Healing Trauma and Unite With Your True Self

What is Medical Trauma?

Medical Trauma refers to the physical or emotional responses a child may have to severe illness, injury, surgery or other invasive treatment. These responses can be mild or severe. Medical trauma affects 25-30% of medically ill children. It is also very common for parents to experience medical trauma.

What are the signs/symptoms of medical trauma?

The symptoms of medical trauma can be short-term or long-lasting. Parents with a child who is dealing with medical trauma may notice changes in the child’s memory, emotions, and behaviors. Medical trauma can also lead to more severe mental health challenges, increased risky behaviors, and poor overall health.

Why do some people get Medical Trauma and others don’t?

There are identified risk and protective, or resilience, factors that can increase and decrease the risk of Medical Trauma, but it is not fully understood. Examples of risk factors include previous trauma history, having a diagnosis of another mental illness, and injury as a result of the trauma(s). A protective factor includes social support.

What are some treatments for Medical Trauma?

Finding the right support is just as important to health and quality of life as treating the physical symptoms of the illness. The following treatments are often used to help children dealing with medical trauma:

FOCUS (Families Overcoming Under Stress)
Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT)
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Medication

https://www.semel.ucla.edu/cap/disorder/medical-trauma

Emotional flashbacks happen in good and healthy relationships, where the partners are growing closer.
Living in an 35 ft x 8ft RV with three slide outs 24/7 and working online, stuff gets triggered. We simply can’t avoid it when we spend a lot of time together, it happens also because we feel safe enough to go there and aren’t entirely emotionally shut off from the world anymore as we communicate with clients every day. In most cases, the trigger has nothing to do with whatever started the event/argument/misunderstanding.
It is almost entirely to do with things already inside of us (or our partners) from the past.
In therapist-speak, they call these “stuck points” (from CPT, a type of trauma therapy) or schemas (from Jeff Young’s Schema Therapy).

I read in an article: “These sensitive points, often called triggers, are already within us, and simply get brought out when we’re close to people. It’s no one’s fault, it just happens in human relationships.
There’s a well-known relationship book called Getting the Love You want: A Guide for Couples. It’s based on a type of couple’s treatment called Imago Therapy. The authors state, “When we fall in love, [the] unconscious, trapped in the eternal now and having only a dim awareness of the outside world, is trying to recreate this environment of childhood. And the reason the unconscious is trying to resurrect the past is not a matter of habit or blind compulsion but of a compelling need to heal old childhood wounds.”

Good read ! - https://medium.com/invisible-illness/how-trauma-affects-your-relationship-according-to-a-therapist-e751bf1e3d7

Traumatic bonding occurs as the result of ongoing cycles of abuse in which the intermittent reinforcement of reward and punishment creates powerful emotional bonds that are resistant to change.[1][2]

Patrick Carnes developed the term to describe "the misuse of fear, excitement, sexual feelings, and sexual physiology to entangle another person."[3] A simpler and more encompassing definition is that traumatic bonding is: "a strong emotional attachment between an abused person and his or her abuser, formed as a result of the cycle of violence."[4]

1) Dutton; Painter (1981). "Traumatic Bonding: The development of emotional attachments in battered women and other relationships of intermittent abuse". Victimology: An International Journal
2) Chrissie Sanderson. Counselling Survivors of Domestic Abuse. Jessica Kingsley Publishers; 15 June 2008. ISBN 978-1-84642-811-1. p. 84.
3) Samsel, Michael (2008). "Trauma Bonding". www.abuseandrelationships.org. Michael Samsel LMHC. Archived from the original on May 10, 2018. Retrieved July 7, 2018.
4) Wendy Austin; Mary Ann Boyd. Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing for Canadian Practice. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 1 January 2010. ISBN 978-0-7817-9593-7. p. 67.

Perhaps you ask a survivor “What happened to you?” and he/she remains silent. Simply asking the question hey is not enough.

Creating safe space, communicating respect, and building trust take time. Ignoring what a person has to say or trying to close down their attempts to communicate what has happened in their lives can create profound disconnection in relationships.

As a friend or supporter, you may have been taught to re-direct the conversation if intense parts of a person’s story emerge in a conversation—but, tragically, this is likely to reinforce old messages: no one will believe you; what happened to you wasn’t so bad; if you don’t think about it will go away; you shouldn’t talk about those kinds of things.

Her/ his feelings of being different may grow if she gets the message that “who he/she is” and “what he/she has experienced” is somehow beyond the scope of her or his relationship with others and requires specialized care.

Telling one’s story is not always a literal event and, even when it is, the story may not flow from beginning to middle to end. The person may share pieces and parts of their story over the life of their relationship with you. You may know parts of his or her’s that others do not and vice versa. As people open up and share traumatic life events, the most important things you can do may be the simplest.
- Bearing witness to another person’s grief, rage, or anguish is a powerful way to stand with someone in
the immensity of their pain.
-Listening from a place of deep attentiveness and caring and asking questions can demonstrate that you honor what a person is giving of themselves and that you want to know more about their life.

There are three characteristics of trauma that may be expressed through one’s story:
▶️ the event (what happened, where, when, and how),
▶️ the meaning of the event (including its cultural meaning and the person’s personal interpretation of what happened),
▶️ and the impact of the trauma on her or his present life.

Source:https://www.nasmhpd.org/sites/default/files/PeerEngagementGuide_Color_CHAPTER11.pdf

When violence leads to physical and mental injury, it also engenders a healing response. - Richard F. Mollica M.D., Healing Invisible Wounds

When we try to heal trauma we often get stuck in the story.

The story that was created around an experience that is stuck in your body.

While the story is the reason why you had an experience you need to not judge it as it serves a purpose.

Trauma pushes the activation of the nervous system beyond its ability to self-regulate. When a stressful experience pushes the system beyond its limits, it can become stuck on “on.” When a system is overstimulated like this, we can experience anxiety, panic, anger, hyperactivity, and restlessness.

“The telling of stories has been an integral part of the history of people of African descent. From the griots (singers/story-tellers who carry the oral history of a local culture) of ancient Africa to the sometimes painful lyrics of hip-hop artists, people of African descent have known that our lives and our stories must be spoken, over and over again, so that the people will know our truth.”https://www.nasmhpd.org/sites/default/files/PeerEngagementGuide_Color_CHAPTER11.pdf

Healing starts with questions and the ability to process the answers and bring balance. You are not a victim the moment you ask your self a defining question.
The answer is the acceptance of your true self.

“ I Am.”

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