Dr. Serani is a licensed psychologist in practice for 30 years. She is also the award-winning author of “Living with Depression,” “Depression and Your Child: A Guide for Parents and Caregivers” and “Depression in Later Life” by the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group.
Research has long shown that the key to healing from traumatic stress is telling your own story. While it may not be easy to revisit the sights, sounds and psychic memories of your trauma, it can help you heal.
First, what is trauma and what impact might it have on you?
The unthinkable happens before your own thoughts can even register it. The unimaginable arrives in ways that you can’t comprehend. The unspeakable leaves you breathless, numbing your ability to utter a word about what’s happening. In the seconds that follow, you realized you’ve survived a trauma. Maybe it’s an accident, disaster, crime, assault, abuse or other catastrophes.
Traumatic stress leaves an indelible mark on your mind, body and soul. When the impact of trauma causes stress, your brain will work to problem solve—sending messages to your muscles and organs to be ready to fight the problem or flee from it. In traumatic stress, the acute danger of the situation causes your mind to dissociate, fragment or shift into denial; your body to go into emergency mode, like numbness or limpness, just to name a few. Trauma is so overwhelming that the fight or flight response freezes.
As a result, trauma causes one to be in a state of permanent alert. It’s as if everything you’ve even known has been lost, and now you remain acutely aware of the rawness of what’s left around you. Simply stated, trauma shatters your sense of security, your attachment to others and the connection of experiencing hope in the world.
How can I recover from trauma?
Trauma recovery begins the second you emerge from the experience. Your body naturally begins healing; your mind tries to make sense of it all. Your recovery process will be stronger if you can reconstruct what the trauma took away: security and safety, reconnecting with others and restoring a sense of hopefulness. And one of the most powerful ways toward this reconstruction is through your story—your personal narrative.
Why your story matters
Human beings have a basic need to make sense of things. This comes from an inborn tendency to organize experiences. Some people have a knack for processing experiences and events in their own mind, while others struggle. However, when trauma hits, the stress of the experience can cause nearly all of us to fragment, dissociate or numb out. We lose the tools as well as the map that helps guide us toward understanding.
But when we return and start to plot-point our trauma narrative, we live through our story in a new way. Our personal narrative offers us a chance for not just understanding, but for reorganization our sense of self. A self that was wounded, broken, frightened or lost—but can now be reclaimed. The power of telling your story allows you to transform the foreign into the familiar—making the unspeakable speakable. Your narrative and yours alone, from your perspective, can bring you awareness and closure.
Why is telling your story important?
Some children and adults can heal through the power of their own storytelling. Psychotherapy, or talk therapy, is a way to help people with a broad variety of mental illnesses and emotional difficulties. Psychotherapy can help eliminate or control troubling symptoms so a person can function better and can increase well-being and healing.
But for those who may need help recovering through their trauma, or finding their narrative, and expressing it in a safe environment, talk therapy is a valuable resource. The goals of talk therapy, not only look to reduce the symptoms caused by trauma (depression, anxiety, avoidance, constriction, etc.), it aims to go beyond—to enhance your inner capacities and psychological resources and to help you construct a self that is resilient.
Research tells us that recovery from trauma is not a process that occurs in isolation, but requires a collective process through which the story and the intense pain is heard, witnessed and shared. For trauma survivors who may not have others in their life that are supportive, talk therapy provides such vital listening. Psychotherapists are skillfully trained to listen, witness and reframe a trauma survivor’s struggle. Together, at a pace that feels safe, remembrance, reconstruction, and mourning of your trauma narrative will be the goals in psychotherapy. It’s also important that sessions balance cultural, spiritual, and religious beliefs so that a sense of connection to order, justice, and personal worth can flourish once again.
In conclusion, trauma is a life-changing experience. Recovery is not a simple dusting-off and squaring of your shirt collar. It is an enormous task. You have the power to reclaim your sense of self and your life by inviting your story to be told. Whether you share it with your loved ones, friends, blogger buddies, write it in a journal, or process it more intensely in psychotherapy, the goal is to use your struggles as gathering points and to draw on your strengths as stepping stones.
As you move through your recovery, keep a few things in mind. Don’t measure your sense of well-being against anyone else’s. Recovery is not a one-size-fits-all experience. Your timeline for healing will be unique.
Surround yourself with people who support and understand your personal trauma narrative. If you feel strong enough, educate those who are ignorant about traumatic stress. Teachable moments enhance your own understanding of your struggles and help reduce stigma from others.
Try not to isolate yourself when post-trauma symptoms like anxiety, depression, flashbacks or hyperarousal occur. I know it can feel like it’s a good thing to be alone when these happen, but studies show that reaching out to others has more positive outcomes.
Finally, I want you to remember the power that comes from your own personal life story. It not only describes you, it defines and shapes you. As you explore your narrative, embrace what the struggles have taught you and celebrate what your strengths have given you.
Take time to reflect on your life.
What is your story like?
Write your own story and share if you wish to.
Adapted from:
- https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/deborah-serani-psyd
- https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/two-takes-depression/201401/why-your-story-matters#:%7E:text=Research%20has%20long%20shown%20that,you%20emerge%20from%20the%20experience
Dan Siegel – “The Adolescent Brain”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O1u5OEc5eY (4.36 mins)
Personal Narratives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E51SVojTpY (2.35 mins)
