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Comment by zozin | Hacker News Reader

Shouldn't the goal be to deal with the psychological trauma rather than engaging in activities that suppress memories of the trauma?

During the pandemic I went down the rabbit hole of the fitness industry. You will find thousands of videos on YouTube/memes on forums that teach people that they can get over an ex by just focusing on getting shredded and developing a killer physique. To me that is akin to what this study suggests: avoid the trauma by distracting yourself with another activity. While self-improvement is commendable, I don't think avoidance tactics are the best way to treat the root cause of the problem though.

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I've gone through some traumatic shit and some of it just could not be dealt with until I had gained some distance from it. It does still need to be dealt with eventually but it helps a ton if it's not something that actively makes you want to curl up into a ball and hide every time you think about it.

Ultimately, sure, you need to sit down and open up the vault you've put this pain in and deal with it. But it's a lot easier if you don't get consumed in a wave of remembered fear and stress every time you even think about touching that vault. This article suggests that distracting yourself with Tetris soon after the painful experience helps avoid that happening.

I think there has been a pradigm shift in this regard in the last decade.

It really used to be about "dealing" with trauma. Now AFAIKT many psychologists believe that the end result matters the most. If you suppressed your trauma and now you feel fine and functioning, who cares? This is especially true for sever trauma, whatever works works, suppersion is OK. (We have plenty of lifetime examples. e g., Many Holocaust survivors and veterns who actively run away from reliving or even thinking about their experience, and conducted an healthy life)

I'm not saying someone should avoid treatment, only that we should not dismiss suppression as an illegitimate tool. It works for many (not for all of course).

This.

Sometimes it is perfectly fine to not lift every stone to see what is crawling underneath, and quite alright to let sleeping dogs lie. The operative word is "sometimes", and a professional counsellor might help define when that "sometime" strategy is best applied. It is not avoidance; it is strategic limiting of analysis.

You can only deal with psychological issues on a long term basis from a position of relative calm, which isn't going to be the case when the sufferer is in crisis.

Distraction (like medication) is a tool that can help the individual get their head above water in those moments, but, yes, presumably that wouldn't be the end goal.

That assumes the person currently has the capacity to deal with it. In my own experience, trauma can be too overwhelming.

Medication or other interventions may be required before therapy techniques become effective. Video games have fewer side effects than anti-depressants and aren't physically addictive like tranquilizers.

I think sometimes it might be necessary to create a bit of a buffer between the truama and "dealing with it." When it's still fresh it can be hard to regulate one's emotional state, and it's nigh impossible to "deal" when the thoughts of the situation/event send you in to a really bad emotional state of panic and endless rumination because you either lack the tools for emotional regulation, or utilizing them doesn't even come to mind in the first place. A mind under psychological distress is a messy dark place, and only after the fact do you look back on things and wonder why you spent such a long time suffering instead of working yourself out of it.

Some do need to escape from the reality to get a bit of relief, and can't handle the confrontation directly too much. That is understandable.

But, the panic/anxiety surrounding the trauma after the fact is often due to resistance of experiencing the emotions/memories associated with the event. Allowing the 'bad' feelings in and going through those feelings is most always going to be healing.

Sometimes you have to treat the symptoms so you can get the person functional enough to then start treating the root cause. For example, this is the point of anti-depressants and fever-reducing medication. They don't treat the underlying disease. They just keep the symptoms from killing the patient long enough to do something about the disease.

A person with particularly bad PTSD may not want to see a therapist and start rooting around in those bad memories. If the overall anxiety level associated with those memories can be reduced, then maybe the therapy can start.

Sounds like they are actively encouraging suppression. I don't believe this will lead to 'Good'(tm) things. The way to properly deal with trauma, if one wants to heal psychologically and disable the 'intrusive' memories, is to actively encourage the recall of those memories until they become so unexciting that they no longer have a reactive emotional component.

Depending on the magnitude of the trauma, this may not be an exercise one does by oneself, and in one sitting. It could take some time. That I know of, directly related in the western psychological world is one such technique called 'exposure therapy'.

The repression suggested in this study will guarantee that the emotional reaction will come roaring back to the surface when some strange, probably unrelated situation triggers the memory once again.

I've had 3 instances of extreme trauma in my life. After the 3rd, I heard about this technique. It has been completely transformative for me. N=1 and all that...

Glad it works for you, but doesn't sound like a generally applicabale approach.

I really disagree with a couple of your statements: "The way to properly deal with trauma" there really isn't a proper way imo. Individuals have different ways.

"will guarantee that the emotional reaction will come roaring back to the surface when some strange, probably unrelated situation triggers the memory once again." Not really true, not always. People do successfully repress, and some people have a really negative experience from treatments like the one you suggested.

People are different and their experiences are different.

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