Quora - May 15, 2023: trauma informed medical profession?

From personal experience, adult trauma can be overcome. It is possible to heal. In my case, I don’t know if it is because I had prior experience, so to speak, but I have been able to recover from stuff that happened in adulthood when given the chance. I guess we are talking about primary dissociation. Overall, when having the opportunity to talk about and process events and fallout, it is possible to put it all behind.

Even when repeated over time (in my experience periods of up to 3 years of daily repetition of trauma) can be overcome when one dedicates appropriate time and effort to healing.

Childhood trauma however stays. I guess that is what is called chronic. One may have periods of remission, sometimes lasting even long spells. Even decades. But there are relapses. That is simply the brain develops and works differently. This is what I learnt by living with my brain for a long-ish amount of time:

1. Certainly when one experiences childhood trauma they will be more likely to develop permanent EPs, they may have a relapse with old EPs, will be more likely to have PTSD-like episodes, etc. So, traumatic events can either create new alters/dissociations or trigger old ones.
2. But Not only in trauma. It must be acknowledged that once a brain creates alters instead of sub-personality types, it will do so for almost everything. So, life changes, even positive ones, can create additional selves.
3. I think understanding this multilayered and extremely multifaceted and compartmentalised inner working of the brain has acute implication on the psychology of the individual. Standard psychology does not apply. Therapy has to be multilayered and multi-faceted to identify and manage each compartment in the brain.
4. Compartmentalisation following childhood trauma can be nested with compartments inside compartments. Connections between these compartments can be either totally emotional, or totally logical, or driven by logic that may seem irrational if not understood.
5. I also believe it is important to understand that nobody, EVER is stuck in the past. Parts and selves and alters and whatever you want to call them, are not stupid. If they are allowed to partake in daily life, they will catch up really quick. There are things like calendars, google, news, and lots of information that can bring an alter up-to-date. Stop victim blaming.
6. And this is the same in regards to talking about dysregulation. I will leave you an answer I wrote about that yesterday
   [1]
    , just to give you an idea of how wrong the whole concept of emotional dysregulation is.
7. Understand that double-empathy is laziness. Someone pointed out to me that emotions are like colours. One only need to understand a few basic ones to empathise with others. All complex emotions are a mixture of those basic ones. I agree wholeheartedly.
8. Stop accusing people of psychoses. True psychoses are actually quite rare. Most fears are well founded. Even an “irrational” fear may actually be rooted into something. And even when someone is having a psychotic episode, remember these people are terrified. Give them some love instead of making them feel like they are a burden. Otherwise one is actually validating those fear.
9. Don’t give drugs to people to shut things away. At least not unless a patient specifically asks for it. We should be able to deal with our demons whichever way is best for us, and each should be fully supported. The end goal is healing, not following any specific process or school of thought.

These are just off the top of my head, I am sure there is more, and I can write a lot more about each, but I know infodumping can be frowned upon 🤓

But I think it is very important to extend trauma-informedness beyond the boundaries of mental health. Medical practitioners must ensure their practice is trauma-informed. Many people are traumatised or retraumatised by medical professionals. Many are accused of hipocondria or of being aggressive simply because they bring up issues that doctors are not competent enough to be aware of.

Access to care, signposting and referrals should always be trauma informed. Depending on the statistics, between 50% and 75% of people will experience trauma in their lives. We never know what happens in someone else’s life.

Trauma-informed in reality just means empathy-driven. So, get rid of double empathy theory. Spread information about the basic emotions, and how these are mixed in our minds in the same way the basic colours are blended by artists all over the universe to create millions of colours.

I guess, let’s humanise humanity, huh 😁💜

Here’s a couple of links.

Multiplicity

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May 14

What does it mean to you, personally, to feel dysregulated? How does having multiple selves/alters affect your ability to feel regulated? Any examples you can use to illustrate dysregulation would be very helpful.

IKR? That is what “they” would like us to believe. “dysregulated” 😱😲😬 I have learnt to be careful in accepting mainstream victim blaming language because that has a negative effect on my emotional regulation 🤣 Jokes aside, I don’t ever consider myself to be dysregulated. But I will admit to being intense. There are biological (genetic) and psychological (trauma) reasons why I am so intense. And this mean that for someone with my specific profile: 1. My emotions are perfectly regulated to respond to events IRL and 2. I have the emotional maturity to recognise my emotions and manage them appropriately. Also, 3. My emotions are adequately managed in response to what happens inside my head. So, let’s change the language: * Dysregulated <=> Intense * To regulate <=> To manage our response Because there is not a tap to “switch off” emotions. That is a societal control mechanism. If we don’t feel our sadness, we won’t stand up for ourselves. Society can be as abusive as individuals can be. Emotional regulation is equal to denying our soul its means of communication. Possibly, if I am lenient, it can be classified as some kind of toxic positivity. However, it is important to learn to manage emotions, or rather our responses to emotions. Especially when our emotions can be so intense. Let me give you the example of a couple of my littles. We have been establishing trust, both ways. I made some mistakes, and so did the previous 2 hosts. But overall we made great progress over the past couple of years. Finally, in the last few weeks these two littles chose names for themselves. That is, names that do not reflect their previous roles and trauma. They have been truly happy. Sometimes they come up front and just say their names over and over. I can feel their pride, their developing sense of identity. They feel validated. However, as they do that, and within that joy and pride, they also become inconsolable. I can feel their pain, anguish, desolation. Their disbelief, incredulity mixed with relief that maybe it is really happening: they are loved. And there is a highly charged intensity that can only be described as the sun exploding inside our chest and melting our brain in the process. I have never been through trauma. But they have. And I guess this is the consequence of that. So, when someone tells me to “regulate” I find it insulting. I will never invalidate my littles, or anyone else in the system. in one of my answers I mentioned : [we] all feel a sense of duty, responsibility, and gratitude towards our other selves. We respect and honour them. This is the true nature of resilience. It is about learning to live with the pain. It is about thriving, despite the pain. We just need to learn how to manage the process. For example, we are developing a mechanism where everyone is allowed a space to deal with these emotions. Effectively, we are giving each of our selves the specific type of “therapy” that they need to overcome their trauma. To conclude I hope I proved my point that there is nothing dysregulated about “my” emotions. They are intense. And there are reasons for that. And that is fine. I manage my “intense” emotions by ensuring that I give space for those feeling to be acknowledged, felt, and validated. By trying to “schedule” this activity I can minimise disruptions IRL. However, it must be recognised that sometimes there will be “disruptions”, and that is absolutely fine too. I’ve been using this meme quite a bit lately 😁 I don’t know, I hope I’m not being controversial. I certainly don’t mean any disrespect, rather the contrary. This is just how we see it in our system 💜

Structural Dissociation | DID-Research.org

When people are not supported in processing trauma, they may struggle to integrate the trauma into their narrative and acknowledge its effects on them.

https://did-research.org/origin/structural_dissociation/

Footnotes

[1] 

Neurodivergent UK's answer to What does it mean to you, personally, to feel dysregulated? How does having multiple selves/alters affect your ability to feel regulated? Any examples you can use to illustrate dysregulation would be very helpful. in Multiplicity

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