5 Ways Trauma Changes Your Thinking and Recovery Strategies

Hey there everybody, and welcome to this video on how trauma changes your thinking. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. Anytime you experience something, your brain creates a memory. That memory is used to help you in the future predict what will happen. Think about stoplights, for example. You probably, when you were 2, didn't know what a stoplight was, but as you experienced interactions with stop lights, you saw your parents stop at a red light. You started to recognize that the stoplight means you need to stop. You started to recognize that the light is going, going to go from green to yellow to red. And you can anticipate what is getting ready to happen. Plane crashes. Now, this is one that can be taken out of context. For example, because there are tens of thousands of flights that happen every single day and happen without incident, people arrive safely, no problem at all. But the ones we hear about are the crashes. They are the outliers. So when we hear about it, we think, oh my gosh, flying must be really dangerous. And because we don't have all of the facts, we are basing our interpretation of what's going on on feelings, not facts. So we may filter that in the back of our head or, or store that in the back of our head, that memory as planes are dangerous, when in reality they're not. They're, they're actually quite safe. So it's important to think about experiences that you've had in the past and how they your thinking about similar experiences in the future. If you experience trauma at the hands of someone you trusted, then that can make you have difficulty trusting others in the future. If you experienced victimization, violent crime, when you were walking in the parking garage to go to your car to go home, then you're going to have a different perspective or a different interpretation of your safety in parking garages than other people might. So it's important to recognize that your history impacts the way you interpret the world. Your brain says, okay, been here before. This is what I remember. This is what we need to do. Unfortunately, events that are dangerous are, or threatening are given more weight or what they call salience, so they seem more probable. Like the plane crashes or the person you hear about that gets robbed in the parking garage or whatever. Now again, parking garages, thousands of people, tens of thousands of people go in and out of parking garages without incident every single day. But the ones we hear about are the traumatic ones. So it's important to make sure that you get all of the facts. But it's also important to recognize if you're in a situation and you are feeling anxious, your brain is telling you that there might be a threat. And that's when it's important to get curious and say, why am I thinking? Why do I believe that there might be a threat here? When you've experienced trauma, it impacts how you perceive your safety. It impacts who you think is safe. And a lot of people who've experienced trauma not only lose the ability to feel safe around others, but they also lose the ability to trust themselves. They don't even feel like they're safe anymore because their judgment in prior situations was such that they became a victim in some way. Now, it's important to process that and recognize that, you know, again, think about the parking garage. Hundreds of thousands of people go in and out of parking garages every day. So there was no reason for you to expect that it was going to be dangerous for you on that particular day. So it's important to process, using facts, what is and is not safe and your part in it. And most times, most times it was not your fault. You did not have a part in it. You know, if you're driving and texting at the same time and you get into a car accident, okay, in that particular situation, it may have been your fault, but in most instances, it's not your fault. If you were a child or even an adult and you trusted someone else, you felt like you could trust them for some reason and they betrayed you. All right, well, based on all the facts and evidence and information you had, they were trustworthy. You are not unsafe. Your understanding and your information was inaccurate in that particular situation and needs to be adjusted a little bit. Likewise, trauma affects how you perceive your safety in places where is safe. So not only who is safe, but where is safe. Are you safe in your home? Are you safe in your neighborhood? Are you safe driving to work? Are you safe on the bus? You know, I can go on, but depending on your experiences, you're going to have different perceptions. And these traumas don't necessarily need to be personal traumas. You can see things that are happening on tv, you can see the news, and you can see the upsurgence of violence in stores and different places and start thinking to yourself, hey, maybe it's not safe to be in these places, but it's important to back that up with facts. Again, you may have a bank that gets robbed. Unfortunately, you know, it happens occasionally, but how many tens of thousands of banks never get robbed? How many people went in and out of the bank without problem? So, yes, on that particular day, it was in that particular context, it was unsafe. So what can you do in the future? So you feel safe going into a bank, for example, what can you do so you feel safe with your new knowledge? You don't want to throw out all the old knowledge and say, no bank is ever safe or no store is ever safe. Because that is a feeling. That's a decision based on a feeling, not on facts. So it's important to get the facts and then adjust it, saying, okay, well, I can't say that this is always safe, but I can't say that it's never safe, so what can I do? So when I go to the store, when I go to the bank, when I'm driving to work, so I can feel safe. It's important to recognize that our memories shape how we interpret things. And a lot of times, trauma memories, because they involved a threat, are global, stable, and internal. So you may start thinking, all people everywhere are unsafe. So global is all and everywhere stable. Is this is the way it is. This is the way it always will be. Not this was a unfortunate moment in time. An internal says that it pertains to the person. You know, all people are unsafe or all environments are unsafe. All banks are unsafe. And that's not true. So you want to look at your attributions or the way you're thinking about somebody, something, and see if you can make it more specific, changeable, and external. So specific in this situation, at this time, or this person or place is unsafe right now, now, maybe in the future, let's stick with the bank. As long as we're vilifying banks, maybe in this situation, at this time, the bank was unsafe. Well, banks are going to react. They don't want that to happen again because they don't want to lose business and they don't want to lose money. So they are probably going to react to that situation by increasing security. So while that bank was not safe on that particular day in the future that the bank can adapt, the bank can change. Same thing with people. People who are in active addiction are often not safe to be around. They are not safe to trust. However, when they're in recovery, they are often changed in the way they think, and they often are much safer to be around. Trauma also impacts our ability to see goodness in people and the world. You may. It may impact your ability to think you are a good person. You may look at what happened, whether it was a trauma, you caused a car accident because you were texting and driving, for example, or something happened to you and now you feel like you are broken or damaged goods. And that impacts how you feel about your goodness as a person. So it's important to look at that and separate behaviors from who you are. You're a good person who made a mistake, if you caused the car accident, and separate things that are out of your control, like being a victim from things that are in your control. Being a good person is within your control. That situation was out of your control and your perception about whether other people are essentially good. Do you look out your window? Do you go to the store? Do you look around and see people and assume that, you know, generally people are good, they can make bad choices, really bad choices, but generally they are good. Or do you look at other people and you just see danger everywhere? After a trauma, you may experience a lot of anger, shame, and distrust of others and yourself. And that kind of goes back to safety, like we were talking about. But you feel unsafe when you think people are evil, when you think situations are evil or bad. And so it's important to recognize that part of feeling safe may involve recognizing the goodness in some people. So we're talking about that attribution. Again, it's not global. You can't say that everyone, everywhere is always a good person. That's not accurate. We'd love it to be, but it's not. In order to start feeling safer, in order to start recognizing the goodness in yourself and other people, it's important to explore what is motivating or continuing to cause feelings of anger, shame and distrust. You want to start working on developing love and compassion, self esteem, you know, feeling that you're a good person and trust in yourself and others. And you're not just going to dole out trust like candy. People have to earn your trust, but it is possible. So developing those skills so you can allow people the opportunity to prove to you that they are good is going to be helpful in the recovery process. Predictability is also thrown out the window in trauma. You don't ever predict or anticipate that something bad is going to happen. I shouldn't say you don't ever. You may, but predictability is important for a lot of people. We like to have some element of control. Like when tornadoes are coming through Tennessee, we have them a lot, and it's predictably unpredictable. I know there are certain times a year we're probably going to have more bad storms, but I never know what, whether that tornado is going to come to my neighborhood or not. And that is really anxiety provoking. That involves a lot of unpredictability, which causes distress. It's important to remember that life and and trauma are unpredictable. But when you've experienced trauma, a lot of times you say, well, it's safer, or I can pretty much count on the worst thing happening. And that sets you into a negative spiral where you're regularly, nearly always expecting the worst. It's important to think about how lack of predictability or unpredictability impacts your feelings. A lot of times it causes anxiety for people. They're living in the future. We'll stick with the tornadoes for the minute. When we start coming to tornado season in Tennessee or heck, anytime there's inclement weather expected, my anxiety goes up a little bit. And that's me thinking in the future, what if, what if this happens? And it's important for me to rein that in and say, what do I know? What are the facts in this context? At this time, there might be a possibility of a tornado. Okay, that's a fact. Can't control that. It could come through this way. Can't control that either, but I don't know that it will. So getting all worked up, assuming that bad things are going to happen is going to be counterproductive. What I want to do is use that energy to be mindful and prepared based on the facts in the current context and the probability of bad things happening. So FCP Facts, context, probability. What are the facts in this situation given the current context? And what's the probability that the worst case scenario is actually going to happen? Help us continue to make practical tools available to everyone by supporting the channel. You can donate any amount@docsnipes.com donate or on cash app at Doc Snipes. You can also purchase a super thanks or if you need continuing education for counseling or behavioral health, you can earn ceus@allce.com After a trauma, people's sense of personal power is also impacted. And I know a lot of these seem similar and they are, but they're also slightly different. Trauma causes a temporary loss of personal power. It happened, you can't change it and you couldn't stop it. So people start feeling vulnerable and powerless. Remember, we've talked in other videos about how the key aspects of trauma are feeling unsafe and powerless. Regaining your sense of personal power is going to be important. But after you're knocked down by whatever that trauma is, you may feel like you got the wind knocked out of you. You may. It may take you a minute to get your power back, to get back up on your feet. You need to end up choosing, Are you going to embrace powerlessness and stay down on the mat? Or are you going to be resilient to and change the things you can and cope with the things you cannot change? And that's really difficult. But recognizing personal power doesn't mean controlling everything all the time. It means recognizing what you can control and then figuring out how you can cope with or accept those things that are out of your control. Your brain changes the way you think after a trauma. It takes that experience and encodes it. It writes a chapter in your, in your history that says, okay, this is what happened and these were the consequences and we don't ever want to do that again. Unfortunately, those that information, that chapter continues to influence your future thinking until you start addressing it. Until you start recognizing how the present is different than the past, how you're different now than you were in the past, and addressing some of those thinking errors to help yourself feel safe and empowered. Until you regain that sense of safety and empowerment, you're likely going to continue to use trauma thinking that fear based, anxiety based state of mind. Likewise, the longer you use trauma thinking, the longer you will continue feeling unsafe and powerless. And that really drains your stress response and actually causes inflammation and stress related problems. It's. It's no good. It's important to recognize the function of your autopilot. The function of those memories that your brain stores for you is to help you survive. Then become mindful of your thoughts and evaluate their accuracy based on the facts in the current context.