Compassionate Living Psychology

Traumatic life event refers to significant event that bring actual or threatened physical and/or psychological harm to us or someone close to us. For example, natural disaster or accident that leads to injury or death, physical violence, sexual violence etc.

Traumatic event can lead to intrusive re-experiencing, hypervigilance, avoidance behaviours and emotional distress. The symptoms often arise from difficulties restoring one’s sense of safeness after the traumatic event. Therefore, our body continue to act like we are going through the traumatic event again, that we are still in danger so we need to be prepared for fighting back or escaping.

Experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event often put us in a state of shock and fear for safety. Survivors are often concerned about risk of future danger and are weary of potential threat. They might struggle with thoughts like “there could be danger lurking in the dark” or “malicious people hiding their true intention beneath a kind façade”. The most difficult part in recovering is that these thoughts are not always 100% untrue and it is hard to refute worries like “You never know what would happen. Danger can come without signs. People do tell lies.”

Another common theme that survivors struggle with is trying to identify the causes of the traumatic event. They want to know why the event happened and who was responsible for it. They ask if they were to be blame and feel guilty about it. They wonder if they were inadequate and feel ashamed. They may have thoughts like “I should have known better. I was stupid. I should have acted faster. I should have protected myself/others etc.” One might become stuck in the loop of cause finding because they want to achieve closure and to feel that they are able to protect themselves from future danger. Unfortunately, traumatic events can happen without any identifiable cause.

Being unable to feel safe, survivors tend to interpret most life events from a threat-based perspective and the traumatized voice keeps saying things like “what if it happens again?” or “I cannot relax since I have to protect myself”. In some scenarios, the traumatized self might believe that withdrawing from the surrounding and/or numbing ourselves with drugs, alcohol, work, gambling etc. could be a way to cope with difficult feelings and memories. Disconnecting with our feelings and environment, the traumatized self may feel safer from the isolation. They may rationally understand that withdrawal and self-numbing are not helping them to live a better and safer life. However, this could sometimes be seen as the lesser of two devils.

Compassion focused approach to trauma healing is built on the idea of recruiting the compassionate part of our mind to comfort and soothe our traumatized mind. The following reminders could be a useful start to the journey:

1. What happened in the past had ended.
2. We are probably not the only one who suffered from similar trauma.
3. It was not our fault that it happened.
4. We could try to calm down by counting three indicators that we are safe in the current environment.
5. Even though we may not be able to foresee and predict danger or threat, remember that we are able to grow stronger and wiser so that we are in a better position to cope with future challenges.

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