Psychological trauma, psychotrauma

People love to complain. If the boy is tired, he will complain that he rubbed his leg. If a girl does not want to do her homework, she will tell about the nasty classmates who offended her terribly. If we are not in the mood today to solve the problems that confront us, there is a great temptation to avoid solving them by explaining our unwillingness to strain ourselves with the difficult circumstances of the past that inflicted unhealing wounds on you. Which are now called psychological trauma.

I do not want to say that there are no psychological traumas at all. I want to say that if it is possible to write something off for them, a long queue of people who want it instantly line up, and psychotraumas are composed on the fly. And then it is very difficult to figure out where the hard truth is and where the cheap cunning is.

However, let’s try to figure it out!

A reader writes: “My friend (she is already 40 years old) is afraid to be alone in the dark. Logically, she understands that it’s okay. But physiologically — the pulse, breathing, etc. quickens. They began to look for the reason … Finally, she remembered that when she was punished as a child, they locked her in the pantry and turned off the light there. Such is the punishment for life … ”- All children like to close themselves in the dark and be afraid: at this time their pulse quickens, breathing is normal stress, ordinary children’s entertainment. An adult woman has the same reaction, a slight stress and a slight fear that does not entail any real trouble. In the language of injuries, this is a scratch, not a serious injury. Light stress is not a problem. On the other hand, if you wish, you can make a problem out of anything, including light stress. And we also note that a specialist can remove such a fear of the dark in half an hour, a maximum of a couple of hours … Are you sure that there is something to talk about here?

Also: “My sister is afraid of heights. The reason is that in the elementary grades in the library on a stepladder I took out and leafed through books. The stepladder swayed very strongly and she almost fell … She was VERY scared. Anyone can be frightened when they suddenly fall from a ladder, but if you do not make a tragedy out of this, the fright passes in a couple of minutes. As for the fear of heights, this fear is inherent in almost everyone, and for this you do not need to fall from the ladder. Yes, looking down from the roof of a 20-story building is scary. Why do you need to approach the edge of the roof?

And also: “If you talk with girls of easy virtue, it turns out that more than half of them suffered sexual abuse in childhood. Psychological trauma? Yes». If you talk to girls of easy virtue, it turns out that more than half of them grew up in more than problematic families, watched a lot of things and looked for sexual adventures at a very early age. The result is not psychological trauma, but bad upbringing.

So, for now, we can state: at least in ordinary consciousness, any circumstances that can justify the position of the Victim are considered psychotrauma. Accordingly, if we lower it from science into life, then psychotrauma is an emotionally loaded everyday pseudo-concept, to which all the unfortunate people who remember it in time are happy to refer. And then psychotrauma is understood as the harm caused to the mental health of a person by adverse circumstances or actions of people.

And according to science, psychological trauma is a hypothetical cause of inadequate behavior in a healthy psyche, associated with difficult, painful events that have occurred in a person’s life. Or — immersion in mental illness for reasons that others perceive as valid.

Fashion for psychotrauma

At the end of the 19th century, every decent girl at least once every few years must have fainted from experiences. Today there is no such fashion. At the beginning of the 20th century, all psychiatrists studied hysterical seizures with convulsions, today this fashion has sunk into history. Today there is a new fashion in the yard, a fashion for psychotrauma.

Until the 80s, no one knew or spoke about psychotrauma, no one was afraid of psychotrauma. With the development of crisis psychology, the concept of «psychotrauma» has become popular, parents are now frightened by children’s psychotraumas, smart children and quick-witted parents actively manipulate the threat of a possible psychotrauma.

Everyone in our class already has a cell phone! If you don’t buy me a cell phone, everyone will laugh at me, and I will have a psychotrauma!

They used to say: “I came in a bad mood”, “I returned angry and upset.” Now they say more solidly: “Be careful, he has a psychotrauma!”

As a result of the massive exposure to talk about the dangers of psychotrauma, many readers of psychological literature are poisoned by the idea that our entire life is due to our childhood traumas. Our parents do play a decisive role in our development, parents are responsible for our upbringing, but they are not responsible for what we are now. Today I am already an adult, and what happens to me is already on my responsibility. Only by accepting this responsibility, a person is able to grow up.

We can agree that there are people who are predisposed to psychotraumas, who lead such a lifestyle and have such inclinations that psychotraumas simply stick to them. This is a person-child (a person who often shows the features of a child’s position in thinking, emotional reactions and behavior), even more often — an emotional person (the addition of the characteristics of a neurotic and a person-child). As for the personality of the hysteroid plan, then composing a psychotrauma for themselves for any reason is not easy for them — just, but a real joy.

How to prevent real and imaginary psychotrauma?

The recipes are simple: the removal of anatomical negativity, a healthy lifestyle, the development of a positive worldview, the development of adulthood, which primarily includes responsibility, habit and the ability to be needed.

Is it possible to work with psychotraumas in psychotherapy? The question seems strange, in fact it is very important. Psychotrauma may well be a reality (circumstances: natural disaster, mass death of people, including the death of children, and everything happens in front of the mother), and then work with psychotrauma may be necessary and justified. However, cases are not uncommon when a psychotrauma is sought (and found) where it does not exist, to the complete delight of both the client (he justifies his helplessness) and the psychotherapist (he has received a long client). How to warn it? See How to deal with internal problems.

Important: mental and psychological trauma are not the same thing. Psychic trauma is damage (by someone or something) to the psyche, leading to a noticeable disruption of its normal functioning. A person ceases to recognize loved ones, attention floats, speech is odd, there are gaps in memory, thinking becomes confused … In case of psychological trauma, there are no mental disorders, a person still has the opportunity to be adequate and successfully adapt to the environment.​

The main claim to the “concept” of psychotrauma is the absence of both a strict definition and any criteria for the presence or absence of psychotrauma. In the medical literature, the concept of psychotrauma is absent. There are no observed signs of psychotrauma. There are no criteria for applying psychotrauma. The emergence of any strong feeling of a negative plan can be interpreted as a psychotrauma inflicted by people or circumstances. Accordingly, almost any Masha can accuse some Vasya of inflicting psychological trauma on her, if after talking with him her mood has deteriorated, especially for a long time. After all, the damage to her mental health has been done?

With that clear, observable criteria there is no psychotrauma, instead of criteria they often indicate evidence psychotrauma. How solid these signs are, we will leave our opinion to the respected reader. So,

The presence of an event that is assessed as a severe impact. An unexpected loss of a very dear person, rape, for a child — an unexpected divorce of parents (in the presence of very close emotional ties with both).

It seems reasonable, but this criterion cannot be recognized as objective, since the significance of an event is a very subjective matter, depending on the culture of the local and the individual. Wise people are ready for anything (See Soul Insurance), and a human child is ready to throw sincere tantrums over any little thing. As far as children are concerned, would any child take the rape or divorce of their parents as a blow? It turns out not: the data says that the perception of this is very individual and largely depends on the scenarios that are prompted by the environment for the child.

The obsession of memories. The average time to fade intrusive memories in a healthy person is three days. If a person returns to the experience again and again, after a week, month, or even years, and all new (and past events) are now seen through the prism of the negative of the trauma received, this is an important sign of psychotrauma.

It also seems reasonable, but again it cannot be recognized as an objective criterion. Long-term obsession with memories may not speak of a psychotrauma, but of a person’s bad habit of living with negative experiences and memories. There are many such people, people with a habit of a negative worldview perceive everything through the prism of negativity without any psychological trauma, and if they still don’t know what to do with themselves, then this is a natural way of life for them, and they constantly occupy themselves with difficult memories: see a fragment from the film «Amelie».

Involvement. A person does not separate himself and the situation that led to the psychotrauma, cannot distance himself from it, look at what happened calmly, from the outside. He perceives everything personally, thinking about the situation, a person thinks about himself and vice versa. He seemed to fit into the situation.

At the same time, many people live like this all the time, they, in principle, do not have the habit of considering the situation from the outside. They will take any little thing personally. The inability to separate oneself from what happened more often than not speaks of a psychotrauma, but of an insufficient level of development of the subject.

Serious difficulties in normal mental functioning, stoppage of personality development.

In principle, active personal development characterizes not many people, passive personal growth always proceeds depending on external circumstances, and those who are inclined to worry for any reason (to worry in such a way that “everything falls out of hand”) is always enough.

Tendency to implement life scenarios aimed at self-destruction (suicidal tendencies, alcoholism, drugs, craving for delinquency).

In general, there are enough such people in life, and without any psychotrauma.

Childhood trauma in the life of an adult

For many psychotherapists, the belief “Childhood and childhood traumas fatally determine the life of an adult” is characteristic. To what extent does this belief correspond to scientific data? You can confidently answer — it does not correspond at all. This postulate is untenable, studies and experiments have not confirmed this fact. see →