You may have experienced a traumatic event, once or twice in your life. Most of you even experience post traumatic growth (PTG). For those who have experienced past trauma, usually a variety of internal reactions appear as signs of the trauma itself. By the way, how to eliminate trauma? Let us find out the way to heal trauma from the text below.
What is Trauma?
Trauma is an unpleasant experience which can lead to confusion, fear, feelings of helplessness, dissociation, anxiety, etc. When not addressed, trauma can have long-term adverse effects on the individual (Trauma – APA Dictionary of Psychology, t.t.).
For example, someone who was involved in a traffic accident when she was just beginning to ride a motorcycle. In that incident she suffered a serious injury. Since the incident, she has been traumatized if asked to ride a motorcycle on the road and various signs of her trauma appeared. Some of the signs of her trauma include anxiety and fear that she will have another accident.
When individuals are faced with conditions above, some people have been able to control the reactions that appear in themselves by coping with past trauma and some people have not. In individuals who do not understand how to cope with past trauma appropriately, some of them will tend to use inappropriate coping strategies or non-adaptive coping strategies, such as avoiding the source of fear or trauma. Actually, this selection of inappropriate coping strategies can worsen the trauma experienced by the individual themselves.
How to Eliminate Trauma?
According to Bhinnety (2008), trauma itself will be difficult to forget and tends to stay in our memory. What you can do to overcome it is your response or reaction to the past trauma. The response can be done by coping strategies when the trauma returns from your memory and interferes with your daily lives. To reduce the possibility of worsening the condition of trauma due to inappropriate coping strategies, now we are going to share some ways to eliminate trauma.
Here are six ways to eliminate trauma:
- Realize that this reaction is natural and normal
After you have experienced a traumatizing event, you are going to feel frightened, anxious, or your body gives rise to excessive reactions when remembering the incident. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) said that the first way to overcome psychological trauma that individuals can do to eliminate trauma is to realize that abnormal reactions to abnormal conditions are normal.
- Deal with the reactions that arise
According to Jeong Youn & Halfond (2019), the existence of certain feelings or reactions due to trauma they feel sometimes makes some of them feel that avoiding these feelings is better than facing them. However, when this behavior is done repeatedly, it can worsen the mental health of the person concerned and keep away from the healing process.
The avoidance behavior is like being unproductive, because you do not want to leave your house to avoid triggers of fear or other traumatic reactions. Need to know that eliminating past trauma by confronting the triggers can slowly help you to return to your routine. Of course, this is not easy and requires time and support from various parties.
- Seek support
According to Jeong Youn & Halfond (2019), support from loved ones to work and social environments plays an important role for individuals who experience psychological trauma, especially those who are in the process of coming to terms with their trauma. The form of support from the people around us can take various forms ranging from only a friend to chat to asking for help to complete tasks, especially households that become neglected when the traumatic reaction appears.
Tedeschi, Park, and Calhoun in Şimşir et al. (2017) showed that social support is one of the important and useful variables in supporting post traumatic growth and has been shown to provide positive changes to individuals who have experienced trauma.
- Actively participate in groups with similar conditions
It is undeniable that when someone is going through a difficult time due to money trauma, the individual may feel alone or even tend to isolate themselves from their environment. Various things may cause the individual to feel alone or choose to be alone, for example, feeling that no one can understand the feelings that arise because of the reaction to the traumatic conditions he experienced.
One way to eliminate trauma that can be done when experiencing this is to participate or join a group that is experiencing similar conditions. These activities can help to reduce stress and provide a space where they do not feel alone anymore (Şimşir et al., 2017).
- Spiritual coping
Spiritual or religious coping is another way that we can try to eliminate or cope with our trauma. Şimşir et al. (2017) explained that an individual’s level of religiosity or spirituality can change between before and after experiencing a traumatic event. However, most of the participants in Şimşir et al.’s (2017) study showed positive changes and experienced an increased belief in God and a closer relationship with God.
According to Jeong Youn & Halfond (2019), by trusting in God’s providence or a greater energy, individuals may see the process of making peace as a cure for trauma or a process that can be both psychologically and spiritually fruitful. Also, this relates to increased patience to get through the process of reconciling which is not short, but necessary for survivors.
For example, you went through a difficult process to come to terms with your fear of riding a motorcycle on the road again. You tried to accept your God-given destiny. You remembered the teaching in your belief that God will give results in accordance with the efforts made by his servants, so you continued to be eager to process to overcome the psychological trauma and physical trauma you experienced.
- Seek professional assistance
If you are trying to get rid of your trauma, the process of how to get rid of negative thoughts that you go through is definitely not easy. When you are making these efforts, you will experience obstacles such as not feeling unable to deal with the physical and psychological reactions of existing trauma, then it is better for you to seek professional assistance. Keep in mind that not all processes of eliminating or overcoming trauma are easy. There are some conditions that require professional assistance such as psychologists and psychiatrists.
A bookworm and researcher especially related to law and citizenship education. I spend time every day in front of the internet and the campus library.
