Keywords
PTSD, trauma, peritraumatic reactions, protective factors, coping strategies, mental health, dissociation, identity, meaning-making, recovery
Summary
This conversation delves into the complexities of trauma, particularly focusing on peritraumatic reactions and their implications for PTSD. It explores the protective factors that can mitigate the effects of trauma, the importance of identity and meaning-making in recovery, and practical strategies for managing trauma responses. The discussion emphasizes the need for self-care, community support, and the recognition of one's resilience in the face of adversity.
Takeaways
- Understanding peritraumatic reactions is crucial for preventing PTSD.
- Dissociation can be a maladaptive coping strategy during trauma.
- Protective factors include sleep, physical activity, and social support.
- Identity and meaning-making play significant roles in trauma recovery.
- Avoiding reality can exacerbate post-traumatic symptoms.
- Engaging in community service can aid personal healing.
- Recognizing oneself as a survivor fosters resilience.
- Maintaining a routine can help mitigate trauma effects.
- Positive emotions and laughter are essential during recovery.
- Self-care practices are vital for managing trauma responses.
Transcript
OKAY FUCKERS. Today, we get into the meat of the discussion. Finally. So, what can we do for ourselves, per the literature, to prevent PTSD… when we are stuck in a traumatic situation or event… or series of both?!
Not to say, “welcome to 2025” but
….
….
Continuing our discussion of peritraumatic reactions and distress, which potentially make or break our accrual of PTSD… we’re going to dip into two additional articles.
We’ll hit up a bit of research that discusses peritraumatic disassociation, denial, and their relationship to later symptoms. And then we’ll talk about the protective factors that seem to shield one against post traumatic disordering.
After that, taking those together with what we’ve previously covered, we’re going to make an integrated story of it all. Getting closer towards creating a cohesive set of instructions for getting through trauma without creating PTSD. Though we will still be working in “broad strokes,” which we’ll attempt to rectify next time.
On your marks, get set, get into it.
First, talking about peritraumatic disassociation. (Yeah, I’m using my word when I’m speaking it and their word when they’re speaking it. If you’ve a prob with “disassociation” vs “dissociation”… cool, respect you… and also, I suggest integration over intellectualization for recovery.)
Remember our last episode, Feelings, Thoughts, and Behaviors During Disaster
Qualitative health research 2020, when they stated:
Participants reported experiencing a variety of peritraumatic dissociative reactions. These reactions clustered around three key phenomena: distortions in one’s sense of reality (i.e., derealization), distortions in one’s sense of self (i.e., depersonalization), and emotional numbness.
The most commonly reported dissociative reaction was experiencing distortions in one’s sense of reality (51% of the sample). The disaster experience was permeated by a profound perception of “un-reality.” Some of the most common adjectives participants used to describe what they experienced were “surreal,” “absurd,” “impossible,” and “unbelievable” to indicate the disintegration of their perception of reality.
Right. Most of us have been there. Often, not in natural disasters, but in relational trauma. When the sense of reality can also feel very thin, thanks to gaslighting, unhinged behaviors, and loss of self. We know about traumatic disassociation, depersonalization, derealization, and numbing.
Now, lettuce pick up from there, with this article that examines the relationship between peritraumatic disassociation and post traumatic symptoms. How much does protective “self-ditching” harm us in the long run?
Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy
The Relation Between Peritraumatic Dissociation and Coping Strategies: A Network Analysis
Etzel Carde?a, David Marcusson-Clavertz, Matti Cervin
This study split disassociative responses, also, into three categories. However, they are not the same as our prior researchers. (… does this nod towards the first episode in the Preventing PTSD series, in which we found out that trauma research hasn’t been very successful, scientifically? It does. Why aren’t psychologists defining or measuring the same things, even while using the same terminology? Great Q.)
So, in this paper, disassociation is split into the very poorly defined subtypes of:
Altered consciousness (similar to a dissociative trance)
Depersonalization (experiential disconnectedness)
and Compartmentalization (segregated behaviors)
From their findings, they report:
The following were robust associations using exploratory and confirmatory network analyses: 1) Different types of dissociation were strongly related and can be considered a related group of phenomena 2) Peritraumatic alterations in consciousness were more strongly related to denial than to any other type of coping. 3) Coping through denial was more strongly linked to altered consciousness than to other forms of Peritraumatic Dissociation. (AND HERE’S THE VERY IMPORTANT ONE) 4) Both altered consciousness and denial predicted PTS at 2, 6, and 12 months, with the former (altered consciousness) having a stronger effect.
So, disassociation types are closely related.
Disassociation that changes our relationship to reality goes hand in hand with denial.
And, lastly, they’re saying having disruptions or disconnections in our normal sense of reality AND denial predict the incidence of post traumatic symptoms up to a year later. Which is the time limitation of the study, not to say that after a year participants were in the clear.
So, let’s talk about that disassociative trance state of altered consciousness a little more.
Altered states of consciousness (ASC) refer to any deviation from the normal state of wakefulness, including states of drowsiness, sleep, or altered perceptions. Trauma-related altered states of consciousness is a specific type of ASC often linked to trauma.
Trauma-related altered states of consciousness can manifest in various ways, including:
Time: A sense of time distortion, like time speeding up or slowing down, or feeling like time is unreal.
Thought: Intrusive thoughts, difficulty focusing, or feeling like one's thoughts are not their own.
Body: A feeling of detachment from one's body, or feeling like one's body is not their own.
Emotion: Numbness, emotional dissociation, or lack of emotional awareness.
Thus, we can conclude… altered consciousness is generally what we think of when we think of disassociation. Or dissociation if you’re still screaming at my preferred word. A step beyond that is depersonalization – when disassociation is significant enough in intensity or duration that we forget we are us. And I would say a “lesser version” of disassociation is compartmentalization; choosing who we are in the moment, while abandoning the other thought, emotional, and behavioral options.
Henceforth, let’s consider altered consciousness to be good ole, middle of the road, disassociation, as we prevalently experience it.
To better understand how altered consciousness and denial contribute to PTS, they tell us:
Our findings suggest that problems with alterations of consciousness during/after exposure to trauma may relate to denial of events that are difficult to accept (perhaps in conjunction with other variables such as sleep disturbances).
In other words, traumatic disassociation may be a type of denial or it contributes to denial. Both of which hinder acceptance, causing the event to remain unintegrated in the psyche – separate from the larger life story of the individual. The definition of trauma. And lack of zzzzz’s doesn’t help us with recoupling-with, or acceptance-of, reality.
Furthermore, they say:
Peritraumatic alterations of consciousness may blur the distinction between perceptual and “internally-generated” content (i.e., reduce reality monitoring), making memories of trauma more tenuous and increasing the likelihood that they might be denied and/or not integrated with self-narrative.
So, if we’re not associated with what’s around us… we can accidentally associate strongly with the story we’re creating, instead. As we heard previously, that story can be WORSE than what we’re neutrally observing. Thereby creating a LARGER, semi-imagined, traumatic event for our system to contend with – a MORE damning memory to attempt to integrate - rather than processing the accurate shitiness of material reality.
And here’s the summarizing statement from our authors:
Intervention strategies should take into consideration the likelihood that dissociative alterations of consciousness may impair reality monitoring and a coherent narrative, making the resolution of traumatic memories more difficult.
(So, though we can’t definitively say that PTS are the same as PTSD or correlate one to one with development of the disorder… we don’t want either one, right?
Therefore, this study tells us we do not benefit from ditching reality in the way that we commonly disassociate. From time, space, body, feeling, observation, or memory.
Disconnecting from these points is closely associated with avoidant denial – a maladjusting coping strategy we can call “similar to avoidance” that also serves us only in the short term.
And it’s of grave importance to note that both avoidant reality and disassociative, altered consciousness states, are related to post traumatic symptomology at 2, 6, and 12 months after the event. After which, this study stopped collecting data, so participants may still be symptomatic to this very day. We have no idea.
Meaning. It, unfortunately, is in our best interest to “be present,” and “sit with the horrors of reality,” even in the distress of the situation.
When we aren’t doing that present sitting, we still accrue the distress we’re trying to avoid, however it’s unconscious. It cumulates inside the subconscious and the body memory. Then we have a harder time getting it back out, like a secret black mold infestation, compared to acknowledging there’s a leak in the roof and addressing the undesired reality as its happening.
Want another analogy?
It’s natural not to want to see what’s upsetting. However, ignoring it just kicks the can down the road… and then you have to go searching for that can, which has now become a fire ant Meca somewhere in your weeds.
So, from our first entry today, what do we know so far?
The brain might want to dip out for self protection. However it is long-term self destructive to disassociate, avoid reality, or otherwise alter consciousness in peritraumatic times. That’s a broad wave of the hand towards “what not to do.”
But what’s protective against PTSD?
Evaluation of peritraumatic distress at the point of care: A cross-sectional study
Giancarlo Pontoni c,1, Stefano Caiolo b,e,1, Alessandro Miola a,b,1, Chiara Moriglia d, Tommaso Lunardi f, Sergio Garofalo e, Fabio Sambataro
Journal of Affective Disorders
This is a study that examines peritraumatic reactions, peritraumatic distress, the pandemic, and later PTSD.
Here are their findings.
Multivariate logistic regression revealed protective factors in age> 35 years, the male sex, higher educational level, night sleep > 7 hours, and being physically active.
(okay, so “be a well read, grown, man with the power to establish a reasonable lifestyle for yourself” and you’ll be better off in traumatic times. You don’t say.
This is where I cut a bunch of the details about those findings and my reflections on them because the solitary surprise in those results was that they DIDN’T ALSO tell us “white, straight, property owning men are the best off.”
…. Because they didn’t measure for those things.
And also, the findings of this research aren’t ALL scoffable and related to societal privilege. Onto the more useful bits, which get more interesting as we go:)
A change in nighttime rest periods was the factor associated with peritraumatic distress with the greatest effect size in our study. An effective night’s rest (more than 7 hours), resulted as a protective factor. The study also confirms the importance of physical exercise also in the context of the pandemic situation.
(Great, taking care of our physiology makes a difference.
Obviously, the two factors they mentioned are related: we’ll sleep less if we’re moving less and we’ll move less if we’re sleeping less. We’ll also be more stressed and therefore less likely to engage in either behavior during a trauma… due to those behaviors being disrupted BY the trauma. So, lack of sleep and exercise can create a vicious cycle that sends us right down the wrong drain.
Which is also true… always. In every set of circumstances.
But here come the results we weren’t told about before, which, I think, reveal a lot more about the human psyche in response to trauma…)
A change in work habits has proved to be a risk factor in our sample. In line with our findings, peritraumatic distress seems to be more related to work changes, including demotion or job loss, rather than to a specific occupational category itself, even if it is at risk or exposes people to contagion. The association between unemployment and increased peritraumatic distress was also previously found in Italy.
(And;)
A change in recreational habits such as alcohol consumption was found to be a factor associated with peritraumatic distress.
(So, we can hypothesize that in a traumatic situation, especially one that’s long and drawn out, such as the pandemic, the “normalcy” created by consistent work probably helps us. Not because we need to be distracted – actually quite the opposite, as we talked about last time – but because the maintenance of that identity – that sense of self – is a supportive factor, rather than enduring a trauma and having to start life all over again on the other side.
And hitting the bottle, such as the great pastime of 2020-2021 for many… a disassociative response… does not help us.
Two factors that help us understand how to support ourselves in peritrauma.
AND, again, two factors I think we can call “often related in a death spiral fashion.”
Less work? More boredom. More distress about not working, financial stress, or assumed social sliding. More drinking to ease the internal strife. I think the trope of the unemployed grump at the bar or the recently laid off dad fermenting in the corner exist for a reason. It all fits together. Dangerous outcomes of trauma that create long-lasting disfunction. PTSD.
And let’s also say, this increased-risk cycle can go like this:
Less work? Less physical activity? Less sleep? More drinking to try to medicate those zzzzs? I don’t know about you, but alcohol instead of ambien is a popular trend in my old life and the people who were around me. It creates a death grip on your intentions to do anything besides fading out every day, because you’re perpetually exhausted or inebriated or both. Even when you do sleep, it isn’t fulfilling. So getting back on your feet to break the cycle becomes more and more difficult.
Point being. We can easily see how these casually discussed factors… are SEVERE life inhibitors during and after traumas. They stack up and group together to increase the likelihood of avoidance, of disassociative altered states of consciousness, and of peritraumatic distress… all of which then is more likely to create PTSD, because “old reality” has been lost and a “new, separate reality” has entered stage left.
When we lose whatever it is that normally creates our “structuring” day to day… we get into trouble. Be that sleep, exercise, a job, a duty, a pattern of sobriety… if these things slip during chaotic times, our psyche is under greater threat, months and at least a year later.
We can’t make ourselves male, or more mature, or more well read to protect ourselves… and, honestly, those are data points that completely miss the mark… the REAL PTSD protective factor they uncovered with those numbers is societal privilege that tends to prevent loss of status, identity, and daily structuring.
To that end, here’s the sentence they throw us like a mostly-chewed bone:)
Several studies have also highlighted how a low socioeconomic status is associated with a greater psychological impact (during trauma).
Right. Because low economic status is an influence of PTSD – an adverse experience and moment by moment survival threat - all on its own. Throw an earthquake in there and it’s survival stacked on survival with an outlook of survival, but with less resources than ever.
So, from this article we learn… a lot of this trauma-protection is out of our hands. It can come down to conditions we were born with or without.
But that doesn’t mean we’re helpless or hopeless. Because we CAN do what’s possible to take care of ourselves in line with everything we know our biology needs, to the best of our ability, to spare ourselves downstream suffering.
It’s not all bad news.
In fact, if we look at this research together, it looks a bit bright.
I want to take a beat and go back to what we talked about the last two times we met here.
Ways to help ourselves:
How to Prevent Trauma From Becoming PTSD Debra Kissen, PhD, MHSA
Identifying as a survivor as opposed to a victim
Look. It’s easy, especially in the face of “just be an old, rich, unfirable, dude research,” to start becoming bitter that we aren’t the “protected group.” And likely have a lot of feelings about that from lifetimes of dealing with the opposite.
It’s easy, from there, to want to disassociate or numb some of the pain. To dip into a fifth and drown some unhappiness and awareness of unfairness away. To alter consciousness and avoid the reality of struggling upstream for decades – sometimes more frantically than others.
Unfortunately, all of that would be acting against ourselves. Decreasing our social standing even further, by threatening our health and the structures in our lives. Increasing the likelihood of psychic disruption, long-term, through PTSD. Especially through victimizing ourselves mentally, as we glare at the havers, from our have-not strongholds.
Or.
Instead of falling into that spiralling trap, likely to earn PTSD, and therefore to spiral even further…
We can see ourselves as survivors of this batshit world we’ve grown up in. and become aware of all the ways we’ve learned to support ourselves, already, through so many inequalities. Which prepare us to support ourselves, again, for a decreased likelihood of PTSD in the future.
We know that during traumas we can expect
Peritraumatic reactions to expect: Feelings, Thoughts, and Behaviors During Disaster
- Big feelings, sadness, anger, fear
- Cognitive overload, vacancy, and confusion
- Sense of defeat and hopelessness
- Disassociation of three to five varieties
- Immobility and physical stagnation
But also…
- Sudden clarity
- Action taking
- Positive affect, hope, joy, relief
- Socially minded emotions, thoughts, and actions
And here’s the empowering part. Let’s be real. Many of us probably hear the first five points and say “okay, so a normal Thursday afternoon, then?” Big feelings, cognitive overload, defeat, disassociation, stagnation… sounds like the first three months after seeing my family for Christmas. Every year. Sounds like my life experience, regularly.
I don’t know about you, but it hasn’t killed me yet.
AND.
I bet that many of us also have experienced the latter points. Hitting that state of overwhelmed defeat; a dark night of that soul; and then bouncing back up as soon as whatever is holding you down loosens its grip a bit. Sudden clarity, release, relief, concerted action taking, and a social mind with genuine concern for others take over. When the dark cloud passes, or even when its directly overhead, the flip-side of suffering prevails. Relief, motivation, and a newfound clarity about what and whatnot to do.
If you’re still breathing after a childhood of PTSD, you’ve experienced it. Traumatic hellrides and then return trips to reality.
We’ve been there, seen and felt and done that. We know those are realities of peritraumatic reactions and long-term adaptions we take away from traumas. It gets horrible, you’re pretty sure you’re dying or dead already or doomed because you’re losing your mind… and then… it passes, as the brain recalibrates. Lighter. Wiser. Deeper.
We, perhaps unlike those who are socially privileged enough not to have experienced PTS, have done it all before.
Including:
Disclosing the trauma to loved ones
Contact with and support from important people in your life
Holding the belief that you can manage your feelings and cope (AKA developing self confidence in emotional self reliance through practice)
Use of positive emotion and laughter
Finding positive meaning in the trauma
Helping others in their healing process
It’s old hat. It’s in our memories and DNA and therapy notes and journals and preferred pods. We have experience and evidence that these things make a difference. Not THE difference between suffering and thriving – sure. But enough of a difference to make life tenable. To jumpstart a better mindset. To permit more honest feelings. To allow improvements to be made through behavioral changes from there.
And… if you haven’t noticed… these actually aren’t very difficult things to do if we get out of our own way…
Because the common peritraumatic reactions reported in the literature correspond nicely with the traumatic protective behaviors that we can engage with. Creating a system for recovery that comes, automatically, from within.
If we look at our articles from this series, taken together,
Concern and action-taking for others are natural traumatic reactions? Finding positive meaning in the trauma and helping others in their healing (I would also say “surviving”) process is a way to help ourselves.
Positive affect is a peritraumatic response? Use of positive emotion and laughter is a trauma healer.
Emotional switching is common during traumas? Belief in your emotional shuffling skills is a PTSD preventer.
Connecting with friends and family around the trauma is something we need? Connecting with friends and family and even strangers during the trauma is something our social animal brains innately propel us towards.
Disconnecting from thought and acting is a regular trauma-response? Staying proactive with our bodily care, health and social routines, are protective factors.
Even disassociation can be seen as an emotional shuffling tool that enables us to detach from the situation, prioritize without upset, and provide care to others. However, we need to be sure that we aim for compartmentalization of BEHAVIORS, not of versions of REALITY. And that we re-associate with our feelings and life experiences later, for full processing and integration.
You see what I’m saying.
In most ways, our biology and psychology are primed for reacting in ways that support and protect us. We need to provide a little guidance – some gentle handed leadership to those systems to make sure we take the right tone with the actions we’re already potentiated to engage with. Which is what we’re learning to do now, in this conversation.
AND, on top of that all that good news, we have prior experience with these behaviors to engage them as positive coping skills, just like we’ve learned to do for relational and historical trauma. If you’ve recovered from trauma before – if you’ve walked yourself back from what feels like insanity or mind control or the earth crumbling beneath your feet – you’ve practiced. You’ve hopefully created resources that can be used at the drop of a hat later. Like a fast shooter, pulling those skills out of your holster.
And that means…
We don’t need to be the most privileged in society to make it through raging storms.
In fact, in most cases from what I’ve seen, those folks are reliant ON their privilege to be okay. They aren’t accustomed to threats on threats on threats, or instability, or self-support because ain’t no one else going to lend a hand.
When things really go down, when the earthquake hits without making distinction between gated or ghetto communities… all the book readin old men or their codependents aren’t necessarily going to be the best suited for survival or for managing what comes next.
If we keep our minds carefully, but softly, leashed and led… we traumatized motherfuckers… might be.
But to do so, we need to mind the pitfalls. And take away the wisest points.
So here they are.
Stay present. Don’t alter your consciousness or encourage disassociation.
There’s no point in delusion, avoidance of reality, or prolonged denial of what you’ve been through. Scrolling or streaming have limited utility.
Drinking and other forms of imbibing are not your friend. Mental fog and forgetting are not the same as healing or dealing. They’re procrastination behaviors that will almost certainly contribute to post traumatic symptomology later on.
Also figure, you don’t need substances in a tsunami. Traumatic events are trippy enough on their own. They’re like portals to another dimension.
The human mind will have trouble aligning “what it knew” with “what’s happening now” and will likely estimate events to be dreamy, absurd, illogical, impossible, on its own.
And, actually, that’s a door-opener to finding social connection with humor. Positive affect. Many of us feel that absurdism is the belief system of our traumatized lives, and that means the punchlines are abundant. EVERY terrible thing that happens… kindof seems funny, when you string it all together.
WHAT ARE THE CHANCES? Pretty good, it’s my life. LOL.
So don’t forget – you’re not a victim, you’re a survivor. Who’s been uniquely prepared with the obstacle course called “your life” for good reason. Go ahead, WATCH the world try to get the best of you. Not because you’re its chosen punching bag. But because you have a knack for prevailing.
That said. We can use that information to stabilize our outlook on self reliance and independence during traumatic times. How much bullshit have you already waded through? Oh, several Olympic swimming pools? What’s another kiddie pool going to do? Get your shoes wet?
Recognize your capacity. Not that you desire or deserve more shit to tread. But your aptitude and ability to move through it.
Remember, at its core, trauma without PTSD is alllll about 1) the way your nervous system is reacting and 2) the way you’re framing the events.
So, take care of your biology. As we’ve been saying, listen to your meat pet. It is everything.
Keep your sleep and exercise regular.
In disorienting times, focus on the pillars of your needs. High quality nutrition, water, rest, mobility, muscle activation.
AND.
Tend to your stories. They’re the other half of everything.
Simply: Stick with observing, neutrally, while the thing is happening. And be careful with the final tale you tell yourself as its ending or over.
As we learned from TWO of these papers, story-making (extending the events beyond observation, into catastrophic daydreaming) increases likelihood of PTSD.
Did you catch this quote from our article today?
“Peritraumatic alterations of consciousness may blur the distinction between perceptual and “internally-generated” content (i.e., reduce reality monitoring), making memories of trauma more tenuous and increasing the likelihood that they might be denied and/or not integrated with self-narrative.”
Connect that with the tales of “the earthquake having monstrous intentions” which then tumbled into freeze-states of defeat in our research last time, and we can gather quite a picture.
If we disconnect from the present moment and instead start telling ourselves “this monster is out to get me” (attributing consciousness and intentionality to the trauma) “nothing will ever be the same” (catastrophic futuristic projection based in nonreality “it’s all gone” (black and white thinking), we lose out on the opportunity to be there, in material reality, finding out if any of that is true.
We’ve already decided it is. So, the mind spirals. The thoughts become real, internally, regardless of what’s really happening externally. Especially if we’re disassociating from reality with altered consciousness. We can take a trauma from a 2 to a 10, perceptually. Which is what matters and extends farrrrrr after the threat is over. Because we won’t see that it has ended or recognize its true weight if we’re still spitting stories about it or believing our original ones.
So. Don’t. Create. Negative. Narratives.
Aim for neutrality in the event. And figure out the meaning later, based on the clarity and accuracy that can only be found in hindsight.
On that note, more points:
Remember, Big emotions -> stories. Give honor and ownership to your emotions of anger, fear, sadness… setting down with them, allowing them… and they’re less likely to snowball into horror plots.
Personification of the traumatic event -> helplessness and a sense of being targeted, personally, by something much larger than you can handle. This creates overwhelm and freeze reactions. Tonic immobility.
Drinking -> decreased cognitive control… which isn’t something we need help with. That cognitive overload or void? Isn’t assisted by throwing thought-slurring juice into the blender.
Furthermore, that lack of inhibition and abundance of enthusiasm from bustin brewskies -> even bigger emotions -> grander stories -> a larger output of helplessness, anger, hopelessness. We can pretend that booze and drugs make us feel LESS… but actually, they just make us feel MORE of what we don’t want to let ourselves feel. Ya can be a happy drunk today… maybe not so much after a big T word you’ve been avoiding.
And. On a strictly physiological note. Drinking -> worse sleep, and less activity. Which we learned are protective factors against PTSD and applicable ways we can attempt to regulate ourselves. (Given, insomnia is insomnia. Don’t pay too much attention to it or it becomes a complex, just do what you can to assist yourself in sleeping by tending to the rest of your physiology.)
Even though drugs feel tempting when you’re absolutely tanked… consciousness altering substances “ain’t it,” during upset.
What “is it?”
Focusing on community and taking actions to assist that community. Whether you know them or not, strangers feel like companions and people you dislike feel like brothers when you’re facing something TOGETHER.
We don’t love trauma bonding for long term relationships. But there’s a reason it exists. For survival IN the dangerous events. We’re stronger when we work together.
Nurture the biological system with all the resources you can spare. REST even if you can’t SLEEP. And use RESTLESSNESS to get gentle exercise, to help you get into your body, to be with your autonomic system.
As soon as you’re able to, begin to sew the story into your life narrative. Gently. With a victorious outcome. How’d you get there? What happened? How’d you make it through? What was the golden rope, tethering you to your wherewithal, drive to survive, and actions taken?
Then what happened and why does it seem like it matters? Remember, make meaning out of the event. Try to make it positive, somehow. Even if it’s extremely bittersweet. Hey, we call that “life.” It’s sortof a travesty. And also, there are so many points of beauty.
Recall that long-term disruptions to life increase likelihood of PTSD. We can’t get back to business as usual without processing and tending to our selves first – that’s not the winning move. However, creating some careful, compassionate, progressive, structure will go a long way.
Losing a job or taking a demotion can be a threat to psychic health because it prolongs the traumatic story “this bad thing happened AND THEN IT AFFECTED ME FOREVER.” It makes it seem like the trauma is still ongoing (and it might be). As much as possible, we want to maintain important life frameworks after traumas.
And, unfortunately, just like we can’t wave a wand to become a societally privileged person protected against PTSD, that loss or change in career is not something we can always help.
So, rather than relying on a career for sense of self or life structure? In and after trauma times? Focus on meaning-making activities. Not a job.
That’s like five birds with one stone, as far as giving yourself structure, creating a positive story, helping others, making meaning, and sustaining a chosen life direction. Aim for volunteering, gardening, fostering animals, tending to pollution in your environment, supporting those still “in it,” donating excess, spreading the word about self-support during trauma, etc. Be of service. And you WILL serve yourself, lessening your threat of PTSD, through taking that consistent action.
If none of this seems clear now…
Don’t worry.
Peri-trauma, the research and real life experience says, “you’ll be slapped around by sudden clarity, showing you what your priorities are and giving you the energy to attend to them.”
And you don’t even have to be a rich, bookish, old man to be okay.
You DO need to stay with yourself, with your life, with reality, with your people.
And, together, as possible, try to squeeze some laughs in there.
You might find it to be the PTS protection you – and they – need.
Hail yourself.
Hail your system’s self-support functions.
Weird how peritraumatic reactions and post traumatic protections fit together like puzzle pieces… if we don’t let varieties of disassociation and avoidance prevail, huh?
Huh.
We’ll meet back here next time… to talk about the ACTUAL activities I’ve been engaging in, peri-traumatically. Of which, you need not be any sort of economically or genitally privileged person to access.
And until then…
I love ya, Fuckers.
Cheers y’all.
Talk to you soon.