Putting Kindness into Practice When Recovering from Trauma

If you’ve experienced a traumatic event, whether a “Big T” trauma (like a natural disaster) or a “small t” trauma (like prolonged bullying in a toxic workplace), you’ve probably felt some negative aftereffects.  In some cases, you might have had heightened anxiety for a few weeks, but it resolved when the disaster passed.  But for others, it’s possible to find yourself dealing with reminders or fear for months or years afterward.

In the case of childhood trauma, past abuse, or sexual assault, these effects may be more hidden. You could notice strange or unusual behavior and not even link it to those past experiences, because you believe you’ve gotten over them or moved past them.  Typically reminders of these events exist deep under the surface and stir up emotions or physical responses that seem to have no cause. 

For many partners recovering from betrayal trauma, you’re still living in the reality of the trauma.  Your spouse may be in recovery, but that process takes time, so it can feel as though the trauma isn’t over.  It’s like you’re living in the house being affected by the natural disaster: sometimes it seems like everything is okay, and then another wave of pain washes over you as you find out about a slip or relapse.  This “present trauma” effect can happen also for those who are in toxic or harmful situations without an easy way out.

How Trauma Affects Your Emotions and Self-Talk

One of the hallmarks of trauma is a tendency to minimize or question the impact of that trauma on yourself.  Many survivors of trauma have thought, “My experience wasn’t so bad.  Not as bad as so-and-so had it.”  More than that, depression can be an aftereffect of trauma, fueled by negative, self-defeating self-talk.  You might feel doubt about the trauma itself and your own role and responsibility within it, which affects your sense of self-worth.

This unique combination of minimizing your own experience, thinking negatively about yourself, and doubting your own perspective can lead to destructive self-criticism and self-hatred that derail your path to recovery from trauma.

Symptoms of Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress

In your story of trauma, you may be dealing with some or several of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  These symptoms are worsened when you’re still experiencing the trauma, as with betrayal trauma discussed above.  Those symptoms include:

• Intrusive memories of the traumatic event

• Flashbacks (re-experiencing the memory of the trauma as if you were still there)

• Nightmares

• Avoidance of people, places, and things that remind you of the trauma

• Insomnia/difficulty falling asleep

• Exaggerated startle response (jumping at things more easily, being on edge)

• Hypervigilance (being extra aware of your surroundings and anticipating danger)

• Irritability

• Depression

• Anxiety

• Memory lapses related to the traumatic event

• Chronic negative beliefs about yourself, others, or the world

• Lack of interest in things you used to enjoy

• Distorted self-blame or blame of others about the event

• Intense emotional surges (fear, horror, guilt, anger, shame)

• Feeling isolated or withdrawn from others

• Inability to experience positive emotions

• Self-destructive behaviors

• Lack of ability to focus or concentrate

Why Kindness is Important in Trauma Recovery

If you relate to any of the symptoms listed above in relation to your trauma, my guess is that you also have expressed unkindness toward yourself.  Some of the symptoms directly create that self-hatred: having a negative view of yourself, feelings of self-blame, and shame associated with the events.  Other symptoms can be frustrating and lead to self-criticism, like insomnia, irritability, flashbacks, and nightmares.

For some, the person you were before the trauma happened and the person you are now feel drastically different from one another, and you long to go back to where you were before.  Or, if the trauma occurred when you were young, you long to be “normal” and not have such intense, symptomatic response to triggers of the trauma.

I cannot overemphasize the power and necessity of good psychotherapy if you are dealing with PTSD.  At the same time, learning to approach yourself with kindness while you are healing from trauma is essential. Healing from trauma takes time, and it can be a tiring process. You need an extra dose of kindness to move forward through it.

How to Practice Kindness

Call it what it is.

Stop minimizing your experience and let yourself name it what it is: trauma.  Naming the experience as trauma can give you more of a sense of understanding and peace, as you know that there is an explanation for your symptoms, as well as proven treatments to help you process and learn to cope.

Research the impact of “small t” traumas and acknowledge that they can have just as significant of an effect as a major, “big T” trauma. In fact, sometimes the chronic nature of “small t” traumas can make them harder to move past, as they create ingrained patterns of thought and behavior that need more work to change.

Offer yourself grace and understanding for your symptoms.

Rather than becoming annoyed with yourself for experiencing the very real symptoms of trauma, learn about what they are and acknowledge that is what is happening when you feel them.  Then, when you have symptoms, you’ll know why they’re happening, which can offer a sense of relief. 

When you know your emotional response is tied to trauma, it can also give you more clarity on how to best care for yourself within it. Putting your emotions in the correct context helps you not to feel crazy and reminds you to rely on coping strategies specific to trauma.

Affirm your resilience in surviving the trauma.

Recognize that you made it through whatever traumatic event occurred to you, and (in most cases) it is over now.  If it isn’t fully over, as in the case of betrayal trauma, recognize what you’ve made it through so far and the strength it’s taken to get there. 

Honor what you did to survive, even if it wasn’t the healthiest choice.  Some of your responses to trauma may feel crazy or irrational, but often they are motivated by a legitimate desire for safety or security, particularly after experiencing such an unsettling event.  Consider the root of some of these responses and offer understanding to yourself of why you responded in this way.

Give yourself what you need.

If you’re managing the aftereffects of childhood trauma, ask yourself what you needed then.  Was it someone to listen to you?  A safe place to go when you felt afraid?  A sense of comfort? If you’re still coping with the trauma, ask yourself what you need now.  Healthy distraction? Connection with your recovery community? Rest and nutrition?

Then do it: give yourself the space for extra comfort or care as a result of the reminder of the trauma.  Connect with loved ones or give yourself space and alone time, whichever feels more authentic to your needs.  Practice grounding through deep, mindful breathing or connecting with your five senses.  Practice sensory self-soothing behaviors like taking a bath, putting on warm and cozy clothes, smelling a scented candle or essential oils, or eating a comforting meal.

Use kind words to talk to yourself.

Rather than self-defeating or destructive thoughts you might be used to, consider positive coping thoughts you might use to support you.  Put today’s experience in the context of the bigger picture: you’re working your way through trauma, and it isn’t over yet.

Our words have power. Choose words that remind you of resilience and empowerment rather than hopelessness and helplessness within your response to trauma. Remember your unique character qualities that are supporting you through this crisis.

Practice kindness toward others.

Sometimes the most helpful way for us to move through our own traumatic experiences is to find mutual support through places like support groups, advocacy organizations, or volunteering opportunities.  Find a way that you can love and support others who are going through something similar to you.  If the trauma still feels too fresh, it may be helpful to find a place where you can volunteer or help others that has nothing to do with your area of trauma.  Offering help to others can promote a sense of gratitude and love that brings you out of the all-consuming nature of your trauma experience.

How to Cope With a Trauma Response: Part 1

Your day is progressing just like any other.  Waking up, getting the kids ready for school, going to work, preparing dinner…when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, you’re hit with a flashback of the event.  You feel a pit in your stomach, sweat breaks out on your forehead, and you feel your heart rate spike.  You’re having trouble breathing, and you feel the urge to escape. 

If you have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or symptoms related to PTSD, you probably know this experience well.  Memories of the trauma or triggers that remind you of the event can send you into a tailspin: you’re fine one moment, then in a panic or shut down the next.  For partners who have experienced betrayal trauma, this response arises with triggers related to their addicted spouse’s behaviors.

The experience of a trauma response can be scary, as it often comes on suddenly and feels impossible to stop.  It can be exhausting to go through one of these experiences as your body goes into overdrive, trying to protect you from a threat that (often) isn’t there.  To cope with your response, you might shut down into a depression, lash out in anger or irritation at the people around you, collapse into grief and sadness, or turn inward with shame.

How do I know I’m having a trauma response vs. pure anxiety or panic?

There are several common symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder that may come up when trauma resurfaces:

• Flashbacks to traumatic events (re-experiencing the memory as if it were happening now)

• Mood swings and emotional volatility

• Exaggerated startle response

• Avoiding certain triggers or activities that you used to find enjoyable

• Low self-esteem

• Isolation and withdrawal from others

Trauma shares symptoms with anxiety and/or panic attacks.  Anxiety often includes worries that are more future-oriented than trauma.  While it is true that some anxiety centers around worry about events from the past, trauma responses are different in that they can be traced back to a specific memory of a traumatic event.

Panic attacks can also arise as a result of trauma, with symptoms such as racing heart rate, sweating, feeling faint, nausea, and worry that you’ll die (often related to the heart rate symptoms).  If you experience these symptoms, be sure to meet with your doctor to rule out any underlying medical causes.  However, if there is no obvious medical cause, see if you can connect your reaction to a specific reminder of trauma (as in a trauma response), or notice if the panic arises seemingly out of nowhere (as in panic disorder).

How to Manage Trauma Responses

There are two stages to handling trauma responses.  First, you need strategies to bring yourself back into your window of tolerance by calming the physical and emotional reactions you’re having.  Once you’ve been able to calm and self-soothe, the next step involves exploring the cause of the traumatic response and some options for processing and addressing that trauma.  Today, in Part 1, we’ll talk about the first step: reducing the intensity of your initial response. 

Reduce the physical and emotional overwhelm caused by the initial hit of trauma.

You can’t think straight when you’re in the middle of a trauma response, as your body and mind take you out of your prefrontal cortex (the part of your brain involved with decision-making, impulse control, and executive thinking) and move you into your limbic system (the emotional center; the fight-flight-freeze response).

In order to bring your thinking brain back online, it is necessary to calm down your nervous system enough to communicate to yourself that you don’t need to run from a threat, as the adrenaline response is prompting you to do.  Deep breathing, guided meditations, progressive muscle relaxation, grounding exercises, and other ways of calming down the nervous system are useful during these moments.

Use coping thoughts to calm your emotions.

Often, the traumatic event happened in the past and is not currently occurring, as in an experience of a car accident or a past experience of sexual assault.  In these cases, you can use words to remind yourself of your current distance from that painful experience.  They can help you ease the initial intensity of the trauma response.  These might include phrases like:

• I’m safe now, in this moment.

• I’m no longer in that situation.

• I can get through this.

• This too will pass.

• That was a painful experience, and I am not living it now.

But what if the trauma is ongoing?  When you are in a relationship with a sex or love addict who has betrayed you and are working the process of recovery, the traumatic experience may feel more present and real due to broken trust.  In those cases, it may be more helpful to use self-encouraging statements to affirm the strengths you have that are carrying you through.  These might include words like:

• I’ve been through painful moments before, and I’ve survived.

• I’m strong enough to handle this.

• I can’t control other people’s actions, but I can control my decisions and how I respond.

• I can handle this one day at a time.

• This is hard now, but in the long-term, I’m going to be okay.

Use a distraction technique.

If meditations and coping thoughts aren’t cutting it, use a distraction technique.  These are not meant to create unhealthy dissociation from your feelings or events, but instead are meant to help calm the intensity of your experience so that you aren’t as overwhelmed by it and can approach it with more curiosity.  It helps to think of this distraction as temporary, meant to bring your level of intense emotion down so that you can make sense of your reaction and respond differently. 

Using strategies popularized by dialectical-behavioral therapy (DBT) can help create this distraction.  Find an enjoyable activity that you can engage in for a period of time that takes your mind off the trigger.  Engage in a self-soothing behavior that helps you connect to your five senses.  Use the acronym ACCEPTS to help you connect with ways you can distract yourself from the distress. 

In Part 2, we’ll delve into how to explore and process the trauma response, creating tools to help you navigate its impact differently in the future.

Releasing Your Body from Trauma's Grip: A Review of The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

If you’ve experienced a traumatic event, you know the symptoms that follow.  It could be physical or emotional pain directly related to the trauma, but also symptoms in response to reminders of the event once you’re physically healed.  You might be dealing with panic or out-of-control flashbacks that pull you into re-experiencing the trauma.  You may have trouble putting words to what happened to you, with gaps in your memory or difficulty placing a beginning, middle, and end to your experience. 

Bessel van der Kolk, in his book The Body Keeps the Score, describes the experience of holding trauma in our bodies both through changes to the structures of our brain and effects of trauma on daily living for those who have experienced traumatic events. 

In his 40+ years of clinical experience as a psychiatrist, van der Kolk has done extensive research on the effects of trauma on brains and bodies of children and adults.  His focus on neuroscience and attachment form the basis of his points in his book.  

How This Book is Organized

How Trauma Affects the Brain and Body

Van der Kolk begins the book giving background information about trauma and how it impacts both the structures of the brain and interpersonal relationships.  He discusses how trauma activates your fight-or-flight response in the amygdala, or emotional center of your brain.  This affects not only how you remember and tell the story (typically more images than biographical details), and it also changes how that information is stored in your brain.

He normalizes traumatized individuals’ difficulty improving, not because they don’t want to, but because of the impact of the symptoms and the weight of self-blame they carry in response.  This can cause physical symptoms and reactions in the body that echo long after the traumatic event has ended.  It can affect their lives as they lose their ability to focus or concentrate, they dissociate or disconnect emotionally, and they have difficulty feeling safe with other people.

“When the subject of blame arises, the central issue that needs to be addressed is usually self-blame – accepting that the trauma was not their fault, that it was not caused by some defect in themselves, and that no one could ever have deserved what happened to them.”

— Bessel van der Kolk

The Impact of Trauma in Childhood

Next he moves on to discuss the impact of childhood trauma and insecure attachment on adults.  He highlights insights from research with children and teens to highlight the detrimental effects of trauma and how it can be reversed.

One insight he shares is that how we cope with trauma as children usually translates into how we cope as adults.  We learn to survive amidst chaos using certain strategies, some of which can include addiction, destructive relationships, or other unhealthy patterns.  Recognizing where these patterns originated can release some of the self-blame you carry. 

“Many traumatized children and adults simply cannot describe what they are feeling because they cannot identify what their physical sensations mean…trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies.”

— Bessel van der Kolk

How to Treat Trauma

Luckily, trauma is not a death sentence, because our brains are designed with healing mechanisms in place.  During this section, van der Kolk highlights several different methods of psychotherapy that can help heal the effects of trauma, such as EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), yoga, internal family systems therapy, writing, theater, psychomotor therapy, group therapy, and others. 

He speaks about using an approach to trauma treatment that focuses both on top-down interventions (strengthening the control center of the brain with activities such as mindfulness and yoga) and bottom-up interventions (regulating the emotional brain through breathing, touch, and movement).  He emphasizes that revisiting the trauma is an essential part of this process, but it needs to be done when you are feeling safe and grounded in the present moment.  Ultimately, he believes (and I agree) that experiential knowledge is much more powerful than intellectual knowledge, and therapy should incorporate these aspects.

“More than anything else, being able to feel safe with other people defines mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.”

— Bessel van der Kolk

How to Use This Book

If you are someone who has experienced trauma or helps others who have been traumatized, The Body Keeps the Score will be a helpful resource to put words and explanations to what you feel and experience.  You might discover a completely new perspective on your story of trauma as a result.

Begin with the first section of the book if you are curious to understand how trauma affects the brain.  His anecdotes about individuals who have experienced trauma coupled with images of brain scans illustrate the connection between trauma and the brain.  My guess is that you’ll find your story to be more common than you realized.

In particular, I think the first section of the book is helpful for women who have experienced sexual assault or other violent crimes.  He speaks at length about the freeze response of the brain that shuts down and inhibits the victim’s ability to fight back against their attacker.  This survival response often becomes a source of self-blame after the traumatic event.  Knowing it is a natural biological reality to shut down can lift some of that blame.

If you’re interested in the concept of attachment and how trauma during childhood can affect development, read the middle section of the book, where van der Kolk shares research insights into the impact of attachment on children.  He speaks about the impact of a caregiver’s ability to emotionally attune to their children and respond to their needs so that children can learn to self-regulate.  Children who don’t receive that attunement can grow up to be anxious (feeling too much) or avoidant (not feeling at all).

If you want to learn more about a particular type of therapy to treat your trauma, jump ahead to Section Five of the book, where van der Kolk outlines the different methods of therapy that have been helpful in his experience of treating trauma.  As an EMDR practitioner, I enjoyed how he described the way a typical EMDR session works, as that can give you an idea of what to expect.

Overall, I think the combination of personal anecdotes, research, and hope this book offers make it an invaluable resource for therapists who work with traumatized clients, but also for those who are seeking to heal from their personal stories of trauma.

How to Cope with Trauma-Related Anger

The experience of sexual abuse or sexual assault as a child, teen, or young adult can have traumatic effects throughout your life. In a similar vein, betrayal by a spouse who is a sex addict can shatter your sense of normalcy and leave you reeling from the traumatic backlash.  It is normal to experience anger in response to traumatic events.

Yet we often fear or avoid anger because of its perceived destructive effects.  We throw around statements like, “hurt people hurt people,” as though it’s a given that anger stemming from hurt will harm those around us.  If you watched parents express anger with violence or abuse, you’re more likely to be primed to believe that anger is unacceptable.  However, anger is not inherently bad nor is it harmful.

Reactions to Anger

There are various different ways in which we naturally react to anger caused by trauma.

Uncontrollable outbursts of anger

Anger may feel like it is constantly simmering under the surface, waiting to burst out at the slightest provocation.  You could be more irritable and likely to lash out at others around you.  You may feel out of control of the intensity of your anger response.  You might also experience shame, especially if your anger is directed toward your loved ones, or it is similar to unhealthy expressions of anger you experienced as a child.

This type of reaction to anger can involve violence, either with physical action or with words.  If you are becoming violent with those around you, please seek help.

Suppressing your anger.

If anger isn’t acceptable to you, you may take your anger and turn it inward as self-contempt or self-loathing.  This is a common response for women.  At its most extreme, this suppression of anger can turn into self-harm behaviors, drug and alcohol abuse, overeating, or suicidal thinking as ways to express the anger that has no other outlet.  Sometimes suppressing anger can be encouraged by religious backgrounds that place an overemphasis on forgiveness and equate anger with sin.   

If you are actively having suicidal thoughts and considering taking your own life, please care for yourself by calling the Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-TALK.

Numbing out.

A third way might be ignoring anger through distraction or numbing, until you are no longer able to access the anger itself.  You may know it’s there or see it come out from time to time, but you just can’t get and stay angry.  This can come after prolonged suppression of anger when the body adapts to the response of the mind.  It can also be a way of dissociation or detaching from reality when the trauma has significantly affected your sense of self.

Healthy Response to Anger

Anger is a natural response to perceived injustice or wrong being committed against you.  In many cases of trauma, the anger is justified by the wrongful actions of an abuser or betrayer.  You can recognize the emotion of anger as acceptable because feelings alone do not harm anyone.  In fact, anger can, at times, indicate love or care for other people, like your children or fellow survivors of abuse.  You can learn to use your anger to serve you and help you move forward, rather than destroy your life.  The more aware you become of your experience of anger, the more able you are to manage it effectively.

How to Deal with Anger

Get into therapy.

First and foremost: if you are a survivor of trauma, whether it is from your childhood or from more recent experiences, the most effective way you can work through it is through therapy.  EMDR-Certified therapists and trauma-informed therapists do specialized work in treating trauma.  Find a therapist who you click with and trust them to be your support as you walk through the anger and other corresponding emotions that arise from your trauma.

Identify your go-to response to anger.

From the list above, identify yourself: are you someone who stuffs their anger down, only to turn it inward on yourself?  Do you find yourself lashing out at others and feeling angry all the time?  Or do you numb out and find it difficult to experience or express anger at all?  Examine the origin of this automatic response: did your family or parents handle anger in this way?  In the opposite way?  Where did you learn to express your anger in this way?  Acknowledging that anger is learned helps you to feel empowered to learn new ways to deal with anger.

Identify other emotions that are intensifying the anger or getting in the way.

Your anger may be directed at your abuser in the case of sexual abuse, or your spouse in the case of spousal betrayal and addiction.  However, you might find outbursts of anger in the present moment have nothing to do with the individual who wronged you: instead, they may be directed at individuals you interact with in everyday life.  It may be connected to stress, feelings of overwhelm, hurt, disappointment, or sadness.  Explore how any of the emotions behind the anger might be difficult for you based on past experiences.

Conversely, if you struggle to access your anger, examine what might be getting in the way.  Perhaps fear of how you will react or how others will perceive you prevents you from feeling comfortable experiencing your anger.  Follow the narrative through with these questions: if I really allowed myself to get angry, what do I believe would happen?  How true do I believe this is?

Slow down and notice your body.

When you feel anger coming up, hit the pause button.  Slow yourself down for long enough to check in with your thoughts and experience.  Notice your body’s physical response to the anger.  Describe or draw the anger: what color is it?  What shape, size, and texture?  Is it moving or standing still?  Where is it located in your body?

Write a letter to your abuser or betrayer.

For those who are pointing the finger of self-blame at themselves, it can be helpful to write out a list of the reality of how the other person harmed you. This can assist you in feeling justified anger at the abuser for their actions, rather than directing that anger at yourself.  I’d recommend you write this letter as a personal exercise rather than a letter to give to the abuser or betrayer: this will help you feel more freedom to express the full weight of your anger and be as honest as you’d like.  If you find yourself wanting to share that letter, talk with your therapist and support individuals before making that decision.

Reframe your anger as a “dashboard light” telling you there’s something wrong.

Use your anger as a tool to indicate something’s off.  It could be that you need to step up your self-care through contacting a supportive friend, attending an extra therapy session, or practicing a breathing exercise.  If you learn to accept the anger as it arises and examine what your anger is telling you, it will help the angry feelings to dissipate.  This increased awareness of the messages of anger can help you channel that anger into assertiveness and setting boundaries in relationships that trigger your anger.

Speak out on behalf of others currently experiencing trauma.

Channel your anger and frustration over past trauma into service for those who are experiencing similar situations.  Write letters to government officials about fighting back against human trafficking or legislation related to sexual abuse.  Attend events or rallies to support causes that empower women.  Volunteer at a domestic violence shelter.  Get involved in survivor’s groups where you can find others who have been through similar experiences.

Release anger through physical activity.

Often anger can feel like restlessness or pent up energy.  When anger threatens to overwhelm, channel that energy into physical activity that will increase your endorphins and help you release your anger.  Take a kickboxing or self-defense class to help you to feel empowered and able to defend yourself.  Go for a long run and imagine the anger releasing into the ground with each footfall.

Write a statement affirming how you will deal with anger.

Negative beliefs about yourself or the world around you can perpetuate feelings of anger.  Once you’ve identified the sources of your anger and your influences on how you experience or express anger, identify faulty thinking patternsthat make it difficult for you to feel in control or safe.  Write a statement reminding yourself of what is true about your anger that gives you support and grounding during intense experiences of anger.