Brad Schipke explains why trauma survivors feel dread when trying to access positive emotions. Past experiences create associations where good feelings predict bad outcomes, trapping people in negative processing. Healing means untangling those connections so positive emotions stop triggering fear.
Trauma survivors feel an increase in negative emotion when they try to feel positive emotions, which means that trauma survivors need to process the negative side, but they also need to process the positive side. Because there can be this weird kind of limbo space when people are only focusing on the negative and only processing the negative and not installing or processing on the positive side, where they get to this tolerable level of pain and they never experience the positive emotion they want to experience. In the past, when you felt positive emotion, bad things happened. So you start to associate good things with bad outcomes. You have to process that trauma there in order to unlock those positive emotions. But once you do, all of those positive emotions return. You feel peace. You're able just to enjoy life again. So make sure you're looking at both sides of the equation, not just the past, but also ask yourself, what positive emotions do I have negative associations with so I can process those and feel the good things in life and not just have to focus on the negative?
