So here's the thing about trauma: even
though the event happened in the past, we work with trauma in the present moment. It
causes pain in the present moment. It changes your nervous system in the present moment.
The hurt isn't just in the past; it's right here. It's in your body. It's in your emotions.
Right? Now, in the last video we talked about four ways traumatic memories differ from regular
memories, and in this video we'll cover four ways you can work with those memories in the present
moment so that they don't bother you so much. When traumatic memories are integrated and consolidated,
real healing can happen. And and this might look like someone being able to say, you know,
this terrible thing happened to me, but right now I am safe. And when they remember the event,
they can calm their mind and body in the present moment. The memory becomes a memory instead
of a flashback where they're re-experiencing a terrible event as if it's happening again and
again. Now, as we talked about in the last video, traumatic memories differ from regular memories
in four ways. Number one: they don't naturally soften over time; they stay intense and
vivid. Number two is traumatic memories are often sensory. It feels like the event
in sight and sounds and smells. Number three: the passage of time is distorted. It feels like
you're living it over it and over again in the present moment. And number four is that they're
often fragmented. They don't follow a sequential order. Some information may be missing or blocked.
Now, putting memories into words or something more solid can help people make peace with those
memories and gain more clarity about them, and therapy can be a great place to do this. But
also, in my in my opinion, we all have an inherent ability to heal, and if we work within a few
principles there's a lot we can do on our own. So here's a couple principles that I think can help
anyone learn to work through traumatic memories. The first is just do small doses at a time so
that you don't get overwhelmed and flooded and re-traumatized. This is called staying in
the window of tolerance. So avoidance keeps you trapped in traumatic memories, but so
does re-traumatizing yourself by jumping in too fast or too deep. It's kind of like you
need to learn to swim. Right? You start in the shallow end with an instructor or with some
other resources like a life jacket, and then you gradually learn the skills to move deeper on
your own. Okay. Next, be gentle and compassionate with yourself as you work through these memories.
It's common for survivors to put themselves down, to think that they're stupid or they're weak
for struggling, and it's also really common to compare yourself with others. You might
say something like, "Oh, he went through the same thing and he's fine" or "What I went
through wasn't as bad as what she went through," etc. etc. And you you just you can't heal by
hating yourself. You can only heal by restoring a sense of safety, and that means you've got to
be safe toward yourself too. So in the trauma groups I've worked with, we've had a rule: you are
not allowed to compare yourself to other people. You're not allowed to compare your trauma to other
people. It's just not helpful. Okay. Number three: get a lot of support. Not only can therapists,
friends, and family members help us when we're struggling and they can give us someone to talk
to, but their nervous systems literally help to soothe our nervous systems. When we're working
through trauma, being with a compassionate, supportive person can help you reprocess trauma
from the ventral vagal state. This is the safe and social state of the nervous system, where learning
and healing happen. Eye contact, hugs, a soothing voice -these all communicate to your nervous
system that you're safe now, and they create a space to work through these painful memories and
to reprocess them as being in the present moment. Okay. Next, learn to take breaks. Find really good
coping skills so that you can rest and recover between moments of processing. Now, if you don't
know how to do self-care or if you'd like to learn a ton of options for coping skills, check out my
course Coping Skills and Self-Care. And you can develop your own personalized plan for coping with
intense emotions and taking breaks so that you can recover. Okay. Here's another principle for
working through traumatic memories. And therapists say this all the time. They say "Make the implicit
explicit." This means to take the fuzzy, vague, unclear, or unexplored parts of your memories and
explore them. Give them words, give them colors, name them, say them out loud, draw them. Anything
you can do to take something from vague to clear will give you more power to resolve the
feelings that are connected with them. By making cloudy thoughts concrete you'll be
able to handle them, and they won't keep hurting you so much. Okay. So now let's talk about four
treatments that have been shown to help process and heal traumatic memories. So first, all
of these treatments have one thing in common: they seek to help survivors retrieve
a memory when they're feeling safe. If you recall traumatic memories when you don't
have the resources to manage the stress response, this can be overwhelming, and then the memory gets
restored as traumatic. This is like, you know, going back to the swimming analogy, this is like
jumping into the deep end without any help and you don't know how to swim. So if you don't know how
to swim but you have to jump into the deep end, there's two things that can help you: the
first one is an external resource. So this would be something like a life jacket or a swim
instructor who's helping hold you up. And the second thing that can help you in swimming
would be learning the skills to swim. And this is an internal resource. And you for sure
need the external resources in the beginning, and then eventually you can learn the skills
to process painful memories independently. Now, just like swimming, with processing traumatic
memories you for sure need external resources in the beginning. You need someone to help you
regulate your system as you work through these painful memories, and then eventually you can
learn the skills to process through painful memories more independently. So this is why it's
so essential to work with a skilled professional in the beginning stages of trauma therapy. They'll
help you build up skills like grounding skills and nervous system regulation to handle the bodily
sensations that may come with these memories. And then this sense of safety can help you retrieve
a memory and then process it in a safe context and then store it differently, and that's going to
decrease its intensity. Now, if you can't access working with a therapist, there are some ways
to work through these memories on your own. And, you know, it always helps to talk about
them with a safe friend, or a family member, a religious figure, or a counselor, but even
something like journaling can help you work through painful memories. You can also choose
a safe environment to do this work, like like petting your favorite animal or sitting on the
beach and watching the ocean. But processing memories without a therapist comes with the risk
of getting overwhelmed or triggered by these intense memories, so whenever possible work with
a trauma-informed therapist. Okay. Number two, the next treatment for traumatic memories is
EMDR. Research shows that EMDR can be really effective at helping survivors reprocess traumatic
events, especially those that happen as adults, but EMDR is somewhat less successful at
moderating the effects of persistent childhood trauma or abuse. Now, with EMDR the therapist
uses bilateral movement - this is uh like eye movement where you're moving side to side - to
help the brain access a memory, re-label it, and then store it away as a less sharp memory. The
cool thing about EMDR is that even after treatment has ended, it continues to help because it seems
to remove the stickiness of a memory. And the brain continues to reprocess memories and reduce
PTSD symptoms even after treatment has ended. Now, I wouldn't recommend attempting to do EMDR on
yourself, but there is some evidence indicating that during walking, hiking, or biking, or other
forward movement exercise, your eyes naturally move side to side as you take in the scenery, and
this type of exercise can help you process through emotions and memories. So regardless of whether
that's going to work the way EMDR works, exercise is generally really good for mental and physical
health. So that is something you can do on your own. Okay. The third treatment is somatic therapy.
Now, not all memories are conscious memories. There are two types of memories: there's the
implicit and the explicit, or conscious memories. Implicit memories are stored in the deeper,
older parts of the brain. They're connected to bodily sensations. So if you smell something
delicious, you may not remember why but that smell is connected to a memory of love or happiness. Or
if someone startles you, your arm might seem to move on its own to punch them before you even
think. So these types of memories are stored deeper than our thoughts, and they often show up
in our body and in our nervous system response. To treat these body-based memories, somatic
approaches can be really powerful. One technique is called completion. So if someone feels in their
body the need to run away, they might, they might practice expressing that through body movement. Or
if someone feels unsafe or jittery in their body, they might be asked to sit with that feeling,
to exaggerate that feeling, to lean into it, to jiggle their legs harder, and then watch as
that sensation diminishes. Somatic approaches work with the body to process through the habits
and reflexes and Impressions that are stored in our nervous system. Let me give you an example.
I had a trainer who had experienced sexual abuse as a child. And as an adult he did a lot of
therapy, but he also started rock climbing. And as he improved as a climber, he realized that
his hips were really tight, that his pelvis was really tight and rigid, and that he was constantly
storing tension there. And as he worked to improve his flexibility to be a better climber, some
intense feelings and memories came up for him. And when he would open his hips he'd feel big
emotions. He'd feel scared or anxious or guilty. But as he continued to climb and as he worked
through those feelings, both in climbing and in therapy, and as he stretched and loosened his
pelvic floor, he would address those sensations. He'd acknowledge them, and he'd lean into them
and then try to soften them a little. Over time they began to resolve and he started to feel more
relaxed, both emotionally and physically. And it helped him make progress both in climbing and in
mental health. He was less stressed and more open both physically and emotionally. So interventions
like expressive dance, yoga, mindful body scans, tai chi, and other forms of body movement can help
you get into touch with your body's memories. You can scan for tight spots, and you can listen to
the parts of your body that are in pain, that are tense or feel disconnected. And you can work
within your growth zone to explore those parts through acceptance, gentle movement, compassion,
and stretching. Okay. Number four. Conscious memories are memories that are more sequential
and orderly. It's like saying, "Oh, this is what happened, and then this happened." Etc. It's
usually something we can put into words. And these memories are stored in the rational, thinking
part of our brain. We can address the conscious memories through cognitive therapy, through
talking about memories, writing about them, drawing them, sharing them. And this can help you
retrieve the memories and then restore them from a calmer perspective. And this is a regular part
of cognitive therapy. Regular memories are usually stored in the left front part of the brain, where
words and stories are processed in an orderly manner. Traumatic memories are often stored in
the right hemisphere of the brain, the sensory part of the brain, and this can make it hard to
put them into words or difficult to organize how you think and how you feel about them. Cognitive
therapy seeks to make sense of these memories, to put them into words and to make them concrete.
And then when they're more clear, you can often come to peace with the memories. Now, many people
with trauma feel compelled to write their story, to write a memoir, to keep a journal, to create
art or music about what they feel. And in my opinion, this may be the mind's instinctive way to
work through painful memories, to create a sense of them through expression. Now, this isn't the
same as CBT where, you know, cognitive distortions are pointed out and corrected. It's a more
expressive approach to emotions. But in my work, both CBT and these expressive therapies can be
really effective, and sometimes more effective than just talking about a memory. One of my
clients, for example, wrote a couple of songs about her trauma, and the act of looking for
words to express her feelings seemed to be very healing for her. Another one of my clients wrote
her entire story of abuse in a notebook. And as she did, she gained a lot of clarity about, you
know, who was really at fault. Which, you know, was the abuser, not herself. And then she shared
her story in a group of her peers and they held a burning. So we went out back, we lit a big fire,
and we slowly burned each page. And all of these approaches seemed to help her as she processed her
trauma. Okay. So there you have it. There are four ways that traumatic memories differ from regular
memories and four ways that we can treat PTSD and traumatic memories. I hope you found this video
helpful. Thank you for watching, and take care.
