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CBT and childhood traumas

11 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Hi Davit,

I agree, more input would be helpful. I do wonder about childhood and what is set in childhood in our brains and therefore how we respond to the world our entire lives. In other words, what we can change and what we cannot. I think it is a question without a solid answer because every person is different. Some people succeed after difficult childhoods and some do not and I am sure most of us are in the middle and find some solid ground and some areas that are just hard for us our entire lives. Since anxiety played such a big role in my life while I was developing as a child, sometimes I wonder how much of this I can change and how much of it I will need to better accept and stop trying to change so much.

11 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

loves trees

If I think about it, the anxiety I felt as a child definitely was different than what I felt in the last ten years. That early childhood anxiety was like the anxiety one feels with new experiences, like the anxiety from a roller coaster or the first day at school. Gone shortly after experiencing it. The anxiety that stayed the longest with me was that felt as I spent more time alone wandering around outside by myself. Like when I would go fishing by myself and be listening to every sound around me. Half fear, half exciting. Later when I worked there was the anxiety of the challenge. This I think did like yours. It kept me from focusing on any other fears I was going to have. Unfortunately too often they would come through as headaches which was too bad because I loved my job. But I think a lot of that was the interaction with people because later when I got a very dangerous job where I worked away from people I never got headaches again. Some times my heart would pound from the anxiety of being on the edge. Yet even when I got hurt it never increased that other type of fear anxiety, I still wanted to do my job. When I get panicky I do something a bit dangerous that takes care and observation and causes anxiety. It makes the panic go away.

But this is different from the anxiety that caused my panic disorder. Different from the anxiety leading up to panic attacks. That one was triggered by a trauma but not the same trauma as loosing my spleen. Or the trauma of last years life threatening operation. Those were life or death, black or white. No the trauma that got me was knowing life was changing and that I would never be the same again. That all my plans were like ashes in the wind. Life as I knew it was over.

Acceptance was the answer for me. All around me people my age or younger are dying. I can not let myself focus on that. Life is not over it just got harder and that is the normal progression I had to accept. I also had a much better life than I thought if I really think about it.

The key I think is to change the unacceptable anxiety to the acceptable form. Something that I think is hard to do because of the association in memory. Black is still black as far as it is concerned. Yet a person can have a night mare and go back to sleep but a panic attack with the same trigger and the same symptoms has us walking the floor. It has got to be how we look at the form of anxiety we are having because as you pointed out there is more than one kind of anxiety and more than one use for it. Or maybe it is the same anxiety but a different way of looking at it.

This is very interesting and could use more input.

Davit

11 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Hi everyone,

For those of you who don't recognize me / my name, I have been using this site for several years, and I know some of you (hi!) but have not been on here regularly lately. This site helped me to really understand panic and anxiety and I am so grateful for it.

I do not experience anxiety the same way I did before I found this site. In that sense I would say I am "cured" in that I do not feel overwhelmed by panic or anxiety anymore, even though they still come up from time to time.

I wanted to post here today to share my thoughts on the issue of how CBT works when someone has experienced an abusive childhood. I speak only from my own experience, and part of why I am posting is to welcome thoughts, reactions, suggestions, ideas.. Dialogue breeds insights more often than not especially on this site.

I do realize that for childhood trauma, CBT is not the only tool to use, or even the one directed at anxiety that is rooted in abuse because "complex PTSD" describes what can happen after a traumatic childhood and CBT is usually only one of the tools recommended for that..

For me, anxiety is the main emotion I felt as a child because I lived with a lot of unpredictability which bred anxiety (no surprise that this would happen, humans like predictability and children need it).

Did anyone else, as a child, feel soothed by anxious thoughts?

Anxiety was my comfort as a child. That will sound bizarre to anyone who has not experienced it I think. I thought of something to worry about, and that soothed me. That is what I did as a child, and no one interrupted it. there were no school psychologists in those days, no social workers around me to ask how things were going, and even if there had been anyone with training around me, would I have revealed I was enduring my childhood by resorting to anxious thoughts most of the time? Probably not.

Now I did CBT a few years ago, as an adult, childhood long left behind, and after confronting my anxiety and telling it that it was not the best self soothing strategy anymore, it revealed that there were a lot of things underneath that anxiety - sort of like when you lift up a garden pot and there are all these bugs and slugs underneath you did not see before lifting it. Specifically a lot of sadness and grief.

Anyway, I wanted to share this, hopefully get some responses because I have always cherished the responses I get from people on this site - so kind and helpful everyone is here. If this freaks anyone out, here is my consolation - in working with the feelings underneath the anxiety, I believe I have become more empathetic towards myself and others, more compassionate than I already was, more in touch with the complexity of the human range of experience both happy and sad. Some of the slugs under the garden flower pot are ugly when you really look at them but some of them are intriguing, fascinating, maybe even ones we want to enjoy. If nothing else, they are ours in that they have come into our awareness, and we can learn from them. I hope that ends this post on a hopeful note!

All the best to everyone who reads this,

and for anyone-if this resonated with you, please let me know! :)

loves trees.

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CBT and childhood traumas