buy dog food and the woman who owns the store confessed she’s now on medication for depression, OCD and anxiety in order to manage her PTSD that developed after surviving a rare brain tumor. “I don’t want to go to therapy,” she said. “I don’t want to have to go back to all of those feelings and talk about it.”
The good news is: We don’t have to speak to heal. Sure, there are benefits to getting it all down and out in words, but the truth is it isn’t necessary in order for healing to take place. Last week I completed working with a survivor of sexual assault; in our 6 sessions together she never once told me what kind of assault she survived. And yet, she healed because there are techniques we can use that don’t require an enormous dissertation about the past.
I’m not alone in thinking we don’t have to force people to detail events. Last weekend a really fun thing happened: I got to meet a trauma blogger I really enjoy reading. Her name is Teresa: she’s a trauma therapist and future yoga instructor. She has a deep belief in the power of using the body during healing. She works with many people struggling with PTSD and has noticed that some only tell the story AFTER they have healed.
We have so many programmed beliefs about how healing is supposed to go. We must forgive first. We must talk first. We must (fill in the blank).
The truth: Healing doesn’t have a set program. Sometimes, as in this survivor’s account, forgiveness comes after healing, if at all. Sometimes we talk in the end, as you’ll see next week in a special ‘Survivors Speak’ post written by my client who, now healed of PTSD, wants to reach out to other survivors.
It’s very important in healing to trust your own instincts, find your own path and do what feels right for you. When eight years of therapy didn’t heal me I struck out to find healing on my own without professional help. It just felt like the right thing to do. I’m sure my family didn’t think that was a good idea. But look where it lead. I found wellness my own way.
I think there are many paths to finding freedom. If we all share together we’ll have maps for any territory a survivor finds him or herself in.
What do you think about talking vs. not talking about trauma? Leave a comment. Let’s look at this from all angles.
(Photo: Freek van den Bergh)
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Tags: anxiety, blogger, forgiveness, healing, OCD, ptsd, therapy, trauma therapist
I think there are so many different kinds of PTSD, caused in different ways, from childhood trauma, trauma involving trusted caretakers, trauma from accidents or illness, to trauma from war, or attacks….While they share features in common, there are also big differences in the effects. It makes sense to me that then different methods are effective with different cases of PTSD.
As to talking about it, I think most sufferers do have a feeling of avoidance about revealing details. In my case, trying to talk about it brings on flashbacks, and I feel a lot worse.
As to healing without talking about it at all? In your case Michelle, it’s possible that while talking alone wasn’t enough for healing, the talking you did do set the stage for the eventual healing that occurred.
I kind of think that you do have to talk about it, at least once, with someone you trust, even though it’s painful to do so. That may not be all that’s required to heal from the effects of trauma, but it’s a part of the process for most.
Ellen
@Ellen — I completely agree with everything you’ve said. Healing is a continuum and every thing we try moves us forward somehow, even if it doesn’t feel like it. What if we don’t have anyone we feel we can talk to? I wonder, then, if writing it out - talking to ourselves - would do the trick.
Cool. As to writing about out- if the trauma was severe enough to cause PTSD, I wouldn’t recommend approaching it with writing if the person has no one to talk to, as it could open it up to an extent where the person cannot handle it. We got PTSD for a reason - that our systems could not handle what was happening to us. I’m no therapist, but in my opinion, you need outside help to deal with it. If we have no one to help, I think the best we can do is self-care and self-compassion, but need to leave the trauma alone for the time being. My 2 cents.
I think some times we need to talk about what happened to use, to see if any one else can relate to it and to see how they delt with it.
some times thats all we can talk about is our trauma because it lives with us day in and day out. So yes I think we need to talk about it and have some one to listen, and not to say that never happened but to say they are sorry it did
Definitely to each their own. As individual as each person’s path to healing is how they think about and communicate their trauma and their PTSD symptoms.
Talk therapy worked for me up to a point. Sort of. I could talk about the general details of what happened and tried to explain how a PTSD episode felt, but I’m not sure it was ever in the most exacting language. Mostly because the words would draw up visuals and the visuals would destroy me.
Still, my first therapist and I got a long way down the track and cleared up a lot of what I now call the “rubble”. Not the actual impact zone of the trauma, but all of the fall out surrounding it. Those things we cleaned up very well with talk therapy. At that point, I thought I was doing so well and I thought I was “healed” or something. I was *so* much better, even if I still had symptoms.
Then I went away on a yoga retreat for five weeks and came back feeling amazing. Somehow I held things together for three months until another hidden memory re-surfaced and I felt like I was back at square one, even though I wasn’t, of course.
This time however, talk therapy wasn’t getting anywhere. I was feeling utterly manic and nauseous and horrible before and after each session, but we weren’t making any ground. My subconcious mind refused to give up its secrets, in an attempt to protect me. But really, it wasn’t helping. So my therapist referred me on, bless her heart.
In the end, I think the reason EMDR helped me (my next therapist was an EMDR practitioner) is because I’m highly visual and all of my PTSD was tied to visual flashbacks. EMDR doesn’t require you to talk about the trauma or symptoms, you just need to be able to talk around it a little and deal with the emotions as they arise, while the EMDR therapy happens. I know Michele, it didn’t work for you but it really, really did for me!
Definitely I’d say however, all the stuff that’s being repressed or hidden has to come out somehow. But it needs to be in a way that you can handle. Talk therapy was causing me to feel really ill and anxious but EMDR solved all that.
How it works for each person dealing with PTSD is bound to be quite different because we’re all such different people.
I’m glad this was written. How am I supposed to talk about the trauma that brought on my PTSD when I don’t even remember it? Mine was from a car wreck, one of my injuries was head trauma that caused short-term memory loss. I can tell you what the police report said, and what my husband and mother have told me, but I can’t tell you my side of the story. I was worried my recovery would be more difficult because of this, but now I know differently. Thank you for taking a big weight off my shoulders!
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