Working with Emotional Triggers and Trauma

When a client is at the mercy of their emotional triggers…

… it can leave them feeling powerless whenever painful traumatic memories resurface.

So, in the video below, Bill O’Hanlon, LMFT shares the strategy he’s used to help his clients gain emotional control over the traumatic memories that keep them stuck.

Have a look.

Click here for full transcript

So, sometimes people just go over, and over, and over what happened, and they just keep being … Sort of almost wallowing in it. I don’t want to be blaming, and devaluing, but it’s like they just go over it and they don’t move on. And so, I think one of the challenges there is that you want to be supportive, and you want to validate, and you want to hear, and listen, but you don’t want to deeply … We know from brain science now that you’re grooving that trauma more, and more the more they tell the story in the same way, and relive it in the same way. So, for me, I like to have them write out the whole story. There’s some great research. James Pennebaker has written a book called “Writing Yourself Open,” and a bunch of research has been done that there’s something powerful about writing longhand. Not typing, but writing out your traumatic memory. I have them do it until, as James Pennebaker did, until they feel that the whole story has been told. As much as they remember and as much as they can articulate.
And I have them do it several times until they’re really sure. They can revise it. Nobody else should see it, it’s just private for them, but write it all out. When they feel it’s really good, it might take three or four times to write it, five times, two times, whatever it takes, then we discuss this. I want them to find some way to get rid of it: burn it, drop it in the toilet, bury it, somehow leave it somewhere, get rid of it, distance yourself from it. So, it’s all written down … Usually it’s tear it up, burn it, bury it, so nobody else can see it, but it’s gone. It’s not like it’s totally gone from their life, but for some reason … Like, years ago I heard this interview on National Public Radio, which is our national radio here in the States, and there was a journalist named Bob Simon who during the first Gulf War he was covering the war as an American Correspondent. He got captured by the Iraqi troops. They found out he was Jewish and they basically tortured him. They beat him, they hurt him, but also they would take a gun and pretend like they were going to kill him, and it was an empty chamber. He would think he was going to die each time, so it’s quite traumatizing.
So, finally he was liberated from his captors, and he survived the experience, and he went on, but he really had a lot of post traumatic stress symptoms. About three or four years later he decided to write a book about the experience. He wrote this whole book, the book is done, it’s published, and I hear him on this interview on National Public Radio, and he’s … The interviewer has read the book and said, you suffer from a lot of post traumatic nightmares, and symptoms, and is that still happening? And he said, no, actually I didn’t even think this would happen, but as soon as the book was published it went away. I haven’t had one since then. It’s like the story is over there, and I don’t have to carry it anymore, I don’t have to remember it anymore.
I think that’s true for some of my clients. As soon as the story is written out in the right form, that is they feel it really represents the experience, there’s something that settles in some way. Not everybody, because it doesn’t work for everybody, but it works for enough people. I think it’s a really good technique of write it, read it over, write it again, read it over until you feel you got it right, then burn it, typically is what I have them do, typically, if they will.

For more expert interventions for working with emotional triggers, check out this course featuring Peter Levine, PhD; Richard Schwartz, PhD; Steven Hayes, PhD; Resmaa Menakem, MSW, LICSW; Dan Siegel, MD; and more.

Now we’d like to hear from you. What interventions have you used to help clients with emotional triggers? Leave a comment below.

10 Comments

Lisa Ryals, Student, Brunswick , GA, USA says

You have missed the point, entirely. Missed it… gone…out the window. “Not for anyone to see.”, it’s private”. That’s the whole problem. He didn’t have to hold it by himself anymore. It was out there for others along with him to see. Writing it to burn it and writing it out completely is not the point – writing it so others can see. Others was involved in creating trauma …others can help hold it, know it along with, along side. He didn’t have to hold it alone, he was free to be, to move along without, to come out of it, move away from it.

- Abderrafih Ben, Coach, MA says
  
  There is 2 extremes: talking only about the trauma…repeating the same story again and again…or not talking about it at all, shutting down.
  The presence of others is crucial…we could make them present symbolically: writing a letter to a dead one for eg.,…
  
Ruth Engelthaler, Another Field, Phoenix, AZ, USA says

I am finding ART therapy useful in letting go of trauma. I did not know how well this form of therapy would work; in a way it seems too easy. But the exercise of tracking a bouncing light back and forth and the alternating hand held buzzing stimulation along with the visualization exercises has greatly reduced my own anxiety surrounding past traumatic events.

esperanza sanchez, Social Work, San Diego , CA, USA says

When my clients get emotionally dysregulated i like to use self-havening & EFT/tapping to help calm their nervous system & bring them back to the WOT

- Michele Hill, Psychology, AU says
  
  Where best to learn good quality how tos of self havening
  
Judy Ernst, Psychology, Franklin, MI, USA says

I have a client who’s been stuck a long type. I have her rewrite it to me on messenger (because that’s what we have) and tell me as exactly as she can what’s going on at the moment. She has been able to tell more and more over time. I’m going to have her hand write it as suggested and see what happens. Thanks.

Josephine Navarro, Teacher, Bay Shore , NY, USA says

Every time I have a session with my therapist, who I admire and love dearly, I write down as much as I can remember about the session. And like you’re recommending in this very helpful article, I do find it can be cathartic.

Richard Edge, Other, Indian Head, MD, USA says

for my personal experience with Trauma — physical & eventual mental, social, and legal trauma from my disabilities being ignored — built a great deal of conflict with this assessment. — 100% Disabled Combat Veteran with polyvagal full-body trauma & Trauma seperate from mistreatment.

once Trauma has been ended this beautifully brings it to an end — but when used under active stressors its Trauma inducing, if you will.

Patricia Carey, Social Work, TAMPA, FL, USA says

very interesting

Eleni Atmatsidi, Dentistry, GR says

Thank you very much for this insight! I believe it’s of great importance to let the trauma go this way, by writing about it first and throw it away or burn it. It’s kind of symbolic but means a lot to the person who has suffered trauma.

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