(based on a lecture by Alfried Langle)

Traumatic experiences are as much a part of life as joy or love. From Greek “trauma” is translated as damage.

The moment the trauma becomes conscious, we question what we have believed all our lives. We ask ourselves the questions: “is this really how life is?”, “What am I worth if they treat me like this?”  Trauma is not necessarily physical disasters, accidents and the death of loved ones - it can simply be the course of life events that is suddenly disrupted or difficult relationships with relatives.

We are vulnerable, feeling weak and limited in the face of severe trauma.

How to survive this tragedy and remain yourself?

Any injury - damage to an arm, leg or nail is a destruction of integrity through violence.

And if you cut your finger while cutting cheese, then technically what happens to you is the same as with cheese, only it doesn’t cry. The knife forcibly destroys the boundaries of the cheese, its integrity, simply because the cheese is not strong enough to withstand it.  If we cannot resist force, and it breaks our boundaries, this is violence.

But the experience of trauma does not always occur during violence. If you are weak in some situation, then your very failure or depression can be traumatic.

As a rule, trauma causes losses in a person’s functioning. You can't play volleyball with a broken arm. There is also the loss of something that belonged to you, such as a tooth or blood, and this is usually accompanied by pain.

Basically, pain is just a red light on the dashboard that indicates “something is wrong.”  

No matter what the nature of the pain, you usually feel vulnerable to the world.

Pain signals that you need to find the cause and eliminate it.

The same thing happens with psychological trauma. If we start looking for the cause and looking for ways to eliminate it, we have a chance to get rid of it, restore our boundaries and functionality.

When you're plagued by painful thoughts and anxiety, you need to figure out what's causing them.

For example, you have a hard time going through the holidays, fall into a depressed state, feel lonely and useless and cannot understand why this is happening. The root of these experiences may be that in childhood something was taken from you without asking, thereby trampling on your boundaries and significance. At the same time, it was forbidden to protest about border violations.  Therefore, when you are shown indifference during the holidays, it reveals a childhood trauma that has not been worked through and a large amount of energy, anger and the desire to defend your boundaries begins to torment you without awareness or expression. After all, as a child you were forbidden to rebel about this.

Psychotherapy helps to recognize these feelings and share them freely without judgment.

 Awareness, sincere expression of feelings, tears, anger helps to overcome this state, and depression goes away. It’s as if the lid of a boiling kettle was opened and the steam was finally released.

записаться Mekhanizm psikhologicheskoy travmy

Kartina nashikh predstavleniy o real'nosti razrushayetsya, razrushayetsya to vo chto my verim, nashi tsennosti i ozhidayemoye budushcheye.

Ekzistentsial'nyy metod psikhoterapii rabotayet v chetyrekh izmereniyakh zhizni cheloveka: svyazi s mirom, zhizn'yu v tselom, svoim ya i konechno budushchim. Chem ser'yezneye travma, tem sil'neye povrezhdayutsya eti svyazi, no sil'neye vsego otnosheniye so svoim sobstvennym YA.

Imenno «ya» cheloveka dolzhno po ideye deystvovat' v situatsii travmy, no poskol'ku «ya» travmirovano, to u cheloveka net sil borot'sya i yemu nuzhna pomoshch' izvne.

Dazhe yesli travma ugrozhayet ne napryamuyu moyey zhizni, a zhizni drugikh blizkikh lyudey, s kotorymi my sebya identifitsiruyem – my tozhe perezhivayem shok.

Bol'she vsego stradayet nashe doveriye miru i kazhetsya, chto v mire ne na chto operet'sya. Tyazheleye vsego smirit'sya s neizbezhnost'yu obstoyatel'stv i otsutstviyem kontrolya nad nimi.

Osnovatel' logoterapii Viktor Frankl, perezhivshiy uzhasy kontslagerya, opisyvayet chto vse chetyre fundamental'nyye motivatsii – budushcheye, dostoinstvo, zhizn' kak takovaya i real'nost' byli slomany u vnov' pribyvshikh uznikov.

Osoznaniye togo, chto proshloy zhizni uzhe net vyzyvalo apatiyu i lishalo kakikh-libo chuvstv, krome boli i unizheniya.

Vse interesy suzilis' do bazovykh – yeda, teplo, son. Lyudi pogruzilis' v khaos, zhizn' v stade. Ischezlo oshchushcheniye nastoyashchego, ne bylo budushchego i vse poteryalo smysl.

Primerno takiye zhe simptomy perezhivayut lyubyye zhertvy voyny, iznasilovaniy i kakikh-libo drugikh ostrykh travmiruyushchikh perezhivaniy.

Lyudi perestayut doveryat' drugim i miru v tselom. Eto trebuyet dlitel'noy i kropotlivoy psikhoterapii.

Viktor Frankl nashel vykhod iz etogo tupika. Ved' v osnove travmy lezhit vopros smysla. V svoyey prirode travma ne imeyet smysla.  Konechno, mozhno nakhodit' smysl cherez religioznyye predstavleniya o tom, kakoy tsel'yu rukovodstvovalsya Sozdatel' vnosya v nashu zhizn' eti ispytaniya. No slozhnost' zaklyuchayetsya v tom, chto my ne mozhem poluchit' pryamogo otveta na etot vopros, a tol'ko stroit' gipotezy.

Yesli postavit' vopros inache «Chto ya mogu vynesti iz etogo opyta? Kak eto pomozhet mne stat' boleye glubokim chelovekom?» - togda travma obretayet smysl.

Kogda my zatsiklivayemsya na voprose bez otveta «za chto mne eto?» i ne mozhem nayti otveta -  eto nas razrushayet. Nam vazhno borot'sya za svoye dostoinstvo i smysl.

Chtoby ne bezhat' iz zhizni s pomoshch'yu samoubiystva i ne mstit' primenyayetsya metodika «vstan' ryadom s samim soboy».

Pozitsiya yeshche odno ekzistentsial'nogo avtora Al'bera Kamyu otlichayetsya ot pozitsii Frankla. Yesli Al'ber Kamyu v knige «Mif o Sizife» predlagayet ispol'zovat' svoye dostoinstvo kak istochnik energii, to Viktor Frankl schitayet, chto etogo ne dostatochno, nuzhny yeshche otnosheniya s samim soboy, drugimi i Bogom.

Otnosheniya s samim soboy

Chto imeyetsya vvidu pod otnosheniyami s samim soboy? Obychno vedet sam s soboyu dialog i vazhno chtob on ne ostanovilsya vo vremya prozhivaniya travmy, chtob vnutrennyaya zhizn' i vnutrenneye prostranstvo ne ischezli.  Prakticheski uderzhivat' vnutrennyuyu zhizn' v kontslagere Viktoru Franklu pomogalo nablyudat' voskhod i zakat, gory, formu probegayushchikh oblakov, smotret' na sluchayno vyrosshiye v etom uzhase tsvetki.

Ещё 3 679 / 5 000 The mechanism of psychological trauma

The picture of our ideas about reality is destroyed, what we believe in, our values ​​and expected future is destroyed.

The existential method of psychotherapy works in four dimensions of a person’s life: connections with the world, life in general, one’s self and, of course, the future. The more serious the injury, the more these connections are damaged, but most of all the relationship with your own Self.

It is the “I” of a person that should, in theory, act in a situation of trauma, but since the “I” is traumatized, the person does not have the strength to fight and needs help from the outside.

Even if the trauma does not directly threaten my life, but the lives of other close people with whom we identify, we also experience shock.

What suffers most is our trust in the world and it seems that there is nothing in the world to rely on. The hardest thing is to come to terms with the inevitability of circumstances and the lack of control over them.

The founder of logotherapy, Viktor Frankl, who survived the horrors of a concentration camp, describes that all four fundamental motivations - future, dignity, life as such and reality were broken in the newly arrived prisoners.

The realization that the past life no longer exists caused apathy and deprived us of any feelings other than pain and humiliation.

All interests have been narrowed down to the basic ones - food, warmth, sleep. People plunged into chaos, life in a herd. The feeling of the present disappeared, there was no future and everything lost its meaning.

Approximately the same symptoms are experienced by any victims of war, rape and any other acute traumatic experiences.

People stop trusting others and the world in general. This requires long-term and painstaking psychotherapy.

Viktor Frankl found a way out of this impasse. After all, at the heart of trauma is a question of meaning. In its nature, trauma has no meaning.  Of course, you can find meaning through religious ideas about what purpose the Creator was guided by by introducing these trials into our lives. But the difficulty is that we cannot get a direct answer to this question, but only build hypotheses.

Putting the question differently: “What can I take away from this experience? How will this help me become a deeper person?” - then the trauma makes sense.

When we get stuck on the unanswerable question “why am I doing this?” and we can’t find the answer -  it destroys us. It is important for us to fight for our dignity and meaning.

In order not to escape from life by suicide and not to take revenge, the “stand next to yourself” technique is used.

The position of another existentialist author, Albert Camus, differs from Frankl’s position. If Albert Camus in his book “The Myth of Sisyphus” suggests using your dignity as a source of energy, then Viktor Frankl believes that this is not enough, you also need a relationship with yourself, others and God.

Relationship with yourself

What do you mean by relationship with yourself? Usually he conducts a dialogue with himself and it is important that it does not stop while the trauma is living, so that the inner life and inner space do not disappear.  What helped Viktor Frankl to practically maintain his inner life in the concentration camp was watching the sunrise and sunset, the mountains, the shape of passing clouds, and looking at the flowers that grew by chance in this horror.

It seems absurd that such little things can fuel our lives. But in fact, a flower is proof that beauty still exists, it shows that life still exists, it is stronger than circumstances. This is a fundamental value.

Relationships with others

Relationships with others are, for example, for Frankl the desire to see his family and wife.

Viktor Frankl could distance himself from what was happening with the help of an internal dialogue about how he would write a book about it, analytical reflections on life and observations.

Even despite the restriction of external freedom, there was internal freedom. “The opportunity to take a stand cannot be taken away from a person,” wrote Frankl. Saying “Good morning” to your neighbor or just looking him in the eyes was not necessary, but it indicated the presence of some kind of minimal freedom.

Even the most minimal freedom, a bedridden person needs to live, to feel that he is still a human being, with dignity, that he has faith.

Faith and relationship with God

The latter means that the question “why?” needs to be reformulated into the question “what does this situation/God want from me?” This way of posing the question preserves freedom and dignity and makes sense.

In this way, the prisoners acquired the meaning that they attached to both suffering and death itself. According to Viktor Frankl, the fight against trauma and suffering can be quiet and unnoticeable.

The surviving founder of logotherapy learned to re-enjoy the simple things in life after being released from a concentration camp and, although he lost the fear of death, he acquired the skills of a deeper and more meaningful life. The small values ​​of life, such as simply paying attention to the people around us or nature, are not always noticeable, but can give meaning to existence, and we can heal and feel human again.

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