Researchers often talk about "Big T" and "Little t" traumas. Big T refers to exposure to such horrors as wars, bombings, major accidents, sever child molestation etc and small t to much lesser occurrences that may have seemed horrific to a small child. This categorization is largely useless to the sufferer. Some children come through wars mentally unscathed while others apparently develop severe anxiety and panic issues due to hearing their mother scream at a mouse. In truth trauma should be seen not in categories but as a continuum. What was traumatic for one person may not be traumatic for another.
As I said in the regression section, it might well not be as simple as one major trauma which, when revisited, will release you from a lifetimes torment. On therapist used the analogy of a dense forest, in order to clear a path you needs to chop down not just one tree but many. When you do this you are not necessarily looking for the cause of anxiety, it's more complicated than that. You are looking for the cause of attitudes and beliefs that lead you to feel anxiety. These could be
- I'm not good enough.
- I can't succeed.
- I don't deserve this.
- I can't cope.
- I am week.
- I need people to love me.
The list goes on, these are just a few examples.
And when you can understand and change those attitudes, and take the emotion out of some of the memories that caused them, you can start to untangle your anxiety.
Read on for an example.
A lady who suffered severe anxiety every time she wanted to travel, which mounted to panic attacks the day before and during trips, realised after much searching that she believed that if she left home she would never see it again. Discovering this belief and reprocessing the memory which lead to it and therefore the erroneous thoughts in her mind changed her perspective on travel, and desensitization became incredibly easy. She no longer wanted the anxiety to protect her. (More about secondary gain in part 7)
So how best to recover those trapped memories and start felling some of those trees? Well, after reading the disclaimer move onwards to read about PTSD, regression, trapped negative energy, journey therapy, EMDR, and more.
