Blog #14 Trauma Part 2: Trauma and Your Thoughts

A Story Behind Window Blinds

Kwanjai, is a woman of Thai heritage in her mid-20s living alone in an apartment in the city of Denver, Colorado. While pursuing a Masters of Nutrition degree at a local university, she was always known for her extroverted “happy-go-lucky” personality amongst her colleagues. In the winter of 2019 when the COVID pandemic first became a health concern in the US, the initial public reaction was a mixture of confusion, denial, and fear. Amongst people who express their opinions, some folks carried optimism, while others reacted with pessimism and rage. Amidst the many voices in the public, there was also discrimination and hate speech against Asian Americans. As an Asian American woman, Kwanjai was all too familiar with the myriad of ways people have expressed aggression, dismissal, and prejudice against her. Although she had not heard too much discussion around anti-Asian hate in her circle, she felt uneasy and alone since she was the only one in her family living outside of California. 

When quarantine went into effect, Kwanjai’s classes all went virtual. She was spending most of her time inside her small apartment in front of her laptop. Even when she made herself go for daily walks at the park, she felt trapped, describing it as “cabin fever”. Her efforts to exercise were not easy either. She noticed that everyone in public spaces had been avoiding eye contact, and consciously spacing themselves away from one another. She missed the days when she could strike up a conversation with fellow friendly walkers. 

One late afternoon, she was walking on her usual route around the lake in the park. It just snowed the day before, and there were fewer people outside. She was thinking about what she wanted to get for dinner, her eyes fixated on the slick snow-covered sidewalk, when she heard a disgruntled voice from in front of her, “Go back to China, you dirty w****!” Kwanjai was startled and shocked. When she raised her head, she saw a woman with an angry expression rigidly looking straight ahead and started walking past her. Kwanjai was left feeling like a deer in the headlights. Speechless and emotionally frozen, she stood still on the path neither knowing what to say, nor what she should feel. She went home after her walk with a sense of fear and unease.

“I would never have thought this would happen to me”, she thought to herself that night. She called her mother speaking about the incident, but she just couldn't shake off the feeling of distress and confusion. Driven by a strong urge to make sense of what happened, she went on the internet and searched for videos, news reports, and written articles about Anti-Asian Hate. However, the venture of research was like the siren’s song–  the more she read, the more she was sucked in. It also came with a strange combination of anxiety, relief, and terror—like watching a horrifying scene and you can’t look away. She didn’t want to know about all of the material she was reading, but not reading them would make her feel worse. When she finally realized she was doom-scrolling, it was past midnight and she had spent more than two hours on her phone. 

In the following weeks, Kwanjai found herself increasingly isolated. Fearful of being outside, she minimized tasks that required stepping out of her apartment. One particular compulsion was she often felt the need to check that her window blind was closed shut. Only in her darkened apartment, she felt safe. She might still feel trapped, but now it came with a strange sense of conditional safety—as long as she was inside, she felt safe. In her mind, stories of Asian women being targeted in hate crimes echoed and replayed. Sometimes, she even imagined what it would be like if she was the victim in the stories she read. Behind the closed window blinds, she was not okay.

Her sister suggested she should go find help, and so she signed up for therapy at her university counseling center. She was assigned to a therapist who also happened to be an Asian American woman. At first, she was reluctant to open up, but eventually she felt at ease knowing that her therapist understood her. Soon, they started working on the trauma with a method called Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT). The efforts led Kwanjai to recognize her maladaptive pattern of overthinking and creating unrealistic and hypothetical scenarios about danger. A month after she first started to address her trauma, Kwanjai developed the courage to engage in aspects of her daily life that had been challenging. Although she still felt uneasy at times, she started socializing and resumed her self-care again, even if she never walked the same route where the woman had harassed her.

When we feel Confused

Sometimes an intense and traumatic experience can lead us to feeling confused - we can start to wonder “what really happened”, as if what we went through was difficult to comprehend or make sense of. In the case of Kwanjai, her experience of being verbally assaulted likely deeply shook her sense of safety. Thus, a kind of mismatch between the internal worldview and the experienced reality set in. Her assumption that the world is safe was shattered, and created emotional distress. Something horrible happened that turned her understanding of the world upside down. Now, all her attempts for explanations failed to make sense of this new reality, leading her to feel a strange sense of uncertainty, distrust, grief, and confusion.

Our thinking mind plays an important role in the way we feel. This is not to say that our thinking is the sole factor in how we feel, but cognition, “forms of knowing… such as perceiving, conceiving, remembering, reasoning, judging, imagining, and problem solving” (APA 2018), plays an important role. In other words, memories and thoughts create stories and narratives, which influence our emotions. For instance, imagine watching a movie where the main character is grieving a significant loss. With somber music and poignant cinematography, it might make you feel sad and mournful. When that movie transitions to a joyful scene, your sadness may be replaced by a light-hearted feeling. In this example, your understanding of the context of the story influences what you feel in the moment.

When we encounter trauma, our thoughts may not reflect reality due to the confusing nature of our experience—this is called a “cognitive distortion”. Cognitive Distortions are essentially “faulty or inaccurate thinking, perception, or belief”, (APA 2018). Imagine if you have experienced a very intense event that was difficult to fully understand. Your mind might want to create a narrative to explain the yet-to-be-explainable. It is very possible that we generate exaggerated stories and ideas in order to “fill in the blanks” for the unknown. As a result, we create distorted narratives. One aspect to clarify is that even though being traumatized can often trigger cognitive distortions (Ouhmad 2023), cognitive distortions do not always result from trauma. In fact, it is often an inseparable phenomenon in many mental health ailments including, but not limited to: depression, anxiety, obsession / compulsion, and addiction. However, experiencing a cognitive distortion does not mean we are afflicted by pathology. Having thoughts that exaggerate danger is something we all experience, and arguably it might likely be a mechanism that helps us survive (Gillbert 1998).

When Our Mind become Overprotective

There is another term important to know in the topic of how trauma affects our thought processes. Catastrophizing is a kind of cognitive distortion when we “exaggerate the negative consequences of events or decisions”, (APA 2018). It can be “when we think that the worst possible outcome will occur”, or “feel(ing) as if (we) are in the midst of a catastrophe”. For example, say you are an office worker: It’s the middle of the workday and you’re focused on a task,  and you get a phone call from the boss’s office telling you to see them in their office. Unsure about what is to happen, you may start wondering about whether you are about to be criticized for a mistake or worse.

Struggling with social anxiety is another example: You are looking to hang out with a friend in the evening. A few hours before the meeting, they tell you that their five other roommates whom you have never met, are joining. Being a little bit uncomfortable with the idea, you started to think about the worst scenario in which you would be completely ignored, and even judged by these strangers. In both of these examples, what you fear, although it may be rooted in some truth, is impossible to predict. Thus, you are creating stories of catastrophe. 

Catastrophizing is something all of us do. When our brain generates unrealistic scenarios about danger, we feel emotional distress, dread and anxiety. All these negative emotions usually serve the purpose of leading us to either confront or avoid similar scenarios. From that perspective, we can understand even though our mind is trying to protect us, it can do more harm than good. In the example of the office worker, it potentially creates an unneeded sense of vigilance in the workplace, leading to stress and loss of work performance. In the case of socializing with strangers, overthinking about danger can result in not being able to take advantage of the opportunity to socialize. In both of these examples, catastrophizing tries to shield us from any small chance of harm, regardless of what kind of positives we might get out of it. In other words, we can say that our mind is being overprotective.

Sometimes, catastrophizing can take on slightly different forms. I have one such example from my personal experience. Many people have told me about their concerns regarding the safety of riding a large inflated tube down rivers and streams near where I live. Despite knowing these concerns, I have always enjoyed tubing as a treat to escape the summer heat. One summer, I decided to go tubing at a popular local spot. The ride down the river started pretty ordinary. However, as I approached the swifter section, I saw a number of people falling off their tubes. Before I knew it, I flipped 360 degrees, and in the next few moments I was underwater tumbling down the river. Luckily I was wearing my lifejacket. When I finally reemerged, I was a hundred feet from the spot when I fell off. The experience was a bit startling, but I wasn’t overcome with fear. However, as I thought about the incident over the next few days, I began to create exaggerated details of the event. I thought to myself, “how much worse would it be if I didn’t have a lifejacket?” Or “at the river’s current, what would it be like if I hit one of the rocks?” And every time I thought of it that way, I felt a mild form of stress and dread. Although I was not catastrophizing what is yet to come, I was modifying the story of a past experience to generate the feeling of dread and distress as my body instinctively learned to avoid the same experience in the future. 

Besides catastrophizing, there are many more ways our mind tries to “protect us”. For example, through reasoning, we can make our exaggerated ideas feel more real. If you are a parent who has worried about the safety of your child, even if the actual danger is statistically negligible, you would know what I am thinking about. In fact, here are a few cognitive distortions we may engage in at some point in our lives.

Magnification / Minimization: Exaggerating or minimizing importance of events. Catastrophizing is a form of magnification. "We are all going to die!” “Losing a loved one is nothing, it didn’t bother me at all.”

All-or-Nothing: Seeing things as entirely good or bad without being able to consider any nuances. 

“Women in my life harmed me, and therefore all women are bad”.

Overgeneralization: Seeing negative event(s) as a pattern. 

“Since I didn’t manage to complete college twice, I guess I am just too stupid for higher education.”

Emotional Reasoning: Believing something is true because it feels true.

“I feel angry, therefore someone did something wrong.”

“I feel stupid, therefore I am stupid”.

“I feel disappointed, therefore it must be someone else’s fault”.

Examples selected and paraphrased from McAdam, 2024. (Link)

“Should” Statement: Rigid rules about what “should” happen.

“I should fix things on my own.” “I should never let my guard down”.

“I should be unaffected by trauma”.

But also, “I should always try to tend to my wellness”; “I should always assume things are not always negative.”

Notice that none of the statements above necessarily reflect reality; however, they can all contribute to survival. That is the wisdom of our cognitive distortions, even if they are not always helpful.

Addressing the way we think can be an invaluable addition, even if we are already using emotional or somatic approaches. The first step to success would be to gain awareness of our thought patterns. One possibly helpful exercise is to try to review what we have told ourselves in our daily life, and write down anything you suspect to be a form of cognitive distortion. While we are exploring that, we can even enlist a trusted friend or family member. Sometimes our best insights come from external feedback. 

The second step would be to investigate whether our thoughts really reflect reality. We can ask: “What evidence supports this thought?”, and “what evidence contradicts it?” One caveat is that depending on our emotional state, we can pick and choose evidence that makes us more entrenched in ideas ungrounded in reality. It is paramount to try to find emotional safety first. When we can get ourselves to feel calm in the moment, it is easier for us to be logical. 

Safety and Final Thoughts

Working on our thoughts can lead us to a deeper understanding on how our thought processes work, thus creating resiliency for the future. Conversely, a lack of safety in the way we think is like living in a landscape full of dangers in the form of thoughts like exaggeration, self defeat, blaming, uncertainty, and anticipated catastrophes. If we find ourselves being bombarded day and night by our thoughts, we will constantly be stressed, living under fear and hypervigilance.

I recently saw a meme that captured this kind of suffering. It was an image of a man operating some home improvement heavy machinery in front of his garage with a caption saying to the effect of “Daddy is not angry with us, he just needs the time by himself to face his demons, so that he can be a good father to us”. When I read that, my first thought was “why does he have to bottle it all up when there are people and resources that can lessen his burden?” Regardless of what emotions and questions this meme elicits in you, one thing is certain: Having to suffer in silence by yourself does not conjure an image of peace and wellness. The tragedy is that if we don’t develop a healthy resiliency to trauma, this can happen to any of us. So this is my sale-pitch: The modern world we live in often requires us to adapt in order to find happiness. In order to find safety, we might have to learn to go against our instinctual reactions. If we do not do that, we risk a life full of suffering, but if we put in the effort, it might lead us to more fulfillment.

Exercise: Journaling Our Thought Patterns

It is important to examine the way we think, especially regarding difficult experiences. This is a journal exercise which aims to explore potential cognitive distortions. We have to recognize that our thought patterns are trying to protect us, and we can honor that. Try to approach with curiosity instead of judgement. If you are confronting a thought pattern you dislike, investigate how that can be a protective mechanism that helps you survive either the past or the present. 

1. Recalling: Think of, and write about a recent event that left you feeling anxious and/or overwhelmed. Write down the thoughts you had in that moment. For example: “This is too much”, “I can’t deal with this”.

2.  Identify the distortion: Is it catastrophizing? Minimizing? Emotional reasoning or other forms? Use this pdf as a guide.

3. Practice curiosity: What do these thoughts you feel in your body? Is it stress? Dread? Relief? What emotions do these thoughts protect you from? Is it emotional pain? Powerlessness? Your answer might be very different from what is listed. 

4. Try something different: How can you look at your situation in a way that reflects nuance reality? Does re-thinking make you feel resistant to change? Why? 

5. Keep practicing: Repeat this for different events and different thoughts across different days. What did you notice? Is there a trend? Is the pattern similar to what you saw growing up? How do you feel about your thought patterns?

If you or someone you know is looking for therapy in the state of Colorado, you can reach me by visiting my PsychologyToday profile: HERE, or send an email to info@intorelationshipco.com

Sources: 

American Psychological Association. (2018, April 19). catastrophize. APA Dictionary of Psychology. https://dictionary.apa.org/catastrophize

American Psychological Association. (2018, April 19). Cognition. APA Dictionary of Psychology. https://dictionary.apa.org/cognition

American Psychological Association. (2018, April 19). Cognitive distortion. APA Dictionary of Psychology. https://dictionary.apa.org/cognitive-distortion

Cognitive Distortions. TherapistAid.com. (2023). https://www.therapistaid.com/worksheets/cognitive-distortions 

Gilbert P. (1998). The evolved basis and adaptive functions of cognitive distortions. The British journal of medical psychology, 71(4), 447–463. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8341.1998.tb01002.x

McAdam, E. (2024, October 16). Emotional reasoning- the cognitive distortion that makes you emotionally reactive - anxiety 18/30. Therapy in a Nutshell. https://therapyinanutshell.com/emotional-reasoning/ 

Ouhmad, N., El-Hage, W., & Combalbert, N. (2023). Maladaptive cognitions and emotion regulation in posttraumatic stress disorder. Maladaptive Kognitionen und Emotionsregulation bei posttraumatischer Belastungsstörung. Neuropsychiatrie : Klinik, Diagnostik, Therapie und Rehabilitation : Organ der Gesellschaft Osterreichischer Nervenarzte und Psychiater, 37(2), 65–75. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40211-022-00453-w

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