Integrating traumatic experience

What does it feel like to integrate traumatic experience?

Rather than to be triggered and stuck in it?

Integrating traumatic experience is harrowing.?

Nowhere near as harrowing as being triggered and stuck though. Stuck in unprocessed trauma.

The difference is in the solid sense of being grounded in the present.?

From this space you can look back and feel the feelings from the past.?

Not think about the past.

Feel the past.

As I look back over journal entries from many years ago, I remember this experience vividly.?

I remember when it began to happen and how it was so different from anything I had ever experienced.?

It did not happen when I wanted it to.

It happened when I was ready.

When my body was ready.?

When I felt safe enough in relationship with my therapist to feel.?

We need a framework to understand and explain this process.

We need new concepts to scaffold our experience.

A scaffold makes sharing our experience with others possible.

This ability to share with someone, what is happening, is healing in and of itself.

A hallmark of traumatic experience is that we are alone in it.?

Sharing our experience is important.

Internal Family Systems Theory (IFS) is a great scaffold that can be used to explain traumatic experience.

As human beings we have multiple active different parts to us.?

The main parts are:

1.?????The adult self

2.?????The child self

3.?????The protectors (or the fire fighters).

After someone experiences a traumatic event, these parts become more clearly defined and separate. They become overactive.

The adult self is the adult part of us. Grounded in today. Here, at whatever age you may be. For example, while writing this, my adult self is 41. I am 41.

The child self is the part of us that carries the unprocessed trauma.

The scared part.

The part with limited resources.

The part needing protection.

The part that is overwhelmed.

The part that shuts down and dissociates.

The child is also the part of us that gets horribly, horribly scared.

Scared for its life.?

Finally, there are the protectors.

The protector parts of us rush in to save the child at the slightest sign of a threat.

You can think of the protector parts as the fire fighters.?

There doesn’t need to be an actual fire. Just smoke.

We don’t need firefighters if there is just smoke.

We only need fire fighters is the house is burning down.

If there is a real threat to our survival.

How many times have you needed fire fighters in real life?

Not many I’m guessing.

It’s the same here.

?

An adult can take care of burned toast.

Firefighters are not needed.

Not anymore.

We needed them as children.

Overactive protectors keep us stuck in unprocessed trauma.?

They stop us from feeling what we need to feel.

The protectors come in many forms.?

Food

Skin picking

Sex

Alcoholism

Shopping

Excessive working

Drug addiction?

Over exercising

Excessive dating

Gambling

Excessive gaming

Chronic anxiety?

Whatever the protectors need to engage in to stop the child feeling, they will.

This leaves the child part of us starved of feeling.

Starved of valid feelings.

Of feelings that are in response to actual events.

Things the child needs to feel.

If the child is scared the child needs to feel this fear.

To move through it.?

Integrating trauma is about moving through feelings while in the present.?

Not being stuck in them because we are too scared to feel them in their entirety.?

If we continue to block our feelings, we never process them.

We never integrate them.

They never go away.

They will manifest over time in health and relationship issues.

Often causing unmanageable anxiety and depression.?

We need to process what was, so that we can live in what is.

We can experience fully embodied and present ‘today’ lives.

Some of us have never felt this before.

Being stuck in unprocessed traumatic experience is horrifying.

We are totally lost.

Lost in the fear. The overwhelm. The desperation. The suffocation. The hell.?

We lose touch with our sense of reality.

Everything is scary and threatening.

Disaster is always just around the corner.

Or so it seems.

Integration is different.

Integration involves feeling all of these unpleasant things without thinking them.?

I’ll explain.

The body sensations from the original traumatic event or time remain.

But I know I am not back there as I feel them.

I know there is no real threat to me. Not here. Not now.?

It is still unpleasant.?

I feel like I can’t breathe but I know I can.

I notice my breaths are shallow, but it does not scare me.

It’s like a part of me is watching.

A part of me that is not embedded in the experience.

A part of me that knows I am safe.

A part of me I know is keeping me safe.

The adult self.

Grounded in the present.

I am confused.

Just like I was during the initial trauma.

There is a feeling that nothing makes sense. But at the same time, it does.

Because I am grounded here in the present.

The feeling of confusion is in my body. Not in my mind.

There is that old electrical storm feeling that used to manifest when I got triggered.

But it’s not overwhelming.

It’s localised to my head (physically).

I’m watching it.

From my adult self.

It comes and goes.?

It’s like I can dip into and out of it as I please.

This feeling is in my head. Not my mind.

The whole time I feel empowered.

By my startling new ability to feel the past, from the present.

My body is buzzing. Loudly.

My arms.

My legs.

My feet.

It’s really strong.

But more so when I focus on it. When I write about it.?

If I change my focus it reduces in its loudness.

For once I am in control.?

My adult self can step back in at any time and take charge.

This is new.

Slowly these feelings become a part of me.

Of my experience as a whole.

A memory in the body.

A processed memory.

An integrated memory.

Nothing to be feared.

A part of me I used to deny.

Because I thought I had to.?

This is honouring my child self.

Honouring me.

My reality.

My truth.

Allowing myself to feel what I need to feel is empowering and freeing.?

Once the protectors learn that they no longer need to protect you.

Your real time coping strategies improve.?

You don’t become overwhelmed.

Everything is always manageable.

This is the core learning.

Everything is always manageable.

One of the stranger parts of this experience is that the uncomfortable feelings I was avoiding become comfortable.

No.

They are enjoyable!

Because they are real.?

They are congruent.

Everything slows down.

Finally.?

I have stopped running.

I can breathe.

No tension.?

Everything feels so, so slow.?

Bliss.

This must be how I am supposed to feel.?

**I remember not knowing what the other side looked like. I have written this article in the?hope?that you take?hope?from it, if you are still stuck. There is another side. Don’t give up.?