Trauma-Informed Thinking

So, I'm not a therapist, but I do delight in sharing the new things I have learned in therapy, the psychoeducation component of those sessions.  This is an invaluable part to my care, to understand and learn more about my condition and my situation through that professional, unbiased perspective while also learning the right vocabulary and names for different elements.  It's how my brain works.  And then I can apply those same concepts elsewhere, drawing further connections and ultimately reframing parts of my understanding into a healthier structure.  

In other words, I enjoy exploring concepts discussed in therapy to further my own understanding of myself and patterns that I also see in others.  And my blog is a safe space where I have enjoyed these explorations.  

So today, I want to talk about trauma-informed thinking.  I knew that one of the angles my therapist employs is CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but I confess that I didn't really know what that meant until I was further in my Mental Health and Psychiatric Nursing class this term.  Essentially, how we think about things informs our behavior and sometimes those patterns become "programmed" in ways that need "reprogramming."  For example, someone that is highly anxious might assume that someone is canceling plans on them because the other body is angry with them--there are many reasons why someone changes plans, but the programming does not allow the individual to consider the other reasons in that moment.  Sometimes, we need another perspective to point out the other options.  

In my case, I have a fair bit of fear regarding planning for when (not "if") my body breaks down again and guarding my body from potential concerns.  This means that when I'm considering, say, taking a trip, I'm running a complex risk/benefit analysis first before being excited about the trip, considering the nearest hospital and what my insurance might cover before whether I want to go snorkeling on the first or third day.  Sucks some of the fun out of it straight away.  Or when I'm thinking about leaving a good job to start nursing school (*cough*), there's the question about what kind of security blankets I will have in place (building up the HSA fund, specifically) before things like applications and transcripts.  This can also be a freeze response in situations that "normal" persons wouldn't have a freeze response, such as when a dog jumps up and places their paws on my abdomen, only a few layers between their nails and my intestines.  

The look of a potential threat

Sometimes these pathways are very much something that I have to do, that I have to advocate for myself and know what tools I have.  Other times, it's excess worry and grief or other cognitive pathways that I don't need to go down.  In either case, I recognize that some of these first impulses are trauma-informed thinking.  The trauma that I have gone through frames how I respond and think about certain spaces.  It's not always a "logical" response or a "normal" first response, but it is a response that has been trained at least tangentially from a specific traumatic experience.  

When I encounter a reaction from myself that seems off for whatever reason--based on my own discomfort or the apparent discomfort of someone else--I am practicing to pause and run a systems check:  "is this a reasonable response or a trauma-generated response?"  That systems check gets faster the more practice I put in it, but that doesn't mean it's always a quick answer.  The real trick, though, is not judging the answer.  Both answers are valid--my feelings in those spaces are valid--and now I have a better idea of how to go about resolving the issue.

There are some cases where I can see the same process happening in someone else, noticing a particular reaction and thinking, "I bet there's some conditioning/history there."  This isn't always the case--everyone's brains work a little differently--but at the least it's a moment where I can pause and explore with the individual what's happening for them, to seek clarity or make space where it may be needed.  

Awareness builds intentionally.  Running a systems check at different intervals in the day has been a great first step for me, to keep asking myself those questions even when things are going "well."  It's revealing over time to attempt to reconstruct how and why one thinks the way they think.  I'll never get to the bottom of it, but I will at least start to understand patterns given enough time.