Changing Trauma Into Triumph,
Some Thoughts

I am squeezing this pen so hard, either it will break or my fingers will. When I squeeze, my arm shakes. Damn, do I want to hit something! The vein in my forehead is going to explode. With the last flash of images, ******* Anges, he teed off on me when I called him a b****, I squeezed my eye-lids like I was trying to pop my eyeballs back into my brain...

Open Up, Confront The Fury - part 1

Lucky for us Pennebaker is a social psychologist. His studies identified aspects of sense-making, and unexpectedly, linked sense-making with significant improvements in emotional and physical health.

He directed four groups of volunteers to write for 15 minutes over four consecutive days. Each group had different instructions:

1. Just vent emotions (about a deeply-personal, emotionally-upsetting experience, a trauma-object),
2. Just write about the facts of the experience,
3. Vent emotions and write about facts,
4. Write about superficial or irrelevant topics (the control group).

The group who vented emotions and wrote facts (Group #3) demonstrated significant improvement in health - 50% fewer visits to the university clinic over the subsequence six months. This group, in interviews and questionnaires, reported improved moods, more positive outlooks and greater physical health. No other group showed any improvement.

Such an amazing study! Transform a triggered reexperience into an integrated autobiographical memory. Write then heal. I mention it almost every time I talk with someone in an emotional crisis.

She will inevitably respond, “It cannot be so simple.” Indeed, it cannot.

Confronting a Fury is emotional and painful. Such distress can deter the bravest soul. There is risk the Fury can re-traumatize and make the wound worse.

We might choose to live with our Fury’s story of suffering rather than reenact the pain in our body. We would focus on the wrong thing, avoiding the menacing experience.

We might be brave, experience the trauma-object, watch our body and allow the feelings. Even if we then consider and interpret the felt-object, we are exposed to our limiting beliefs and incomplete information. We might feel compelled to interpret events with no rational explanation.

“I attract the wrong kind of man. It’s my fault that I created a world where someone hits me.”

These defensive beliefs and many more, are the responses of a survivor. They have worked. They create some rationality, a sense of control and awareness of potential actions.

When we reexperience, we might engage these responses yet again (consciously or unconsciously). It’s hard work to look at our pain undefended.

The trauma-object is of the present and isolated to defend the psyche from pain. Autobiographical memory is of the past. Contemplation changes the nature of the trauma object so when it is recalled (rather than triggered) it is a functional part of autobiography.

Autobiography, after all, is our story of wisdom discovered.

The work is hard. The process is innate, a few steps. Its simplicity should be the bane of the self-help section of the bookstore:

1. Trigger a tolerable experience [trauma-object],
2. Watch the body and feel the emotions [felt-object],
3. Verbalize the reexperience [a considered-object of the recalled presence],
4. Engage the left hemisphere’s interpreter [an interpreted-object], and
5. Wait so the unconscious can improve decisions and highlight useful understanding [a contemplated-object]

Chris Brewin¹⁰ catalogs the benefits of sense-making:

• Restoration of safety (reduced fear),
• Abandonment of unattainable goals (reduced sadness),
• Absolution of others from responsibility for the trauma (reduced anger),
• Absolution of self from responsibility (reduced guilt), and
• The integration of new information into preexisting expectations.

He also describes how triggered reexperience transforms into function autobiography:

We use the term emotional processing broadly to denote a largely conscious process in which representations of past and future events [trauma-objects] and awareness of associated bodily states, repeatedly enter into and are actively manipulated within working memory. We suggest this process.. has at least two elements. One element involves the activation of highly specific situationally-accessible knowledge, who’s function is to aid the process of cognitive readjustment by supplying detailed sensory and physiological information concerning the event [right-brain imagery, such as flashbacks]. The second element.. is the conscious attempt to accommodate the conflicting information supplied by the trauma by searching for meaning and making judgments of cause and blame [left-brain interpreter processing]. The end point of this process is to reduce negative affect by restoring a sense of safety and control and by making appropriate adjustments to expectations about the self and the world [modifying autobiography].

When Pennebaker’s Group #3 was asked to vent emotions and write facts about ‘a deeply-personal, emotionally-upsetting experience,’ they were asked to write on something psychologically traumatic. Pennebaker wrote about his despair of his marriage. He wanted his volunteers to consider traumas comparably severe.

Each person evoked a trauma-object which then triggered reexperience of the original event. Such objects are often stored in memory without significant cortical processing.¹¹ We can have object knowledge (first-person, as-if, present-tense experience) and limited verbal recall (second-person, language-based, past-tense memory).

Trauma-objects retain a high degree of emotional significance and receive preferential attention. How do we respond? How do we confront the object?

We could talk with someone about the trauma-object. Our self-regulation would improve. We would discover a sense of safety. We could then feel the object, consider the object, interpret the object. Some time later, we might find less of a wound.

If the confrontation creates too much pain, we might engage more defensive responses - divert attention, avoid reminders, self-medicate. These responses attempt to suppress preferential attention (which only causes more pain) and to isolate the trauma-object from the brain’s innate integration processes.

Sometimes, we take the confrontation step alone. The trauma caused emotions such as embarrassment, shame and guilt. Wrapped in this shroud, we won’t talk with someone. We confess to ourself.

Sometimes, we wait for the right setting and the right stranger, an empty bar and an attentive bartender, an airplane and a kind, captive audience, or a confessional and a strange voice on the other side. We confess to someone we will never see again. We open up. James Pennebaker:¹²

Confession, whether by writing or talking, can neutralize many of the problems of inhibition. Furthermore, writing or talking about upsetting things can influence our basic values, or daily thinking patterns, and feelings about ourselves. In short, there appears to be something akin to an urge to confess. Not disclosing our thoughts and feelings can be unhealthy. Divulging them can be healthy.

To contemplate a wound, confess a Fury:

Last night, a cop walked up to a kid I was talking with, trying to connect with and help out. He flash his badge, said, “Kid, come with me.” I waited, almost too scared to walk out side, the kid was cuffed. I couldn’t sleep and lived through a night of horrible flashbacks.¹³

Watch the body:

The yelling, the cops, boarding school. Hell,¹⁴ I almost went to jail. I had my mom and step-shit-head Al. He hated it when I called him Agnes. They are evil and nearly ruined my life.

I am squeezing this pen so hard, either it will break or my fingers will. When I squeeze, my arm shakes. Damn, do I want to hit something! The vein in my forehead is going to explode. With the last flash of images, ******* Anges, he teed off on me when I called him a b****, I squeezed my eye-lids like I was trying to pop my eyeballs back into my brain and watch whatever the hell it was that was ripping me apart. I think I just took my first breathe in two minutes. My heart is pounding. I’m yelling at mom and her b****. **** *** Agnes.

Feel the emotions:

I feel rage just like they had for me. It’s black and sour. I had no family after they sent me to boarding school. They banished dad then me. I don’t know what feels worse, the abandonment or the betrayal? If I didn’t have this rage, I’d collapse, probably lie on the couch in a pool of drool for a year. I’m going to invent a drink - pool of drool. It’d taste like shit.

Verbalize the experience:

Since no one paid for college, I had to take care of myself. Like that worked out. Stupid jobs. Odd job. Concessions at the movie theatre. I did sell me some concessions to the local kids. Busted. A cop walked up to me one ten minutes after I started work. We walked out. **** Mom, **** Agnes.

Interpret the new memory:

Why did it have to go this way? What went so wrong? Mom and Agnes wanted to live their pretty, tidy life. They couldn’t be bothered with me, just my brat of a step-brother. They wanted him, not me. I feel tossed away.

Wait.

Athletes understand training weakens and recovery strengthens. Neglect recovery, undermine the hard work and pain of training.

Recovery is part of the integrating process. You have an experience from the recalled present for your brain to digest. Only after the digestion will the left-brain verbal processing modify the right-brain imagery.

Start again, perhaps change point-of-view:

You wrote a hell of a lot yesterday. And felt so wasted after that. You scared yourself. You only had community service and the rest turned out ok.

You still had such pain. Even thinking about it right now I want to rage all over their ass. I want them to suffer.

Jeez. ‘You’ not ‘I.’ You are so triggered. Your body is doing the same thing, clutching the pen, shaking the arm, trying to pop the eyes into the back of the brain. The vein might not explode today. Still pretty dark and bile-like.. That’s some Fury.

The writing process is sense-making, and instead of improving memory, it actually helps the forgetting. The object will lose preferential attention over time.

But what to do with all the writing? Ignore it.

If you choose to read it later, especially after a year or two, you will feel compassion. Savor the sensation. The first hint of self-compassion started the process after all.

You will recognize much of the drama and the frenzied thinking no longer will make much sense. You created understanding and insight, and saw yourself apart from the Fury’s story.

You relived the trauma-object, the experience of a Fury found in your own breast. You were mindful of you body, open to the feelings, and able to overcome defenses and write. You cognitive mind owned the trauma-object. You pwned it. ¹⁵

Whenever you recall the distressing experience, you will feel some pain no doubt, but you will also feel peace. Your self-care healed the pain. You acted rather than avoided. You practiced resiliency.

The last quality I would want anyone to recognize is triumph. You overcame.

When Pennebaker contemplated the details of his Fury, he found “a sense of meaning and direction.” What insight did you find? Furies, at the end, give out wisdom.

I hope you found perspective, a sense of ownership and the ability to act. If so, you not only survived, you thrived. You practiced resilience.

Spend time feeling compassion and triumph together. This feeling, the hallmark of resiliency, is more meaningful and potent than any form of joy or happiness.

Savor the sensation and feeling. How would you describe it?

Updated 11/1/09 for typos and other embarrassmentata.

Open Up, Confront The Fury - part 1