3 Fundamental Ways Trauma Changes Our Views
Let’s say you always considered your driving time as a way to unwind, as a form of self care—and your car as a safe space. Then right as you’re pulling out of your driveway, someone hits you from behind. Immediately, this accident has the potential of affecting how you perceive the world, and from that moment onward, for months following the crash, you feel unsafe in any car and pulling out of your own driveway. What if it happens again? You become hypervigilant about other drivers and perceive that other cars are drifting into your lane or failing to stop at a safe distance behind you. For a time, your perception of safety while in your can is gone, and you overcompensate by being extra careful. With time and patience, you’ll probably return to your previous belief system after the trauma, “my car is a safe space, driving is self care, my driveway is safe.” However, sometimes, people have a hard time going back to their baseline, thus leading to a worldview that life is unsafe.
Many factors contribute to cognitive patterns prior to, during, and after a trauma. The above illustration shows Beck and colleagues’ cognitive triad model (1979), which shows how trauma can alter three main cognitive or thinking patterns: thoughts about self, the world, and the future.
Trauma can have severe impacts in our perceptions and can lead to:
A sense of feeling incompetent or damaged,
Seeing others and the world as unsafe and unpredictable
Seeing the future as hopeless—believing that personal suffering will continue, or negative outcomes will preside for the foreseeable future
This thinking patterns which we adopt as a result of a traumatic event or events, can greatly influence your belief in your ability to use internal resources and external support effectively. From a cognitive behavioral perspective (CBT), these thoughts work in two directions and work toward sustaining and contributing toward the development of depressive and anxiety symptoms after trauma, a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts, if you will. On the other hand, it is possible for thinking patterns to also help be protective in nature against debilitating psychological symptoms. Trauma can be very complex and getting help from a therapist can be helpful in processing and understanding the nuisance of all these thought patterns and learning how to cope with them.
If you’ve experienced a traumatic event, getting help from a therapist on a timely manner can make all the difference. Some studies have shown that early intervention (within a few months of the traumatic event) can help determine whether an individual will develop PTSD symptoms. If you don’t have access to a therapist, talk to friends and family, you can also make use of journals to process your feelings and thoughts.
If you're feeling suicidal, please call 911.
If you're in crisis and looking for immediate support, please call
Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
or text the Crisis Text Line: 741741
