Tag Archives: traumatic memories

Adversity’s Silver Lining

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A little trauma actually strengthens your resilience.

A little trauma actually strengthens your resilience.

Mark D. Seery of the University at Buffalo published a paper on the psychological effects of adversity vs resilience. He concludes that a little adversity is actually good for you. But, how much is “too much” adversity depends on each person’s resilience. Many studies have shown that traumatic events can cause long-lasting psychological damage.

The common wisdom is “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” – which is not supported by scientific evidence. Quite the contrary, most evidence points to the opposite – that which doesn’t kill you makes you weaker, at least psychologically.

However, Seery contends that a little trauma actually strengthens your resilience – a bit like exercise traumatizes yet strengthens muscles. Just like in the case of strengthening muscles by traumatizing them (to build muscle, one must damage muscle cells a little), a few traumatizing events in one’s lifetime can strengthen their resilience after future traumas.

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Fear Memory Deletion?

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This research strongly suggests that the emotional content of long-term memories can be removed by interrupting the labile phase of long-term memory storage.

This research strongly suggests that the emotional content of long-term memories can be removed by interrupting the labile phase of long-term memory storage.

Another study, this time from the Universiteit van Amsterdam, demonstrates that memories – most particularly long-term fear memories – are encoded when they first happen and then again whenever we re-store those memories. There is a short period of time in which the brain must chemically “prepare” and then “store” the memory. Whenever we bring the memory back to mind, it must go through the same process to re-store it in the brain. In both of these labile phases, the memory is vulnerable to change.

This research strongly suggests that memories are not, therefore, permanent structures in the brain. Their emotional content can be removed by interrupting the labile phase of long-term memory storage.

I wrote about the brain’s file cabinet in another post (Click here to read). Basically, the brain requires a chemical to access memories and to code them back after accessing them. It’s as though we take each memory, like a file, out of the long-term memory cabinet, close the cabinet, look at the file, use it, then open the cabinet again to put the file back in. If I understand Kindt’s research correctly, interrupting that process at the “putting back in” phase can, in theory, stop the perpetuation of the effects of fear memories by eliminating the fear in the memories.

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Childhood Trauma Predicts Adult Health Problems

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"What we're learning is that poor adult health is, in part, manufactured in childhood. It is multiple and cumulative childhood experience that predisposes adults to poor health."

“What we’re learning is that poor adult health is, in part, manufactured in childhood. It is multiple and cumulative childhood experience that predisposes adults to poor health.”

The Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London studied 1,000 individuals from birth to age 32 as part of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study in New Zealand. Their research suggests that sustained health risks stem from childhood abuse, neglect, social isolation or economic hardship.

Adults who had been maltreated as children were twice as likely to suffer major depression and chronic inflammation. Children who grew up poor or socially isolated were twice as likely to show metabolic risk markers at age 32. Adults who had two or more of the adverse childhood experiences were nearly twice as likely to have disease risk factors as those who hadn’t experienced trauma in childhood.

“We live increasingly longer lives and our extra years of life should be healthy, productive and enjoyable, not years of disease and disability,” says lead author Dr Andrea Danese, Clinical Lecturer at Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and MRC Social Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry at King’s. “In this study, we observed that childhood experiences may affect health in old age, regardless of the risk factors that health policies are currently targeting. Therefore the promotion of healthy positive experiences for children is a necessary and potentially cost-effective target for the prevention of age-related disease.”

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Parallel Trauma

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Teenagers tend to pick up the "vibes" of their friends more strongly than do younger children or adults.

Teenagers tend to pick up the “vibes” of their friends more strongly than do younger children or adults.

It is a well-studied and known phenomenon – teenagers pick up the “vibes” of their friends more strongly than do younger children or adults. During adolescence, we bond very closely to friends. We pick up on their hurts and joys, sharing them in a much more psychologically intimate way than at other times in our lives.

I believe we may also pick up our friends’ traumas and make them our own. More than once have I worked with a client reporting childhood, teen, or young adult trauma that later turned out to be “ghosts” – imaginings based on a friend’s childhood trauma introduced to the shared sensitivities of an intimate group of young friends.

In other words – a false memory. Still, a memory with all the power and influence of a real trauma. And I, as the clinician, treated the symptoms of that trauma as though the original trauma belonged to my client. My client “owned” it, so why not treat it as thought it belonged to my client? Made sense to me. The mind is unable to differentiate between real and imagined when it comes to trauma.

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Intention Is Important

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Toddlers perceive our intentions

Toddlers perceive our intentions better than we may think.

“Even a dog knows the difference between being kicked and being stumbled over.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes

And so, it seems do toddlers. A study out of Queen’s University has demonstrated that children as young as 21 months can differentiate the intentions of those around them.

Psychology professor Valerie Kuhlmeier and PhD student Kristen Dunfield found that toddlers are more likely to help someone who has made an effort to help them, even if that person was unable to accomplish the toddler’s desired outcome. In a series of three experiments, the researchers discovered that it was the thought that counted for the toddlers, not the end result.

What does this mean to those of us who are past our toddler stage? (a purely subjective call in my case at least)

I think it means that clients investigating early childhood “memories” (in hypnosis, for example), might be served to also investigate the intentions of those around them. This can easily be accomplished through surrogate or proxy healing in which the client/subject imagines being the other person involved in the early childhood event(s) being investigated. In Rapid Eye Technology it is common for RET Technicians to invoke proxy, especially during the Inner Child Stages work to capture the thoughts of those around the client during early childhood – I recommend to RET Technicians that they focus some attention to the intentions of those others rather than just on what they thought or did.

“Intention is everything.” (might be truer than we think)

Study source: Psychological Science

Study: Emotions and Traumatic Memories

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traumatic_memories1.jpgAccording to an article from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, memories you want to forget are the hardest ones to lose. This may explain why some memories can "haunt" you all your life.

In the early 1990s, the rage was "repressed memories" of abuse. It was theorized that extremely traumatic memories of sexual and other types of abuse were easily masked from consciousness by the emotional trauma. Basically, the theory was that if it hurt enough, you'd easily forget the memory. After a few high-profile cases resulted in wrongful prosecution, researchers began investigating possible false memories (Loftus, et al) – in which "repressed" memories often turned out to be implanted memories – outright fabrications.

Now research has proven out Loftus' claim that many traumatic memories are the result of therapy rather than actual events. The study quoted in this article demonstrates that rather than easily repressed, traumatic memories – especially highly emotional memories containing a visual element – can be VERY difficult to forget – and let go of.

According to the study's lead author, Keith Payne, an assistant professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, painful, emotional memories that people would most like to forget may be the toughest to leave behind, especially when memories are created through visual cues.

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Helping Doctors Cope With Patient Death

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Change is needed in medical staff education and support.

"Also there needs to be a sea change in medical culture to make support available, and for it not to be stigmatized, to help them cope with grief, depression, despair or sadness."

Doctors could benefit from support to help them cope with the trauma of patient death, says a psychologist speaking at the Death, Dying & Disposal conference organized by the University of Bath in the UK.

In a preliminary study, Dr Elaine Kasket from London Metropolitan University carried out detailed interviews with eight US physicians about their experiences of death. Half of those she spoke to wept as they recounted stories of traumatic death they had experienced as physicians, even though some of these events had occurred as much as 30 years ago.

“There is an unwritten rule for doctors that suggests it is not wise or possible for them to feel emotions over a patient’s death because there is always another patient to help,” said Dr Kasket.

“Whilst this detachment might help when presented with a patient with a severe injury, I question how well it serves them in the longer term.

“This emotional detachment is socially ingrained through medical school, and the cultures in both the UK and US medical establishments would see a physician’s emotional response to death as a sign of weakness and even incompetence.

“It feeds into this popular image of the physician as some kind of superhuman ultimate rescuer of human life; unable to do his or her job if they give in to or even acknowledge their emotions.

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Judgments Make a Difference

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Judging past experiences negatively impacts current health and quality of life.

Judging past experiences negatively impacts current health and quality of life.

A Spanish study investigated the impact of judgments about past events.

“We have observed that when people are negative about past events in their life, they also have a pessimist or fatalistic attitude towards current events. This generates greater problems in their relationships and these people present worse quality of life indicators,” explained Cristian Oyanadel, UGR researcher and co-author of the study published in the journal Universitas Psychologica.

Basically, to feel better and enjoy life more, consider changing your judgments about your past events (even traumatic ones) into positive perceptions. If that is impossible for you, you might want to consider make them at least neutral. Judging past events as negative is a sure-fire way to make yourself sick – or at least much less happy.

Study source: Cristián Oyanadel, Gualberto Buela-Casal. “La percepción del tiempo: influencias en la salud física y mental”. Universitas Psychologica 10(1): 149-161, enero – abril 2011. FECYT – Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology

Rapid Eye Technology as Suicide Prevention

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Rapid Eye Technology may be the solution for your suicidal thoughts now.

Rapid Eye Technology may be the solution for your suicidal thoughts now.

“We found that being exposed to many different adversities during childhood increases the risk of suicidal behavior. Sexual or physical abuses during childhood are particularly strong risk factors for the onset of suicidal behavior in adulthood. Even controlling for a broad set of variables, there was at least a threefold increase in suicide attempt and suicide ideation among people with a history of sexual or physical abuse.” So says Dr. Ronny Bruffaerts from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, after examining data from the World Mental Health surveys carried out in 21 countries in Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East.

Clearly there is a direct relationship between childhood adversity and adult suicidal behaviors.

Dr. Bruffaerts concluded, “Across the world, great emphasis is placed on the prevention of suicide. Our study shows a direct association between the number of adversities a person experiences in childhood and the risk of suicide. Therefore, identifying those families at risk of problems, and offering help, may be a way of decreasing suicide around the world.”

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5 Steps to Recanting Abuse Charges

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"I'll say and do whatever it takes to get out of here..."

"I'll say and do whatever it takes to get out of here..."

And Why You Shouldn’t Fall For Them!

An analysis of recordings of jailhouse telephone conversations between men charged with felony domestic violence and their victims have helped psychologists better understand why some victims decide to recant and dismiss charges against perpetrators.

“The existing belief is that victims recant because the perpetrator threatens her with more violence. But our results suggest something very different. Perpetrators are not threatening the victim, but are using more sophisticated emotional appeals designed to minimize their actions and gain the sympathy of the victim. That should change how we work with victims.” -  Amy Bonomi, associate professor of human development and family science at Ohio State University and study lead author.

The study outlines 5 steps perpetrators used to convince their victims to recant their stories and reverse the charges against them. I recognize these stages as I’ve seen them used. Knowing these stages can put you in a strong position to avoid falling for them.

Step 1 – Heated Argument – in which the perpetrator tries to argue his actions against a strong and resistant victim – “You hurt me and you’re not getting away with it this time!” “Well, if you’d just do what I tell you, I wouldn’t have to hit you, bitch!”

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