From a psychobiological perspective, the acceptance of the traumatic event is a mental phenomenon by which reaches full conviction about the reality of the perceived event, its meaning and consequences. But this does not imply compliance with it, since by definition, the traumatic event is harmful and unwanted.
Learn to accept a traumatic event It implies recognizing that a specific event has destroyed the state of balance and harmony that we had, that there has been a harmful change in the perception of oneself and / or the living environment and, most likely, an alteration in the relationships that we had in the family, social or work environment, all causing a feeling of pain and suffering. It also implies assuming that we cannot go back in time, therefore, we should not continue striving for things to be as they were before and resist the obvious and irremediable fact. If you want to know more about this process, we invite you to read the following Psychology-Online article.
Index
- Overcoming emotional trauma: the need for acceptance
- Are the traumas overcome?
- The process of accepting a trauma
- The complexity of the acceptance process.
Overcoming emotional trauma: the need for acceptance.
Nature teaches us that the adaptation of any living system to changes in the environment is an essential requirement for its survival. For this adaptation to take place in a stable and harmonious way, it is essential that a state of balance is maintained in the system, as required. the thermodynamic principle:
"Open systems tend to maintain an inertial state of resistance to change, which gives them stability. In this sense, every system tends to reach the so-called "steady state", which is the one in which all the variables remain stabilized or fluctuate within margins of security, so that, to any external disturbance, the system will try to respond by restoring the state stationary".
The biological system responsible for achieving and maintaining this state is homeostasis. In the human brain system, psychological homeostatic mechanisms are effective against disturbing events that generate minor changes and we adapt to them without much effort; but when it comes to unexpected events that affect physical and / or psychological integrity and have consequences dramatic for the person, these homeostatic mechanisms are not as effective and cannot prevent their effects devastating.
In these cases, the first defense that the homeostatic machinery sets in motion is to consider a traumatic event as something alien to reality, consider that the event has not occurred or that it does not affect us, so that As long as we do not accept reality, we will not be able to regain psychological balance and emotional stability lost (the stationary state required by thermodynamics). If there is no acceptance, there can be no adaptation generator of psychological well-being (there may be acceptance due to passive resignation, but without well-being). Therefore, it can be said that the acceptance of the new life situation imposed by the traumatic event is part of the mechanism of psychological homeostasis.
Are the traumas overcome?
The process of accepting a traumatic event it is complex and painful for most people who suffer from it. It is very difficult for us to accept that we will no longer have what we had until now (health, family, friends, work, etc.), or that we will no longer have what we wish we had, that's why the first reaction to a traumatic event is to deny it or rationalize it in order to preserve the model of the world that we had.
For the person who suffers the trauma, the idea of surrendering, of leaving the family, professional or social world, of not being involved in the world around him (a world that has let him down or betrayed) is attractive and emerges with enormous force, and is further complicated when the event has caused a feeling of guilt or a blind desire for revenge if he attributes the blame to another person.
On the other hand, an acceptance followed by passive adaptation to the new situation, that is, living everyday life with resignation and bent on frustration and suffering, it can hardly be considered a true adaptation, to qualify it as such it has to ensure the absence of mental disturbance and generate well-being psychological. In addition, it must be accompanied by a positive motivation towards the future (for example, the illusion of achieving a desired goal).
A relevant aspect to take into account is that the cognitive contradiction that occurs in the traumatic event is internal, it is a battle that takes place in our mind, not in the environment, which implies a fight against oneself in which the model we had of ourselves and the world (what should be) fades, and we are suddenly forced to replace it with a new one (what it is). This internal struggle is the fundamental basis of the difficulty of acceptance, since it requires a process of reasoning to understand what happened and then develop an appropriate response that does not lead to behaviors maladaptive. In this sense León Festinger (1959) points out: “Individuals have a strong inner need that pushes them to make sure that their beliefs, attitudes and behavior are consistent with each other ".
The process of accepting a trauma.
Acceptance requires time and effort, especially considering the emotional state overexcited due to the stress of the moment that imposes limitations on the effectiveness of the reasoning processes (mainly because attention is focused almost exclusively on the event and its consequences, leaving aside other circumstances of the environment). Also, in this fight, a factor against is that the mind can deceive us conrationalizations, fabrications, projections, dissociations or denials to justify the position that interests us.
However, our mind has sufficient resources to carry out the process effectively if we know how to use them properly. As V. Ramachandran (2011): “In general, the mind abhors incongruities, and therefore devotes the necessary cognitive resources to reducing or reducing them. minimize them, but only when the situation is relevant enough, that is, when it has enough content emotional".
The complexity of the acceptance process.
It is evident that one does not go from the occurrence of the traumatic event to its acceptance directly and simultaneously, but rather it passes through a multi-stage process in which acceptance is the final stage that is reached when the person recognizes and assumes the reality of the new situation (a descriptive approach to these stages can be seen in Elizabeth's five stages of change model Kübler-Ross).
The difficulty of the mental process of acceptance lies in its complexity and one way to undo this is to break down and analyze the process in parts. Taking into account the characteristics indicated above that define an event as traumatic, the analysis of the process can be divided into different partial acceptances:
- Accept the possibility that a traumatic event may happen to us.
- Accept the existence of deficiencies in our model of the world.
- Accept the suffering generated.
- Accept our biological nature.
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 How to overcome a psychological trauma, we recommend that you enter our category of Cognitive psychology.
Bibliography
- Bertalanffy, Ludwig (1976). General theory of the systems. Fund of Economic Culture.
- Chinn, C.A.; Brewer, W.F. (1998). An empirical test of a taxonomy of responses to anomalous data in sience. Journal of Research in Science Teaching.
- Kahneman, D. (2011). Think fast, eggo slowly. Barcelona. Random House.
- Kelly, G. (2001). The Psychology of Personal Constructs. Barcelona. Ed. Paidós.
- Kübler-Ross, E.; Kessler, D. (2005).About grief and sorrow. Ed. Firefly.
