Thoughts on Intrusive Thoughts

YOUR FEELINGS ARE VALID - the happy ones, the hopeful ones, the enthusiastic ones, the proud ones, even the feelings that scream or whisper: afraid, angry, sad, abandoned, resentful, unfair, the sky is falling. The parade of fearful and negative feelings goes on and on. Where do all these thoughts come from? It’s enough to be depressing!

So, some words about where these thoughts and feelings come from. To do this, I have to talk about trauma.

Many of us define trauma as a car wreck or being shot at or a sudden death or being arrested or something that happened in war: thoughts of these life-threatening events that keep coming back in terms of images, behaviors and physical sensations.

One of the definitions of trauma requires that an experience involve “actual or threatened death, serious injury or sexual violence.” However, for the sake of argument, do you think that a 5-year-old might interpret the threat of threatened death differently than, say, someone who is 35? What about an 8-year-old who is threatened by a group of bullies on the way home from school? Do you think imminent danger would be an appropriate description? What about a teenager who has been told throughout life that he/she is stupid and unlovable? How frightening is the monster of abandonment when no one wants to sit with them at lunch? Is this trauma? How often do these thoughts come back – either quietly or with a roar? What if the unwanted thoughts are still coming back 50 years later? I have talked to many people whose unwanted thoughts become ever more urgent with the years.

What about the impact of poverty, racism, or unfairness? Are those feelings dangerous to the health of our Self-images, to our concepts of Ourselves, to who we are? Are we who they say we are? If others label us, do we label ourselves? “There’s something wrong with me; I need to fix myself but I don’t know how! If I go to a doctor or shrink, they’ll give me pills or tell me to get a grip! Normal people don’t have these thoughts and they’ll think I’m crazy!”

The nature of trauma is that it enters our bodies through our eyes, ears and skin, going down into that oldest and most primitive part of our brain, the Amygdala. The Amygdala keeps us alive by telling us when there is something to fear – but it also gets carried away!

“An event becomes traumatic when there is nothing we can do to stave off the inevitable and our bodies automatically focus on the danger, going into the state of flight, fight or freeze.”

The effects of trauma are long and we continue to react to mild(er) stressors as if our lives are still in danger; we become hyperreactive. (Not hyperactive but hyper-reactive.) Someone may irritate us in a restaurant or at a turn signal or on the road. We may have trouble putting up with childish or immature behavior from our kids or partners. Most of us are barely aware that we are reacting to feelings that are rooted in similar experiences from long before. Those events are over, but we’re reacting as if we’re still in danger. We don’t feel safe, so we fly off the handle; we react out of proportion to the small thing that ignites our frustration or inappropriate action! We don’t feel safe in our bodies or environment!

The first step in healing ourselves is to find a place where we can talk about these feelings, where we can say, “Oh, this happened to me, I’ve been wounded, I’m not odd or untreatable or garbage!” Having self-compassion and knowing that our reactions are understandable and are rooted in the past are an important and major part of healing. Most of us are survivors of one thing or another and we are worthy that our wounds be healed.

This explanation of trauma and behavior is taken from the video, ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Psychiatrist, Neuroscientist and trauma researcher for 50 years. Dr van der Kolk is with Boston University and more of his videos can be found on YouTube.