David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
Trauma, Loss and Recovery - A Universal Approach
by Dr. Mark Goulston
March 15, 2011
A formula to get past any trauma
"The key to recovering from something truly awful is learning to live with life never being the same again," a patient said to me some years ago after her husband and child had been killed in a car accident.
This is what she told me several months after seeing me and was something she arrived at on her own. She was of course still deeply sad, but was no longer devastated and furthermore the smallest glimmer of life had returned to her eyes when she came in and shared this with me. She continued, "Life never being the same again doesn't meant that it will be entirely different. It doesn't mean that I'll never laugh again, never enjoy being with friends. And even the toughest realization, it doesn't mean that I'll never love again because that is something my husband and even my child would get angry at me for."
I couldn't take much credit for it since most of what I did was "just listen" to her. She insisted that helped, but also said that the Seven Steps to Recovery she had learned from our sessions and trained herself to do also enabled her to finally have the breakthrough above which involved the 6th of the Seven Steps.
The Seven Steps to Recovery is a way to talk and walk yourself through any upset you've had and make things better instead of worse.
I view trauma as a horrendous and horrifying event that splits apart the thinking, feeling and acting parts of your personality. And when that happens you feel that the next step will be for you to shatter or what some patients describe as "fragmenting." At that point you begin to panic.
The reason the Seven Steps to Recovery works is that it in essence reconnects the thinking, feeling and acting parts of your personality. More than that it enables you to adapt to the reality of what is as opposed what no longer is. One patient told me it felt like suturing their personality back together again.
This is also a great tool to teach your children to help them master stress, and for them to internalize a way of pausing, calming and centering themselves later on in life.
by Dr. Mark Goulston
March 15, 2011
A formula to get past any trauma
"The key to recovering from something truly awful is learning to live with life never being the same again," a patient said to me some years ago after her husband and child had been killed in a car accident.
This is what she told me several months after seeing me and was something she arrived at on her own. She was of course still deeply sad, but was no longer devastated and furthermore the smallest glimmer of life had returned to her eyes when she came in and shared this with me. She continued, "Life never being the same again doesn't meant that it will be entirely different. It doesn't mean that I'll never laugh again, never enjoy being with friends. And even the toughest realization, it doesn't mean that I'll never love again because that is something my husband and even my child would get angry at me for."
I couldn't take much credit for it since most of what I did was "just listen" to her. She insisted that helped, but also said that the Seven Steps to Recovery she had learned from our sessions and trained herself to do also enabled her to finally have the breakthrough above which involved the 6th of the Seven Steps.
The Seven Steps to Recovery is a way to talk and walk yourself through any upset you've had and make things better instead of worse.
- Physical Awareness: when you're feeling stressed, think to yourself, "I am physically feeling _____ [what] in my _____ [where in your body]."
- Emotional Awareness: "And emotionally I feel _____ [angry? frustrated? scared? sad? disappointed? hurt? upset?] and how my _____ [fill in the emotion you just named] is _____ [name the level of intensity]."
- Impulse Awareness: "And feeling _____ [name the physical feeling] and _____ [name the emotional feeling], and feeling it _____ [name the level of intensity], makes me want to _____ [name the impulse]."
- Consequence Awareness: "If I act on that impulse, the most likely immediate consequence will be _____, and a longer-term consequence will be _____.
- Reality Awareness: "While I am holding off (for now) on acting on that impulse, an other and more accurate perception of what might really be going on is _____________________ [seeing the world as it actually is, can further help you not react to the way it isn't].
- Solution Awareness: "A better thing for me to do instead would be to _____ [fill in an alternate behavior such as counting to 10, waiting 24 hours, or thinking of what you want the outcome to be immediately and in the long term, and what you need to do to achieve those outcomes].
- Benefit Awareness: "If I try that solution, the benefit to me immediately will be _____ [for example, "I won't make things worse," or, "I won't do more things that I'll regret and then have to apologize to people for them"] and in the long term will be _____ [for example, "I'll be on my way to making things better," or, "I'll have more respect for myself and gain more from others"].
I view trauma as a horrendous and horrifying event that splits apart the thinking, feeling and acting parts of your personality. And when that happens you feel that the next step will be for you to shatter or what some patients describe as "fragmenting." At that point you begin to panic.
The reason the Seven Steps to Recovery works is that it in essence reconnects the thinking, feeling and acting parts of your personality. More than that it enables you to adapt to the reality of what is as opposed what no longer is. One patient told me it felt like suturing their personality back together again.
This is also a great tool to teach your children to help them master stress, and for them to internalize a way of pausing, calming and centering themselves later on in life.
