Why Do I React This Way To Trifles, Or What Is The Trauma Funnel? - Self-development

"Girl, you are so young and already so nervous!" - have you heard this about yourself? Or have you noticed that you react to trifles, trifles? It would seem that just someone accidentally stepped on your foot, and you have tears like hail that cannot be stopped. You want to get away from everyone, hide, go to bed, or just watch any series ad infinitum. All this, as it were, saves you from unbearable feelings that cover you and immobilize you, lead you into a stupor

This situation is especially disarming if it happens in front of someone. Feeling as if you have been tripped. And the lack of understanding of the situation makes you even more helpless. After all, from the outside it is such a trifle, but for you it feels like the world is crumbling. Your world collapses overnight, and you become helpless and defenseless. What's going on with you?

What is a "funnel of trauma"

The funnel of trauma was first introduced by Peter A. Levin. An American psychologist has been studying the relationship between trauma and psychosomatic manifestations for 30 years. Studying this connection, he came to the conclusion that as a result of trauma (a person's normal reaction to abnormal circumstances, as a result of which mental health is harmed), the person releases energy to overcome it.

But it often happens that not all of the energy finds a way out for discharge and accumulates. Then any such incident becomes not just a small everyday event, but is intensified by the energy of trauma and pain that have not been lived through and are still stored in you.

Example

Translated into a visual example, imagine that you cut your hand. Less than an hour after the cut, you were hit with a hammer. And after another hour, you fell by this place on a rug with nails. If any of the three events happened on its own, it would not have such physical or emotional pain and reaction. But each subsequent time not only increased the pain, but also weakened your faith, hope, understanding of what was happening. And after all this, even if a loved one tries to touch this place in order to stroke you, support you, your reaction to him and painful feelings will be incomprehensible to him and intolerable for you.

The same process happens with your emotions. Having accumulated unlived and unrealized energy, at any slightest touch to it, you explode and your reaction may be incomprehensible to you and those around you. Your distrust of the world and your sensitivity become unbearable even for yourself.

One of the features of the trauma funnel is that you stop breathing, enter into a stupor, become immobilized. This situation paralyzes you, as if your state of mind captures the whole body, you are in a state of shock. Energy is not expressed and at the same time you did not have enough support from the outside. The main feelings that can be experienced in this state: fear, shame, guilt.

What to do if you are caught in the funnel of injuries

In order not to get into a similar state and not to react to the slightest manifestations of the world, it is worth working with a psychologist and finding all the events from the past that include a similar reaction and impose one pain on another, turning them into a layer cake. This is ideal. But everyone loves him and not everyone wants to go to a psychologist for various reasons. Then you can start working on your own and work on some part of it alone.

Action plan:

• Identify the feeling that you are experiencing in this situation.
• Think of a situation in which there were similar feelings or circumstances.
• If it's fear, rationalize it. Check whether it is justified in this situation or not. Separate the situation from the past from the present.
• If it's shame, identify who you are ashamed of and why.
• Wine? How justified is this feeling? To whom are you to blame and for what?
• All emerging situations from the past can be decomposed into letters of grievances and cry, live what was not lived.
• Think, feel, whose support you would like to receive and did not receive in this and past situations. Find a way to give it to yourself or ask for it now.

Do not ignore these situations. If you find yourself in a funnel of injuries, become numb, react to the slightest harmless situation, then you need help. Your psyche and body does not care who will help them: you or a specialist. The important thing is that you have already accumulated enough unlived trash that needs to be sorted out and free up space.