Carrasco Psychological Health Services

Ultimately, the experiences of childhood can have an emotional impact to some extent. You likely have a lot of strengths though which have allowed you do well. This is great! The difficulties could be addressed “processing” the experience, identifying “stuck points” and self-compassion.

The “processing” is simply something we do in therapy in which we are allowing the individual the time to begin discussing some those events that happened to them in more detail. You mentioned that you have also talked to friends and family. This is great as well! The therapy process just involves trying to get more in-depth about the experiences you had. As therapists, we will try to explore some specific thought patterns and emotions that you may be having about what happened. Typically, I find that people benefit from just being to able to discuss these situations. Also, every treatment approach that therapists use to try to treat PTSD involves some form of the person processing the traumatic event again and in detail.

This form of processing then leads to identifying possible “stuck points”. Stuck points refers to statements about yourself, others, or the world at large that are exaggerated, extreme, and often negative. They tend to be related to safety, trust, power/control, esteem, and intimacy.

It is critical to note that stuck points are not behaviors, feelings, facts, questions or moral statements. Much of recovery from trauma is readjusting how we relate to the world, and seeing how stuck points skew reality in a way that is harmful in the long run. Let’s use the example of “I’m bad”. This could be a possible stuck point. Now, you don’t need anyone to tell you that you’re not bad. Thus, you can continue to remind yourself that you are liked etc. Moreover, you can also just notice that these types of feelings and/or thoughts will come and go. Again, you said it yourself these things do not just disappear. Notice the thought and ask yourself “Is this a helpful thought to have?” You may not even need to challenge but just let the thought come and go after noticing it.

(I will say however you likely experience less intense emotions after processing the events more)

Now the next part is self-compassion. Self-compassion is something you can begin to do more immediately. This will involve being warm and caring toward ourselves when things go wrong in our lives. Also, recognizing the shared nature of suffering when difficult situations arise, rather than feeling desperately alone. And mindfulness, which refers here to the ability to open to painful experience (“this hurts!”) with nonreactive, balanced awareness. Taken together, self-compassion is precisely the opposite of our typical reaction to internal threat—self-criticism, self-isolation, and self-absorption.

It seems very common for people who experience trauma to develop more feelings of guilt and shame. Even individuals with a minimum of trauma in their lives assume that self-criticism has certain benefits There is this idea that without self-criticism we will never correct our mistakes and improve. But there is an alternative to self-criticism—self-encouragement. Like a good coach, we can say to ourselves, “That didn’t work, but it was a good try. At least you learned something. Would you like to try a different approach?” rather than “You fool! What’s the matter with you!” Self-criticism is closely associated with feelings of shame, anxiety, and depression.

This does mean to just feel sorry for yourself. It means do not make things harder on yourself then what they already are. Self-compassion feels especially foreign to people suffering from shame and self-criticism as a consequence of trauma, but it is no less essential.