If you have experienced trauma, control might be a big issue for you.
By definition, trauma is an event that creates a high level of stress or fear, but you do not have the chance to escape or get away from it. When thoughts or feelings about the trauma show up later, it makes sense that you would want to avoid these negative internal experiences. So, you exert control, and you can do this in lots of ways. You may do all you can to avoid or push aside the intrusive thoughts and feelings. If that doesn’t work, it may show up in other ways. You are irritable and short with family, friends, or coworkers. You stop going places because memories of the trauma may show up while you are out. You might turn to alcohol or drugs to deaden your senses and awareness.
Control can be a powerful tool when you are trying to lead a project at work or fix something that is broken. But this type of control doesn’t work with trauma. In fact, this misapplied control can actually be part of the problem, making it worse. Why? Using control to deal with our thoughts and memories entangles you even more in those thoughts.
One of the amazing gifts we experience from being human is the gift of language.
It is a gift you use so much that you don’t realize how powerful it can be. The gift of language, and the knowledge and insight that goes with it, allows us to create civilizations, to make all kinds of technological advances, or to make plans for how the world can be in the future. But this gift becomes a problem when you apply it to what is happening inside of you. You use language with the problems of the outside world to evaluate, categorize, analyze, label, and organize. But those same processes do not work with the thoughts and memories of trauma.
Why? Because what you are evaluating, categorizing, analyzing, labeling, and judging is yourself and your experience. The memory of the trauma shows up, and your mind labels this as a problem, so it comes up with all different ways to control the memory and solve the problem. This struggle becomes worse when we fuse with the thoughts that our minds give us. These evaluations and judgements and labels are taken to be true; they are, literally, who we are. When that happens, when you have come to these conclusions about who you are because of the trauma, it makes sense that you would do all you can to avoid and control them.
Entangled in Language
So, as a trauma survivor, when you hold the content of your thoughts to be true, you get entangled in the language of your mind. You overidentify with these self-images and self-descriptions. As long as you stay fused with them, there does not seem to be any way out of the turmoil and the struggle.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offers a different response. It invites you to defuse from these powerful thoughts and feelings. It invites you to see the thoughts as creations of language, not as a description of who you really are. Through acceptance and mindfulness practices, you will not try to control or avoid the trauma; instead, you will develop a different relationship with it. If you are able to maintain this stance of acceptance and mindfulness consistently, you will find the emotional flexibility you need to respond to the trauma in a way that is more aligned with your own values.
On my trauma treatment page, you will find more information about how to develop this new stance towards your trauma that allows you to live a more fulfilling life.