09 - HOW DOES ACCEPTANCE AFFECT TRAUMA HEALING?

Hi, I'm Dr. Carol Darza, author, trauma psychologist and founder of Reconnect Integrative Trauma Treatment center in Los Angeles. Today I'm going to be talking about acceptance and trauma. I'm very passionate about this topic because I get countless of clients asking me about this topic and really struggling with accepting of what happened to them. I divide this topic into three different areas. The first one is acceptance of what happened. The second one is acceptance of your feelings. And the third one could be something you haven't thought of, but is acceptance of who you are after what happened. Acceptance of what you have become due to what happened. So these three areas are what we're going to talk about. I've made some notes because I don't want to forget very important points that I'd like to cover with you. Let's start with the first one, acceptance of what happened. Now, you might I already know what happened. I was abused as a child, or I had a car accident. I had assaulted at the bank. There might be various different issues that you are dealing with. And although you say, I accepted what happened, but there's often a minimization that goes along with that. So it's sort of like, yeah, yeah, I know what happened. But really acceptance of it, really making peace with what happened has a different quality to it. It's not just about knowing what happened, but it's also really making peace with what happened. So a very common reaction is, again, as I called it, minimization, is to minimize the impact of it. I can't tell you how many times I heard that one. Well, you know, my mom did this and that, but I know other people are struggling with much bigger issues, and so they are probably in a deeper, you know, pain or they have had serious traumas, and mine is not that important. So. So comparing yourself to someone else does not actually make your trauma any less or any less impactful or any less painful. So definitely be careful with that. There are some things, like the cultural influences that really impact people in terms of minimization, depending on where you're from, and also gender, a lot of men struggle with, I'm a man, I'm strong, and that doesn't affect me. Or I shouldn't be crying. I shouldn't be impacted with stuff like that. So there's that kind of a minimization that can happen. Another common one is, well, I already talked about that. I'm over it. Or I worked on it, I went to therapy. It was so long ago, I'm definitely done with it. And so believing that can also minimize the impact of the trauma. Why do we do that? Well, who wants to walk around feeling like, oh my God, I had such a horrible thing and I'm feeling bad about it. And so of this sort of victim role, right? There's a lot of propaganda against don't be a victim and just take your life into your control. Yes, of course, it's not about victimizing yourself, but it's also just about validating what happened. It's really about understanding and not neglecting the truth. Because the moment you neglect the truth or wanting to put aside, you will have difficulty later on in some different areas, which I'll give you some examples about it too. Let's talk about the item two, acceptance of your feelings. I talked a little bit about this another time, by the way, for those of you who do not know, I published recently a book called the Trauma Map. And in the book you will hear a lot about how accepting your feelings and how to deal with that is a crucial part of your healing from trauma. Well, here's one of the very common statements that people make about the Pandora's box. How many of you can relate to that? I don't want to open Pandora's box. I'm feeling okay with it. If I don't talk about it, I'm fine. Why should I open? Right? That's a very common question that I get. So think about it like a pressure cooker. What happens is when you don't talk about it or when you don't accept the feelings, it stays there in some area in your body, in your nervous system, and all of a sudden it may show up in a different way. So you might have an explosion because you haven't had a chance to really accept your feeling about the topic that happened. And so when you react to something else, you think you're really reacting to something else without really knowing the core issue of it. Trauma is often at the core of a lot of our symptoms, of a lot of our difficulties in life. That's the reason why I talk about acceptance of the feeling. Are you sad? Are you angry? Are you grieving of the loss? Because trauma often creates a loss. Are you disappointed of what happened? Are you betrayed? So all of those feelings are feelings that can come following a trauma. Here are some other ways that we try to get rid of feelings. Right? By drinking too much, especially by overeating, by under eating, by going into a fantasy world. That's a very common one. You might just sort of find yourself really in a different Way of looking at things, almost like magical thinking, in fact, as we call it often. That's very much related to love addiction, by the way. Wanting to find some sort of happiness elsewhere rather than really looking inside and finding a way to accept feelings and wishing life to be different. These are some of the typical ways that we might go into denial. By the way, I'm not actually against denial. Please let me make sure that I assure you denial, when it's a healthy denial, and in the beginning is necessary because when you're facing something so traumatic and so painful, you can't digest the feeling. And in that moment, that's okay in order to survive, in order for you to go the next day to work or be with your family. But when that becomes a chronic problem, that's when you really have to find the ways to make peace with your feelings. So do not shut down your feelings. Start making peace with them very gradually. Let's talk about the third item. All right, this is, this is a very interesting one. I'm going to give you first an example for this. This is an acceptance of who you have become following a trauma. This is a very sad story, but you might relate to it. I had a client who was abused sexually and she was at school when that happened. And following that, she realized she can't concentrate anymore and she was a brilliant student. Well, that difficulty of concentrating at school created actually more of a, I want to say traumatic symptom for her than the traumatic event itself. So she was so mad at herself for not being able to study and focus. So I really first worked on her accepting that right now, for a while, until the trauma is healed, she's not going to find herself as effective as she used to be and judging herself for it, feeling like, oh, I'm now stupid or they took my intelligence away is the worst thing that you can do to yourself. Because at that time you. You really need compassion. You do not need further judgment of how you are not able to function anymore like you used to. Of course, as we worked on the trauma and the memories and she was able to find some peace, her level of focus and attention and concentration came back. But please watch yourself if you are also a victim of such a situation that you don't judge yourself in that way. In fact, that's the reason why I'm very passionate about this topic of acceptance, because it often follows with a lot of self judgments that you may find yourself hating yourself for something that wasn't your, your fault to begin with. I want to share a poem with you and that you will find in my book on page 48. This is written by a colleague of mine about self forgiveness. His name is Kurt Kristiansen. I'm going to just share a little bit of it and the rest you can read from the book. I forgive myself. I forgive myself for believing that I am not enough. I forgive myself for judging myself as unworthy. I forgive myself for believing that I'm not lovable. I forgive myself. I forgive myself for thinking that somehow I should have done things differently. I forgive myself for beating myself up over those things. I've done some things I'm not proud of but I did the best that I could at that time given my circumstances and conditioning. This is a beautifully written poem. I recommend that you read it and write down your feelings of how you feel after you've finished the poem and see in what areas you have been judging yourself. And remember, trauma equals disconnect, healing equals reconnect. Please stay connected.