You Are Not Defined By Your Psychological Trauma

In a prior article called Psychotherapy: You Are Not Defined By Your Diagnosis, I discussed how clients who have been in therapy before often define themselves by their diagnosis (e.g., "I'm depressed" or "I'm anxious").  

You Are Not Defined By Your Trauma

This is especially true when clients use their health insurance to get reimbursed for their therapy and their therapists provide them with a diagnosis, which is required by the insurance companies for reimbursement. 

As I stated in that article, while it's often useful to know about certain diagnoses, a diagnosis cannot possibly define a whole person.  As a whole person, you're much more than your diagnosis.  Also, diagnoses change and many diagnoses are only an approximation of the problem--or as close as a therapist can get for insurance purposes.

Rethinking How You See Yourself

Whether they realize it or not, aside from defining themselves based on a diagnosis, many people think of themselves as being defined by their psychological trauma. This is often unconscious. In other words, if they were neglected or abused as part of their personal history and their family treated them as if they were unlovable, they take on that identification as if it were true (see my article: Overcoming the Emotional Pain of Feeling Unlovable).

To say it another way, people who have no awareness of identifying with their trauma often see themselves through the eyes of the people who traumatized them.  If their parents treated them as if they were worthless, they feel and behave as if they are worthless.  They also expect very little from their relationships because they have completely taken on this identification without even realizing it.

For people who completely take on this identification, there's no separation between the identity that was forced upon them and how they see themselves.  They don't question this identification because it's so ingrained in them.

Clinical Vignette: 

The following clinical vignette, which is a composite of many different cases with all identifying information changed, illustrates these dynamics:

Nina

Throughout her childhood both of Nina's parents were highly critical of her to the point where they told her that she would never amount to anything and no man would ever want her.

They also said similar things to her older sister, Ann, but Ann was a fighter and she fought back against her parents' criticism.  Ann would get angry and tell her parents that they were wrong.  This incurred their parents' anger and they would punish Ann, who would find other ways to rebel against her parents.  When she turned 18, Ann moved out to live on her own and spent very little time around her parents once she was free of them.

But Nina was a quiet child.  She would never think of arguing with her parents or rebelling.  Her parents' criticism hurt her, but she responded by working harder to get excellent grades and being "extra good" in the hope she could appease her parents and she would finally get the love and praise she wanted so much from them.  

She also saw the impact of Ann's rebelliousness in terms of how much tougher her parents tried to be with Ann, and she didn't want that.  She hoped her parents would see her as "the good one" in the family.  But even though her parents' nurturance never came, Nina didn't give up hope that if only she could show them she was "good enough," they would love her.  

As an adolescent, Nina was shy.  With the exception of a couple of close friends, she tended to isolate at home.  Sensing the problems in Nina's home, her high school advisor encouraged Nina to go away to college and helped her to get a scholarship.  

Since Nina got a scholarship, her parents agreed reluctantly to allow her to go away to a college in Upstate New York.  At first, Nina was unhappy at college because she saw herself as an outsider (see my article: Feeling Like an Outsider).

But, over time, when she found a group of like-minded students who were focused on academic achievement and intellectual activities on campus (as opposed to parties and other social activities), she was happier.

Although Nina was attracted to young men on campus, she felt too shy to talk to them.  Even when some of these young men approached her to ask her out, Nina found dating to be fraught due to her feelings of low self worth. There were times when she couldn't understand why these young men were interested in her.

Without realizing it, Nina had internalized her parents' critical view of her. She took on the identity of someone who wasn't lovable or even likable.  She had no understanding that she was defining herself based on her parents' treatment of her--until she sought help in therapy to deal with anxiety.

Her therapist helped Nina to question how she saw herself, which was difficult at first.  Gradually, by doing Parts Work therapy, Nina came to understand that there was a big part of her, the part that held the trauma, which continued to be critical in the same way that her parents were critical of her.  But, aside from the critical part, she also discovered another part of her (even though it was a very small part at first) where she believed in herself (see my article: Overcoming the Internal Critic).

Her therapist helped Nina to develop this smaller part over time so that she had better access to it, and whenever she felt her critical part berating her, she would ask that critical part to step aside to allow this other more confident part to emerge.

Once Nina realized that she was not defined by the trauma of her overly critical parents, she could be more objective about herself.  She was able to examine the part of her that felt unlovable so she could question and refute that identification.  

Using EMDR therapy, her therapist also helped her to work through her early unresolved trauma so she could let go of her trauma-related identity. As she worked through the trauma, Nina felt more empowered in her life and deserving of love.  This enabled Nina to be in a loving relationship and a satisfying career after college.

Conclusion

People who experienced early trauma often carry an unconscious identification based on the trauma.  This identification might be that they're unlovable (as in the scenario above) or that they're powerless, not good enough, and so on.  

Trauma therapy can help individuals to become aware of the identification they have taken on, question it and discover other healthier parts of themselves (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?).

This work in therapy isn't easy or quick, but most clients find it worthwhile because it eventually frees them from the unconscious, false trauma-related identification.

Getting Help in Therapy

Many clients who seek help in therapy come because they're aware they're dealing with a debilitating problem, but they might not understand the problem. They don't usually come in because they're aware of their trauma-related identification.

Working with a skilled trauma therapist, you can develop a greater awareness of yourself and learn to let go of false negative identifications.

By working through your unresolved trauma, you can free yourself from your traumatic history so you can lead a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 or email me.

How Unresolved Trauma Affects How You Feel About Yourself

Psychological trauma often has a negative impact on how you feel about yourself.  In trauma therapy, like EMDR, the psychotherapist explores the negative beliefs that developed for the client as a result of trauma (see my articles: How EMDR Works: EMDR and the Brain and Experiential Therapy, Like EMDR Therapy, Helps to Achieve Emotional Breakthroughs).

How Unresolved Trauma Affects How You Feel About Yourself

These beliefs often remain unconscious before the client seeks help in psychotherapy.  But these negative beliefs often get enacted in other areas of the client's life without his or her realizing it before therapy.

Depending upon the kind of trauma and the lasting impact, these negative beliefs might include feeling unlovable, unworthy, powerless, weak and so on.  This is especially true if there weren't people who intervened at the time of the trauma on the traumatized person's behalf.

Fictional Clinical Vignette: How Trauma Affects How You feel About Yourself
The following fictional vignette, which is similar to many actual therapy cases, illustrates how trauma can have a negative lasting impact on self perception:

Nina
After she experienced herself as being helpless in a situation at work where she was being sexually harassed, Nina sought help in psychotherapy.

Nina explained to her psychotherapist that she had always done well in college and in her prior jobs.  She was able to negotiate whatever challenges presented themselves in all her prior educational and career endeavors.

However, in her new position as a director, she felt undermined by a manager, Alan, who felt that he should have been the one promoted into the new position--not Nina.  Not only did Alan voice his anger about her getting the promotion when he felt he was better qualified, but he also tried to belittle her by making comments with sexual innuendos when no one else was around.

Nina told her therapist that she ignored him at first but, over time, Alan's sexual comments were more brazen and hostile.  She knew he was trying to intimidate her, and she thought about reporting him to her executive director and the human resources department, but she was afraid that no one would believe her because it would be her word against his, and Alan was generally well liked.

At the same time, Nina knew that she needed to do something because Alan's remarks were becoming more outrageous, and it was getting to the point where she dreaded going to work and encountering him alone in the pantry or on the elevator.  She was losing sleep over it, and over time, this problem was taking up more and more of her thoughts.  It was also interfering with her work.

The psychotherapist explored Nina's background and discovered that Nina was sexually abused from the time she was five until she was 18 by a paternal uncle, who was much loved by the family.  The sexual abuse included making sexual comments to her, kissing her on the mouth and fondling her breasts (see my article: Overcoming the Psychological Effects of Sexual Abuse).

With much trepidation, when Nina was seven, told her mother about the uncle's inappropriate behavior. But her mother refused to believe her.  Not only didn't she believe Nina, but she punished her because the mother believed that Nina was lying.

As a result, the sexual abuse continued whenever the uncle found an opportunity to be alone with Nina (similar to her situation at work with Alan), and Nina felt that, somehow, she was at fault for what her uncle was doing.

The only reason the abuse stopped was that Nina went away to college.  Determined to put the sexual abuse out of her mind, she focused on her college work and excelled in her studies.  After college, she shared an apartment with friends, and she never attended family events where she knew her paternal uncle would be there.

Until Alan began sexually harassing her, Nina thought that she had overcome her history of sexual abuse.  But she realized that she was feeling just as powerless in her current situation as she felt when she was a child.

Her psychotherapist recommended that Nina could take the situation at work one step at a time, so if Nina was too afraid to file a formal complaint with her human resources department, she could speak with her human resource manager informally to find out her rights.

Her therapist also told Nina that it appeared that her earlier trauma of feeling powerless was triggering feelings of powerlessness in her current situation.  She explained to Nina that she had an unresolved trauma that was complicating her current situation, and she recommended that they use EMDR therapy to help Nina to resolve the original trauma involving the sexual abuse with her uncle as well as the fact that her mother didn't believe or support her when she told her mother about the abuse (see my article: EMDR Therapy - When Talk Therapy Isn't Enough).

Nina took practical steps to speak with the human resource (HR) manager about what would happen if she filed a sexual harassment complaint.  To her surprise and relief, the HR manager told Nina that she was already conducting an investigation and, based on a complaint from a few other women in Nina's department, she was about to contact Nina to ask her if she was being harassed.

Since Nina had come to her on her own, the HR manager asked her specifically about her experiences with Alan, and Nina was able to tell her about the sexual comments that he made to her.  A few weeks later, based on several women coming forward to complain about Alan's behavior, he was terminated.

At the same time, Nina and her psychotherapist did EMDR therapy to work on the many years of sexual abuse that she experienced by her uncle.  They also worked on how betrayed Nina felt that her mother thought she was lying.

Nina was somewhat surprised that, after all the years that had gone by, she could still be triggered into feeling powerless in her situation at work.

Their work with EMDR therapy was neither quick nor easy but, her therapist explained, EMDR therapy tends to be faster and more effective than regular talk therapy with unresolved trauma.

Over time, Nina was able to work through the unresolved trauma so that it was no longer affecting her.  She no longer felt powerless in relation to her memory of the abuse or in her current life.

In fact, when another male colleague tried to sexually harass her, Nina put him in his place and told him in no uncertain terms that if he did not stop, she would report him.  Startled by her assertiveness, the colleague seemed intimidated by Nina.  He apologized for his behavior, and he stopped making inappropriate comments.

Feeling Empowered After Resolving Prior Trauma

Afterward, Nina felt she had handled the situation well, and she told her psychotherapist that she felt good about herself.

Shortly after that, Nina had a long talk with her mother about the sexual abuse that occurred when Nina was child.  Her mother believed her this time.  She apologized and they began to work on improving their relationship.  Her mother also forbid the uncle from coming to any more family events.  With Nina's permission, her mother also told other family members so that they would be aware of his behavior and prevent any other children from being abused.

Conclusion
This brief fictional vignette illustrates that, even when a client thinks that s/he had suppressed the negative emotions associated with an early trauma, these feelings can get triggered in a current situation.

The unresolved trauma remains unmetabolized just under the surface, and it can remain there for many years until it gets triggered again.

Trauma therapy, like EMDR therapy, can help clients to overcome traumatic experiences in a more effective way than regular talk therapy.

Getting Help in Therapy
If you are struggling with unresolved trauma, you owe it to yourself to get help in trauma therapy (see my article: The Benefits of Psychotherapy).

A skilled trauma therapist can help you to overcome unresolved trauma so you can free yourself from your history and lead a more fulfilling life (see my article: The Therapeutic Benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy).

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist (see my article:  How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

As a trauma therapist, I work with individual adults and couples, and I have helped many clients to overcome unresolved trauma.  

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

How Psychotherapy Can Help You to Overcome Trauma and Develop a More Accurate Sense of Self

Does it seem like your perception of yourself is off?  Does it seem that logically, you know your sense of self should be higher but, on an emotional level, you're not feeling it?  This is a problem that many people experience.  In this article, I'm focusing on how psychotherapy can help you to overcome the disconnect between what you know and how you feel about yourself (see my article: How Developmental Trauma Affects How You Feel About Yourself).

How Psychotherapy Can Help You to Overcome Trauma and Develop a More Accurate Sense of Self

How Self Perception Develops
Your self perception develops in early infancy and it's based on interactions between you and your primary caregiver (a mother, in most cases).

An infant looks at his mother's face to discover who he is.  If the mother is attuned to the baby most of the time, the baby forms a positive perception of himself.  But if the mother is distracted, depressed or angry most of the time, the baby will often form a negative perception of himself, unless there are other adults who interact positively with the baby enough to offset the negative effects from the mother.

How Early Experiences Affect Self Perception As An Adult
Throughout life people continue to scan other people's faces to discover how these people are reacting towards them.  As children develop into adults, they have a greater ability to develop their own sense of self that is separate from how others perceive them.

But if there was significant early childhood neglect or abuse, it can be challenging to have a positive self perception.  Even when a person might know, on an intellectual level, that she is a "good person" who is kind, honest, intelligent and empathetic towards others, she might not feel it.  The disconnect between what a person knows objectively and what she feels can be disturbing.

The problem is that, as an infant, this person internalized a negative sense of self from the primary caregiver.  Adults have defense mechanisms that can serve to protect them against these negative reactions, but infants don't have strong defense mechanisms.  If something in their environment is bothering them, they can't fight or flee.  If protesting by crying doesn't work, their only recourse is to dissociate.

Later on, as an adult, it can be confusing when someone can't understand the difference in what he thinks vs. what he feels.  He might not know that, when he was an infant, his mother was too depressed, anxious, neglectful or abusive to reflect back love and nurturance to him.

Under these circumstances, it usually doesn't matter how many people might praise him as an adult.  He will probably still feel like he is "not good enough" or "unlovable" (see my article: Overcoming the Emotional Pain of Feeling Unlovable).

Fictional Clinical Vignette
The following fictional clinical vignette illustrates how psychotherapy can help a client to overcome traumatic early experiences so he can develop a more accurate self perception:

Ed
From the time Ed was a young child, he had a poor sense of self.  No matter how many "A's" he got in school, no matter how much his teachers and others praised him, Ed felt unworthy.

Ed's poor sense of self interfered with his making friends and socializing with others.  Fortunately, throughout his life other people saw positive qualities in Ed, liked him, and gravitated towards him.  But Ed had difficulty feeling like a worthwhile individual--no matter how many people befriended him or what he accomplished in his life.

When Ed was in his mid-30s, he won a prestigious award in his field and he attended an awards ceremony where he was honored.  As he listened to the speakers praise him, he was grateful for their kind words, but he felt empty inside because, despite the award and the recognition, he had a poor sense of self.

During the award ceremony, Ed felt an urge to flee.  He knew objectively that he worked hard and his achievements merited the award, but he still felt like a fraud and an impostor, which confused him.

He also felt ashamed because he felt that if the people who were honoring him knew him deep down, they wouldn't think he was a worthy person (see my article: Overcoming the Feeling That People Wouldn't Like You if They Really Knew You and Overcoming Impostor Syndrome).

Shortly after that, Ed realized that, in reality, he had a very good life and he had everything to look forward to but, despite this, he was miserable because of his low sense of self.  He knew he needed to get help in therapy.  So, he contacted a psychotherapist who specialized in his presenting problem and began attending therapy sessions.

After Ed talked about his presenting problem of having a low sense of self, he discussed his family history with his psychotherapist.  He told her that his brother, Jack, who was older by 12 years, told Ed that their mother was significant depressed after Ed was born.

As a result, Ed was raised primarily by a nanny who was known to be efficient but not warm or loving.  Jack also told Ed that their father was often away on business trips and that Ed was usually left alone in his crib for hours at a time.

As his psychotherapist listened to Ed's account of his early childhood history, she realized that it appeared that he was emotionally neglected a child.  As a result, as an infant, Ed didn't get the necessary mirroring and nurturing necessary for an infant's healthy emotional and psychological development.

His psychotherapist provided Ed with psychoeducation, based on mother-infant research, about the importance of early mirroring and nurturing and the negative consequences to emotional and psychological development when they are missing.

Ed had never made these connections before.  While he was glad to know the possible origin of his low sense of self, he also felt discouraged.  He told his therapist that, while it was helpful to have this information, he didn't know what to do with it to change how he felt about himself.

His psychotherapist explained that before experiential therapy, including trauma therapy, was developed, all that psychotherapists could offer clients was insight into their problems.  But since trauma therapy was developed, these problems could now be worked through.

She also provided Ed with information about EMDR therapy, a trauma therapy, which was well researched. She explained that EMDR therapy was developed more than 30 years ago by a psychologist named Francine Shapiro, Ph.D. (see my articles: How EMDR Therapy Works: EMDR and the Brain and Experiential Therapy, Like EMDR Therapy, Helps to Achieve Emotional Breakthroughs).

His psychotherapist recommended that they use EMDR therapy to help Ed to overcome his low sense of self, and Ed agreed.

Over the next several sessions, after the initial period of preparation to do EMDR, Ed provided his psychotherapist with 10 memories that he had about himself from all different times in his life where he felt he was unworthy.

After Ed and his therapist went over the memories, Ed chose a memory to work on using EMDR therapy that still had an emotional charge for him.  Over time, as they processed this memory with EMDR, his psychotherapist asked Ed to think back to the earliest memory that he had where he had the same emotional/physical experiences as he did with the memory that they were working on.

Ed was surprised that he remembered an early memory of being about three years old when he tried to get his mother's attention.  He remembered calling his mother, who was in the room with him, but she didn't respond.  Then, he remembered crying and getting louder and louder, but his mother still didn't respond.  She just sat there.  Eventually, the nanny came, but when she discovered that Ed wasn't hungry and he wasn't in need of anything else that was physical, she put him back in his crib and left.

How Psychotherapy Can Help You to Overcome Trauma and Develop a More Accurate Sense of Self

After several months of processing similar memories, Ed began to actually feel like he was a worthy individual.  His self perception became a lot more positive and objectively accurate.  He was able to take in others' praise because he felt deserving.  He was also able to interact more easily with others and form closer bonds with friends.

Conclusion
Individuals, who experience early trauma of either neglect or abuse, often develop a negative sense of self because they have internalized these experiences at a young age.

This usually results in a disconnect between what these individuals think and what they feel.  Regardless of what someone might think on an objective level, and all evidence to the contrary, s/he will most likely feel a low sense of self, which can be confusing.

The fictional vignette which was provided above is a simplified version of how trauma therapy can help clients in therapy to overcome early trauma that creates a negative sense of self.

Each client is unique in terms of how s/he responds to trauma therapy, like EMDR, and how long it takes to overcome early trauma.

Getting Help in Therapy
Early trauma often has a negative impact on an individual's sense of self, and this affect can be very difficult to overcome alone.

Trauma therapy, like EMDR, was developed to help individuals in therapy to overcome the impact of traumatic experiences (see my article: The Benefits of Psychotherapy and Why Experiential Therapy is More Effective to Overcome Trauma Than Talk Therapy Alone).

If you're struggling on your own, you can get help from a licensed mental health professional who is trained as a trauma therapist (see my article: How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

Once you have overcome your traumatic experiences, you can live a more fulfilling life free of your traumatic history.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist (see my article: The Therapeutic Benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy).

I work with individual adults and couples, and I have helped many clients to overcome trauma experiences.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Regaining Your Sense of Self After a Traumatic Event

It's not unusual for a change to occur in the way you see yourself after a traumatic event.  Assumptions that you made about yourself, whether these assumptions were conscious or unconscious, can seem off when you experience an event that was out of your control or beyond what you were able to handle.

Let's take a look at an example of this to demonstrate what I mean.

The fictionalized vignette shows how a traumatic event can change the way you feel about yourself and how I work with this kind of issue to help to integrate the experience and to help a client regain her sense of self:

Sandra
Sandra was a woman in her early 40s when she came to therapy to deal with the loss of her husband who had died a few years before in a car accident.

Regaining Your Sense of Self After a Traumatic Event

She attended cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) a few months after her husband's death, and from that therapy she realized, on an intellectual level, that her husband's death wasn't her fault.  But on an emotional level she was still feeling deeply guilty, and she felt as if she didn't know herself anymore.

She described to me how, before her husband died, she felt like a competent person who was the one that others usually turned to for advice of help.   But after the car accident that killed her husband, Sandra was plagued by self doubt, self blame and a sense of foreboding about her future--even though she knew intellectually that she wasn't to blame.

On an emotional level, Sandra felt that she could have prevented the accident if only she had insisted that her husband get the brakes checked immediately when he said that he heard the brakes making a strange sound.

She did, in fact, tell her husband that until he got the brakes checked, he should use her car to drive to work.  But she felt that she didn't insist enough.  Her feeling was:  If only I had really insisted, he would be alive today.

As we went over the sequence of events, Sandra revealed that, even though her husband told her the night before that he would use her car because he didn't have time to go to the mechanic with his car, he left her a note the next morning while she was asleep that he decided to use his car because he didn't want her to be without her car for the day, and he said he would see the mechanic that night after work.  He told her not to worry--he was sure that everything would be okay.

That same morning, while Sandra, who worked from home on a business call, the police appeared at her door and told her that her husband was in a fatal car accident.  Even though she heard their words, she felt like she was in a surreal dream.

It was only after the police left that Sandra found the note that her husband left her on the kitchen table and she realized this was the last communication she would have with her husband and she felt the deepest sorrow she had ever felt in her life.

In our first session, Sandra spoke about feeling "crazy" that she could know one thing (she wasn't responsible for her husband's death) and, at the same time, she could feel the opposite (she was to blame).

Regaining Your Sense of Self After a Traumatic Event

I normalized Sandra's experience by letting her know that this is a common experience under these circumstances and she wasn't alone in thinking one thing but feeling another among people who had experienced this type of trauma.

Then I spoke to her about EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocess and how EMDR is used to process trauma (see my articles: What is EMDR? and How Does EMDR Work?).

During the next few sessions, Sandra and I worked on helping her to develop coping skills to work on the most traumatic event of her life, the death of her husband.

After she learned to do the Safe Place Meditation and she developed other emotional resources in our work together, we began to process the memory that she chose, which represented the worst part of her husband dying, which was the day the police came to her house and informed her that her husband was dead.

Part of the protocol in EMDR therapy is to ask the client what negative beliefs they have about themselves as a result of the traumatic memory that we're working on.

In Sandra's case, she said her negative beliefs about herself were, "I'm helpless" and "I'm a bad person."

As previously mentioned, before the traumatic event, Sandra felt like a good and confident person who could handle whatever came up in her life.  But after the accident that took her husband's life, Sandra felt just the opposite about herself.

As we processed the memory, Sandra experienced waves of sorrow that she didn't know were still there.  But she also experienced waves of deep relief between each wave.

This is what usually happens when people process loss during experiential therapy, like EMDR.  The emotional activation usually comes in waves with a build up, a peak and then a release of emotion which usually provides a sense of relief between waves.

Many people have the misconception that emotional activation will just peak in therapy and remain at that peak.  This misconception discourages some people from coming to therapy to work on their problems because they think it will be overwhelming, but for most people this isn't so.

Sandra went through feelings of guilt, self blame, and sorrow.  Then, as she continued processing the memory in our sessions with EMDR, to her surprise, she felt a sudden surge of anger towards her husband that she had never been aware of before:  "Why did he do this?" and "How could he do this to himself and to me?"

There was no question that it had been an accident, as opposed to a suicide, so this wasn't the issue.  The issue was that Sandra couldn't believe that her husband had been so irresponsible.

Even though these feelings were uncomfortable for her, this was a turning point in Sandra's therapy because, after her anger surfaced, she realized, on a deeply emotional level, that it actually wasn't her fault.  She realized that she had urged him to get the brakes checked and he was the one who chose to wait.

Regaining Your Sense of Self After a Traumatic Event

This turning point was very important to our work together because it was the first time that Sandra felt on a visceral level, as opposed to an intellectual level, that she really wasn't to blame and she said she realized, "I did everything that I could, but I couldn't stop him from choosing to drive the car with the faulty brakes."

Our work continued and Sandra was able to work through her sadness, self blame and anger. Using EMDR, she was also able to regain a sense of herself as a good and competent person. She also realized that there would be things in life that she wouldn't be able to control and she would have to accept this.

Summary
The vignette above about "Sandra" reveals that a traumatic event can dramatically change how we feel about ourselves, but experiential therapy, like EMDR, can help to restore that sense of self.

Unlike other types of therapy, like CBT, which might only provide an intellectual understanding, like it did for "Sandra," experiential therapy helps clients to have a visceral felt sense of what's real, which is what leads to people getting better in therapy.

Getting Help in Therapy
Many people live their whole lives with a diminished sense of self after traumatic events because they don't get psychological help.

If the issues that I've discussed in this article resonate with you, you owe it to yourself to get help from a licensed mental health professional who has experience working with emotional trauma and who uses experiential therapy, like EMDR, Somatic Experiencing or clinical hypnosis.

Getting help in therapy could make the difference between continuing to suffer with a diminished sense of self and feeling good about yourself.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Coping With Changes in How You See Yourself

There is an old adage, "Everything changes. Nothing remains the same," which is true not only for the circumstances of our lives but also for changes in how we see ourselves.  In a prior article, Navigating Life's Transitions, I discussed, in a general way, how change can affect us and suggested some tips on how to get through times of difficult change, whether they are changes that we choose or changes where we have no choice.  In this article, I'll be focusing more specifically on changes in self perception.

Coping With Changes in How You See Yourself

People often resist change because they fear the challenges that the change might bring.  This is, of course, understandable because some changes can be frightening and overwhelming.  This includes changes in our self perception.

Even Changes in Ourselves That We Welcome Can Make Us Feel Ambivalent and Uneasy
As I mentioned in my prior article about coping with change, even changes that we want can be stressful.

For instance, let's look at hypothetical example:  A woman, who is told by her doctor that she must lose weight or she'll be at risk for certain obesity-related medical problems, works hard for many months to diet and exercise to lose weight.

When she gets down to the weight her doctor recommended, she feels a sense of pride and a sense of accomplishment for achieving her goal.  She now has more energy.  She also fits into clothes that she loves that she couldn't wear before.  Her friends and coworkers are happy for her and compliment her.

Generally, she's happy that she feels and looks great.  But when she looks in the mirror, she is momentarily taken aback by the image she sees.  It's so different from the image that she was seeing for the past 20 years that she thinks, "Who am I now?"

Coping With Changes in How You See Yourself

In addition, she's also getting much more attention from men than she ever did before, which, on a certain level is flattering but, on another level, is new and a little frightening for her because she never saw herself as being attractive to men.

So, she begins to realize that, in many ways, the way she sees herself, both internally and externally, hasn't caught up with the reality of this big change in her, and she has some mixed feelings about these changes.

She also begins to realize something that she never allowed herself to see before--she has lifelong problems with self esteem.   In the past, she never allowed herself to see that she saw herself as someone that men would never be interested in.

In the past, before she lost the weight, whenever any thoughts of this came to mind, she brushed them aside by telling herself that this wasn't important.  Now that she is getting more attention from men,  she feels confused about why men are more interested in her now and how she feels about it.

There are times when her ambivalence and unease about how she sees herself and how others see her make her almost wish that she was overweight again.

When she talks to friends, who never had these problems, they don't understand.  They tell her that she looks great and she should enjoy this new attention that she's getting.  She feels frustrated because they don't understand what she's going through.

After months of struggling with these feelings on her own, she decides to go to therapy to work through this issue.

Coping With Changes in How You See Yourself

She's relieved to discover that her therapist not only understands the complexity of her situation, but she's also able to help her to adjust to the changes and begin to thrive.

This hypothetical example is one of many different circumstances where changes in how we see ourselves can be a mixed bag.

In future articles, I'll discuss other examples of changes in self perception.

Getting Help in Therapy
When you're going through changes in your life, one of the most challenging can be a change in how you see yourself.

There are times when this kind of change can be overwhelming and loved ones don't understand.

At that point, you could benefit from seeing a licensed mental health professional who can help you not only to cope with the change but to thrive (for some tips on how to choose a therapist, see my article:  How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

I've helped many clients in therapy to overcome their fears about change and to see themselves in new ways.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also see my article:
Gaining a New Perspective in Therapy About Yourself and Others





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