Video by Dr. Karol Darsa (trauma psychologist) arguing that immediately talking about traumatic events can retraumatize clients. She emphasizes the need to stabilize and build emotional strength (an "emotional immune system") with grounding and resourcing techniques before trauma-processing, referencing a three-phase model (stabilization, trauma processing, integration). She warns against premature disclosure in therapy, to friends, or in support groups.
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Foreign. Hi, I'm Dr. Carol Darza, author, trauma psychologist and founder of Reconnect Trauma Treatment center in Los Angeles. This is my second video. If you watch my first video, we talked about five different trauma myths. So I've been thinking about actually really addressing one of them. That's very, very important for me because I have had a lot of clients that talked about that. So the second one is the belief that you have to talk about what happened to you over and over again. Okay, let's talk about this one. So here's the problem. When you actually talk about something that was so upsetting and so traumatic, as you talk about it again, you may get re. Traumatized. I don't know if you've heard of that before, but it can really be dysregulating, upsetting, and just you can have all of a sudden more nightmares and flashbacks about it. So please, when you meet a therapist or when you meet a friend, do not jump into that topic and do not want to share all of a sudden all the details of what happened. Quite the opposite. So let me put it this way. In order to be able to talk about something that's so painful, you have to first have some emotional strength. In fact, this is why we put trauma aside, because traumas are too, too painful. And in order to deal with it, we put it aside. Sometimes we even forget what happened. And so it's not necessary that you remember every detail anyway. But if you do remember, please refrain from talking about it. So what I tell all my clients is that before we're going to eventually talk about what happened, we need to build some strength. How do we build that strength? This is what I call sort of like emotional immune system almost. You know, when. If you have a friend who's sick, if you have a good, strong immune system and you are taking vitamins, even though they're sick, you may not get sick. I kind of make that analogy with emotional things. That means if you're emotionally strong and you have some stress or a trauma happens, you could tolerate it better. But what if your emotional strength or your emotional immune system is not as strong as you would like because of a bunch of other things that happen to you? Okay, so how do we help you strengthen your emotional immune system? By. By calming your nervous system down? Because when a trauma happens, the system, the nervous system gets really, really activated. And if with this level of activation and upset and anxiety, if you start telling me what happened, you might find yourself worse. How many of you, in fact, can relate to that, that you are kind of okay, and you start talking about something and you actually end up feeling worse. Okay. So when my clients come here to see me, that's what I focus on first. Calming the nervous system. Or in other words, I can call that resourcing, which I'm going to tell you about and, or grounding. The idea is, even if you're talking about something that's in the past, you want to be able to stay in the present moment so that you can tolerate what happened in the past. So if you talk about something that happened in the past and all of a sudden you, you get so much into the story and you get so anxious, it's almost as if you're reliving what happened. That is when a retraumatization occurs. So this is an area where I'm very passionate and very sensitive about. And in fact, I go around a lot of universities really educating people about it. So let's talk about resourcing. What does resourcing means? Well, resources, sort of finding a way to find the strength or something that makes you feel good. Resources can be family members, good friends, your life partner, your dog or cat, a walk on the beach, yoga, playing music. For me, it's a dance. So everyone has different resources. You basically find something that makes you feel good, calm, maybe peaceful and more present into here and now. You make a list of all these resources and then you build on them. You, you try to utilize them more, you try to remember them more, you try to act on them more. And then that starts helping your nervous system to calm down again. These are all the steps before you are ready to talk about what happened to you. In fact, in the 1800s, a very famous psychologist you might have heard of, Pierre Janet, talked about the trauma treatment in three phases. And that's very important to mention here. The first phase is stabilization. This is when we're talking about calming the nervous system down and resourcing and grounding, right? Then you go into second phase, which is trauma processing phase, and then the third phase is the integration. So before you do the first phase of the stabilization, you, you should not be going into the second phase of just all of a sudden processing your trauma and talking about what happened. So this is a very important part where even if you find therapists who sort of make you jump into the, into the trauma memory, day one, please, you put on the brakes and be careful and be gentle with yourself and with the process. Some people believe if they can't talk about trauma, that means they are weak. That's A very sad belief system, but it's a very common one. Unfortunately. It has nothing to do with strength. It has nothing to do with weakness. It just means you're traumatized. And traumatized means you're injured on an emotional level. So stabilize yourself first, give yourself to calm down, and then you build some strength in order to be able to share what happened with you. So some of the resources actually are grounding techniques. Grounding means your focus is on the here in the now and maybe even in your body. Right. If you've heard of what checking out means or spacing out, that's basically the opposite of that. How many times when you're driving, you just kind of don't even know how you got there or how many times you are looking for your glasses and it's at the top of your head. These are little signs that you are not grounded or that you are not resourced enough. So if you're feeling like this and then you start talking about what happened to you again, you might get re traumatized, you might get much more activated. So please be very, very gentle about that and don't jump into the topics. Okay? Here's another problem that I have seen a lot. It happens that people go into some sort of support groups or certain group therapies and they say, good, this is a group where I'm going to talk about my abuse. Because all the other people there have been abused just like me. And unfortunately what happens is that people start opening up and then now you're listening to horrendous, you know, traumatic stories that other people have been through and maybe it even reminds you more of what happened to you. So, but you are not really ready to remember or you are not ready to hear other people's stories. Maybe you're too nice of a person and you're so empathic and you have such a good heart that you get into the story of someone else. That is another cause for retraumatization. That is why I say, please don't share what happened to you until you build some more strength. Well, as therapists, for instance, we are trained to be able to listen to you guys and really learn how to not take it on. So that I can stay empathic, I can stay objective when I listen to you. But unfortunately, people around you may not be in that situation. You may want to share it with your friends, you may want to share it with a family member, but you know, that could also hurt them. They might not be able to tolerate the pain because they will see the pain in your eyes. So in order to protect them, in order to protect yourself, again, I'm back into my first suggestion. Take your time. Build some resources. And don't jump into sharing what's happened to you. Remember, trauma equals disconnect. Healing equals reconnect. Stay connected.
