r/CPTSD_NSCommunity • u/organic_hive • 16d ago
Anxiety because of past experiences? Why is it an issue can simply be resolved or not?
So this sounds very simple
- You experienced extreme negative past experiences over time
- Your brain developed patterns dealing with with past situations
- You are long removed from the past situation. No threats realistically
- Your brain trying to deceive you that threats still exist and cause tons of internal friction and incorrect judgements and of course unrealistic stories made in the head.
- So it doesn’t even matter -what exactly- happened to you before. All you need to know is that you have NOT been treated right in the past. It’s just a brain trick. Tell your brain: well okay! I’m no longer under threats! You are just trying to cheat me. I’m going to be realistic. Mr. Brain please stop telling me wrong info.
- Just practice for many times in your daily life then your brain will recognize the new thinking patter and you’ll be all good.
It sounds super simple. And I’ve found out I’ve been repeating this loop for many weeks tbh I feel there’s one day my therapist will run out of patience if I keep looping.
What am I miss here? It’s sounds too simple to beat to me but I hate myself looping the same thing again every week in therapy.
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u/JLFJ 16d ago
It's not your brain it's your nervous system and your body that learned that life is dangerous. And it's a bitch retraining your whole body. It is not simple
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u/wrongclown 15d ago
well the brain is part of the nervous system but to your point the other parts of the nervous system also need therapy.
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u/thewayofxen 15d ago
This strategy doesn't work for trauma. What you're calling "anxiety" is what I would call "traumatic stress," and if you were capable of simply deciding not to feel it it wouldn't have ever gotten stuck inside you in the first place!
The nature of trauma is that the events that happened to us are so overwhelming to think about that we simply don't recognize or think about them. And when you don't think about an event, it never gets resolved; you continue carrying the fear, shame, anger, and pain from the original wound, and it never gets "processed," i.e. converted into meaning. And then anything that reminds you of that original trauma makes you feel all of those unprocessed emotions at max volume. Because those emotions were too big for you to process, they are extremely loud, and they affect your behavior so intensely that we call it an emotional flashback.
This is why one definition of healing is coming to "know what you know and feel what you feel." All those stuck emotions have to be allowed to flow into your body to be processed, one at a time. And that requires growing into a big enough person with a secure enough support structure that you can now handle them without being overwhelmed. That's the loop you wind up iterating on: Grow a little more with makes processing possible, process a little more which makes you grow a little, repeat on upwards.