Trauma has become an important topic in the discussion of mental health over the last decade. According to Google Trends, searches for “trauma” have tripled since 2016, reflecting our growing interest and awareness of the impact of traumatic experiences. This is likely due in part to the popularity of books such as Bessel Van Der Kolk’s “The Body Keeps the Score”, or Peter Levine’s “Waking the Tiger” which have brought these ideas to mainstream attention. It reflects a shift in mental health treatment from viewing the client themselves as the root of their problems, using terms like “disordered”, to seeing clients distress as an adaptive response to the stressors they’ve encountered throughout their life. You’re not unwell because of something broken or sick inside you, you’re struggling because of the way that your body and mind have learned to cope with broken environments or tragic circumstances.
A traumatic event refers to any experience involving significant actual or threatened physical or psychological harm. Chronic or complex trauma involves prolonged exposure to actual or threatened physical or psychological harm. The criteria for determining what events are traumatic or not are largely up to an individual’s experience and can be inferred based on the impact it has on the person. We can look at the behaviors, thoughts, or feelings they disclose, such as avoiding being out in public, strong feelings of anger or rage when confronted, thoughts like “no one seems to care about me” and identify experiences they’ve had to explain why these are occurring.
Acceptance and Commitment therapy (ACT) is an evidence based, individualized treatment focusing on identifying core processes of behaving, thinking, and reacting that are keeping someone stuck, and building patterns of openness and flexibility to become more adaptable. ACT views mental health struggles as the result of a funneling process of avoidance. We want to feel better, be more connected, be competent at what we do, and as a result we avoid feelings and thoughts that seem to get in the way of these wants. We want to feel happy and calm, so we avoid things that cause us distress, but if that distress comes from memories of a trauma we experienced, we may start to avoid things that remind us of the people who were part of the trauma, the places it occurred, the clothes we wore, etc. This process provides relief in the short term since we don’t have to experience the memories and the distress, but in the long term our life becomes more and more narrow as we encounter more parts of life that trigger these reminders. Eventually we may find ourselves cut off from much of what we find to be valuable and meaningful in life, leaving us feeling stuck at the bottom of this funnel.
ACT addresses this funneling effect by encouraging a shift of this avoidance process in three ways:
- Openness: we intentionally create space for difficult and painful thoughts and feelings. Engaging in practices of acceptance (willingly being with, rather than running from our experiences), and defusion (stepping back, grounding, and taking perspective to reduce the “stickiness” and intensity of our thoughts and feelings)
- Awareness: we build a connection to the present moment and a bigger sense of self. Engaging in practices of contacting the moment as it is, fully, redirecting our attention away from ruminating on the past and worrying about the future, and practicing experiencing your Self as the container for your experiences, rather than just the labels you put on yourself such as “broken”, “depressed”, “too much”.
- Activity: we find out what is most important to your life and create patterns of actions intentionally around those things. Engaging in practices of values exploration and getting to know what matters, and practicing committing and following through on the steps you know you need to take to do what is meaningful.
These three components redirect the funnel by prioritizing long term success over short term relief and building the capacity within you to be with life as it is without avoiding it because of the things that have happened to you. ACT will not help you get better at avoiding your traumas or your triggers, it will not prioritize feeling better in this very moment, instead it will help you move toward what matters most to you. In doing so, you will find that the intensity and pain from the triggers becomes less of a dominate force in your life, replaced by the “you” that you’ve always wanted to be.
For more information or if you want to chat about this topic, reach out to me and I’d be happy to talk!
