Unexpected events often occur in our daily lives that disrupt the psychological balance and alter our emotional state. These upsetting events can range from a simple setback to dramatic events with tragic consequences, such as the death of a loved one, the diagnosis of a serious illness, a physical or intellectual disability, the total destruction or loss of a valuable asset, job dismissal, divorce, physical or psychological violence, etc.
Setbacks are accepted and overcome quickly because they do not affect any essential and determining factor in our life; But a traumatic event does, because it alters the perception we had about ourselves and the environment, causing transcendental life changes. In this Psychology-Online article, we will analyze and explain what is a traumatic event.
Index
- Coping with trauma: processes
- The formation of a trauma from a real event
- Theories of psychological trauma
- The origin of psychological trauma
- Compliance with predictions
- The potential for emotional activation
Facing a trauma: processes.
In the face of a traumatic event, some people tend to not accept the obvious and they try to live with their backs to reality, to avoid it, but this does not allow the recovery of psychological balance and emotional stability, for this their acceptance is required.
From a psychobiological approach, one way to face this question is to analyze the mental processes involved in traumatic events and their acceptance, focusing on two processes basic:
- The formation of a traumatic event from a real event.
- The acceptance of this by the affected person.
The formation of a trauma from a real event.
The question focuses on finding out how a real-life event acquires the rank of traumatic. From the analysis of the different existing definitions of psychic trauma, the most common characteristics that qualify an event as traumatic can be obtained:
- That originates from a event unrelated to daily experiences normal, that is, it is unpredictable, unexpected or casual (it can be unique and intense or less intense but repetitive).
- Let it be perceived and experience as negative (harmful, dangerous, threatening) for physical or psychological integrity and unwanted.
- That causes a strong psychological impact and causes very intense emotional damage or suffering, capable of inhibiting or limiting their ability to respond.
As can be seen, two factors intervene in the traumatic event, one objective referring to the real fact and its circumstances, and another subjective one that concerns the person who is affected by he. Among these strategies is the search for regularities in everyday events and, based on them, make predictions of future events.
Theories of psychological trauma.
Regularity in relationships within the human-environment system
According to General systems theory regularity is an evolutionary mechanism that gives stability to systems, hence there is a tendency towards it. In the human-environment supersystem there is also this tendency to the regularity of their interactions, and an example of this can be seen in social systems such as family, home, friends, the workplace or recreational associations, where each member occupies a position defined, performs a specific function and maintains an established type of relationship, and all these characteristics tend to remain stable throughout over time.
Our mind looks for the regularities that occur in these interactions and through learning processes It incorporates them into its memory, which implies a lower cognitive and energy cost, since it avoids having to explicitly process the same information each time. In this regard, D. Kahneman (2011) points out that the implicit cognitive system, and with it the forms of primary learning, have as an essential function “maintain and update a model of our personal world that represents what is normal in it, and tends to reject changes, that can only be processed by alerting the explicit cognitive system, which is a very difficult cognitive effort to keep".
The origin of psychological trauma.
Each of us, from knowledge, life experiences, beliefs and values builds a stable and regular image of himself and the world around him (G. Kelly can enlighten us about this process through the fundamental postulate and its 11 corollaries), creating a coherent mental model or representation of how things are and how they work in everyday life and the links we establish with the elements of the environment that provide us balance and psychological well-being (examples of these are family attachment, friendship and fellowship). As the neuroscientist R. Llinás (2001) our brain is not so much an information processor as a “world simulator”, a true builder of virtual realities in which we live as if they were the real reality.
When, when processing information about an event, we perceive that it is in contradiction with the way things are expected to happen according to the model and internalized mental representations, a cognitive discrepancy occurs that results in an instantaneous reaction of disbelief and surprise, prompting our mind to activate all its cognitive resources to search for an explanation that allows establishing coherence between the two representations. But in traumatic events, the force of the psychological impact limits and even inactivates these resources, causing a kind of mental "block" that distorts or interrupts processing.
An indisputable element that contributes to configuring these regularities is the cause-effect relationship of events. The mind tends to look for this relationship under the premise that the events that occur in the environment have their reason for being, they do not happen without more, there is always a prior cause that must obey established norms and well-founded beliefs, and from this relationship seeks regularities in the events. Faced with an event that surprises us and we do not understand, we quickly ask ourselves: Why has this happened? and we immediately tend to look for its cause to obtain an explanation of it, and if this is unknown or we qualify it as incoherent, illogical, unfair or absurd, as it usually happens in the traumatic events (for example, alcohol consumption in traffic accidents), information processing is incomplete or inconsistent.
Compliance with predictions.
The mind consolidates these regularities and acts like things were not going to change and that state of things habitual will remain day after day: we will not get sick, we will not have any accidents, loved ones will remain the same, we will not be fired from work, etc., thus forgetting the possibility of contingencies and unforeseen events. Furthermore, it is expected that the people around us keep your intentions, beliefs, desires, and attitudes stable, which provides a sense of automaticity to our social interactions in many settings and situations.
The regularity in most events that occur in our daily lives (getting up, having breakfast, going to work, etc.) and the tendency to overestimating the control we have over events (the illusion of control) prompts us to appreciate future situations and generate expectations about them. Cognitive neuroscientist Jeffrey Zacks tells us that everyday life is nothing more than a constant series of small cataract predictions. Similarly, the philosopher Daniel Dennett points out that the job of a brain is to predict the future in the form of forecasts. about the things in the world that matter to direct the body properly. The mind acts as if these must necessarily be fulfilled and, although we are aware that the predictions may not be fulfilled, we consider it unlikely and do not take them into account when plan ahead.
The consequence of these two strategies mentioned is that we get used to a state of things determined, both in the present and in the future, in which the events have a logical and sensible cause that justifies them, and when an event occurs unpredictable and undesirable that violates such strategies, that is, what is expected to happen does not happen (an encouraging medical diagnosis), or what happens is not expected (a death, a violent assault or an accident) a drastic change is generated in the configuration of the world we had, the regularity of the state of things that we had assumed, and the perception of inability to give an adaptive response to the supervening situation causes frustration and hopelessness.
The potential for emotional activation.
What qualifies an event as traumatic is not in itself the cognitive contradiction mentioned above, but the negative and intense emotional alteration that accompanies it and causes the inability of the person to cope adequately with the situation generated (feelings of fear, guilt, anger, frustration, shame, despair, etc.).
If an event does not have harmful consequences or they are inconsequential, negative emotions are hardly generated or are of little intensity. But if the event involves consequences that break the pillars on which our model of the world rests and they break the links emotional relationships that sustain relationships with the environment (the model of the world that we have built incorporates emotions that are closely associated with life experiences: love, friendship, solidarity, empathy), the result is that It is no longer possible to relate to him as we did before. In addition, the expectations for the future created disappear, and with them the meaning that we had given to our lives may also disappear.
This tragic situation generates a vigorous force o activation potential emotional capable of unleashing a series of dramatic effects in the intimate sphere of the person: the loss of basic self-confidence and in the other elements of their environment, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, decreased self-esteem, loss of interest and from concentration on previously rewarding activities, change in value system, especially belief in a world just. In addition, the afflictive emotional state causes the loss of control of the situation and limits their resources to cope with it.
The emotional potential generated by the traumatic event is measured through its effects, that is, it depends on the intensity, frequency and duration of the activation of the emotional system, and increases by virtue of the number of emotions that are activated. If anger, hatred, or guilt are added to fear or sadness, awakening a desire for revenge, emotional potential will increase, making the acceptance process even more difficult. This increase also occurs when the traumatic event is repeated several times or becomes chronic (gender violence, bullying, etc.).
This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
If you want to read more articles similar to What is a psychological trauma, we recommend that you enter our category of Cognitive psychology.
