How We Get Stuck in Trauma
There comes a time in all of our lives when we must face the worst experience we could imagine. It might be anything from the death of a loved one to a chronic illness diagnosis, sudden poverty, or a relationship that turns toxic. Sometimes these things happen when we are too young to understand them, but they affect our lives for decades, nevertheless. Sometimes it feels like no matter what we do, we can’t get past a certain experience. It’s as if our lives took a screenshot of the traumatic moment, and now that picture is forever framed as a reminder of what we went through. Every time we look at it, we feel uncomfortable, but we don’t know what to do with those feelings. What does it mean to be stuck in trauma, and how can we get unstuck? The Great Escape from Trauma For many people, the most natural way of dealing with trauma is to intellectualize it. Whenever they encounter trauma, in whatever form it takes, they naturally respond by trying to think through it. They might become silent, withdrawn, and stoic, endlessly replaying events in their mind while trying to figure out how it could have gone differently. Alternatively, they might find a person with whom they talk about the life-altering events, only to go round in circles without ever finding a way past the trauma. Their attempts to cope with or process trauma are ineffective because we can’t think our way out of trauma. We must feel our way out of it, as uncomfortable as it is. The reason we find comfort in intellectualizing trauma and our feelings is that it distances us from the events. For example, a man who is navigating a messy divorce might talk to his therapist about the details [...]