Processing feelings vs. just re-experiencing them?

This feels to me like another one of those basic issues that probably everyone else understands, but I'm going to ask about it anyway!

I've spend a LOT of time in my life being very upset and crying. I know that some of these have been actual depressions, that went on for months, but even when things are basically going well, I will have periods of upset--sometimes random, with no awareness of why I'm suddenly crying, and sometimes tied to a memory. But if I spend time crying, and it's tied to a memory, that doesn't make the memory less painful, and doesn't mean that I won't cry just as much the next time I think of it. What does it actually mean to "process trauma"? Does it mean that memories of awful things become less painful? How does that happen?

I'm pretty sure that these questions are coming up because I'm reaching a level of trust with my T where I can begin to think about talking to him about past events (other than what happened with my previous T), and I'm definitely going to ask him these questions when I see him, but I really want to hear from those of you who are farther along on this journey than I am.

It just seems like anything I think of that was difficult in the past, still has all the same pain attached to it. For example, one of my outside kids was injured 3-4 years ago, and the healing took a long time (although it did completely heal). I had a lot of trouble dealing with it (lost sleep, had lots of anxiety). I did okay supporting my child, and being a good mom, but on my own I was a mess. When I think about it now, all those same feelings come up. And then it links to a physical trauma that I had about 25 years ago that I lived with for almost 20 years before it was sort of repaired--and I'm just as upset about that as I was when it happened. And that links to something traumatic that happened right before that. And there are many painful, traumatic memories from when I was a child and teen.

I know there are many memories that don't have the feelings attached to them, and that's a first step that has to happen, but I don't understand how the ones that have all the feelings attached to them ever become tolerable to think about.

Even writing about this is kind of upsetting. I don't want to re-experience a lot of pain at all, let alone feeling it for no helpful reason.

when we were young we didn't process feelings, we repressed or dissociated them. it means that they are in bits and pieces. somtimes triggering one triggers a bunch of others.
what we are aiming for is an integrated experience of these feelings to make it possible to process, and not just re-experience, them.
it means undoing the dissociation. it seems to us that the more complete our experience of a situation is,the less it gets stuck inside.
mourning is an activity, not a state. it means looking at things. slowly there will be more new feelings about old experiences than old feelings. we are processing it.
one key is to look at them while firmly grounded in the present, thinking present thoughts, if needed, changing those thoughts to make them different from the past. it can make me feel deep compassion for a situation that used to hold only fear or hurt. I am an adult, with all I have learned and become, looking back.
if several of us shared the experience we can gather what was split between us, and put it back together like a puzzle. even the littles can learn to look back and feel new feelings and think new thoughts when they are safe and grounded.
We find that EMDR accelerates processing like crazy. it helps our brain to connect the dots and to integrate the memory.
we observe that after processing the intensity of the feelings goes down, a lot. and sometimes we start to forget details. the old stuff it losing the edge. we don't experience flashbacks anymore.

it takes little time of suffering and looking at things compared to the vast time we already suffered from it, and the time we would continue to suffer if we didn't look at it.

Yes, processing trauma actually does do something positive. It is not re-experiencing. It is hard to do, or rather hard to learn how to do, and this is why you need a therapist (or similar) to guide you, so you don't just re-activate stuff and imagine this is healing.

I can now talk calmly about all kinds of bad experiences, without any upset at all, while fully present and fully feeling my emotions about the here and now; these are bad experiences that before therapy I could not mention at all without a meltdown.

birdsong87 wrote:...it means undoing the dissociation. it seems to us that the more complete our experience of a situation is,the less it gets stuck inside.
mourning is an activity, not a state. it means looking at things. slowly there will be more new feelings about old experiences than old feelings. we are processing it.
one key is to look at them while firmly grounded in the present, thinking present thoughts, if needed, changing those thoughts to make them different from the past. it can make me feel deep compassion for a situation that used to hold only fear or hurt. I am an adult, with all I have learned and become, looking back.
if several of us shared the experience we can gather what was split between us, and put it back together like a puzzle. even the littles can learn to look back and feel new feelings and think new thoughts when they are safe and grounded...

...it takes little time of suffering and looking at things compared to the vast time we already suffered from it, and the time we would continue to suffer if we didn't look at it.

Thanks, birdsong87, this gives me a better idea of exactly what the "process" is when one processes trauma.

Una+ wrote:I can now talk calmly about all kinds of bad experiences, without any upset at all, while fully present and fully feeling my emotions about the here and now; these are bad experiences that before therapy I could not mention at all without a meltdown.

Well, that sounds promising. I think with the old T that I had, I talked about many difficult early experiences, and lots of very painful feelings were stirred up, but then I was just stuck with them. I don't think I've ever processed any trauma (or I would probably know what that feels like, both during and after...)

Hm. How long was that therapy? It is possible that T didn't know either how to do processing. It is not just talking.

I wasn't refering to trauma specifically. this is how we process things like a loss or other strong emotional situations.
Una is right, if it is traumatic it is stored differently in the brain and it needs a little extra to "shake it loose" and get it unstuck. You need a T for that. there are different techniques for trauma processing, but they are all more than just talking about traumatic things.
there is solid research that only talking does not help to shake trauma loose in the brain or start you processing it.
the R in EMDR stands for re-processing
there are other approaches, some using imagery work. but if you want to process stuff that is stored as trauma in your brain you will need a trauma tool to process it.
the integration of memory and feelings will be the same, you gain distance, it looses the edge, you feel new feelings, think new thoughts.

Una+ wrote:Hm. How long was that therapy? It is possible that T didn't know either how to do processing. It is not just talking.

How long? I saw him for a little over 3 years, most of that 3x/wk. I didn't know that I had had trauma, just that I had an "unhappy" childhood. He was an analyst, and back then (late 80s), the general idea was that you talked about stuff, someone listened, more or less emotionally engaged depending on their philosophy (this guy was into self-psychology, and being nurturing and (overly) available), and because you talked about it with someone listening, your issues were somehow worked through! (I was also being taught a lot during that time about how therapy worked, and really wasn't given more insight than that from the doing-therapy side of it either).

birdsong87 wrote:if you want to process stuff that is stored as trauma in your brain you will need a trauma tool to process it.
the integration of memory and feelings will be the same, you gain distance, it looses the edge, you feel new feelings, think new thoughts.

This is all stuff I know abstractly and have read about, but I'm finding now that with a lot of concepts that I "know," I have to rethink them in a way that all the parts can understand, and also in a way that shows how it directly applies to us.

Thanks, birdsong87 and Una+!

Thank you for this thread: we could have asked similar questions ourselves. We have a better understanding now, or at least we think we do. We have thought of processing feelings as cognitive restructuring, though that is a simplistic description of a process which is complex.

Una+ wrote:Yes, processing trauma actually does do something positive. It is not re-experiencing. It is hard to do, or rather hard to learn how to do, and this is why you need a therapist (or similar) to guide you, so you don't just re-activate stuff and imagine this is healing.

I can now talk calmly about all kinds of bad experiences, without any upset at all, while fully present and fully feeling my emotions about the here and now; these are bad experiences that before therapy I could not mention at all without a meltdown.

This gives us hope, Una. Thank you.

Charity

I was telling my T the other day that I'm worried about painful memories and feelings crashing down on me, and being overwhelming, and I wanted him to remind us again that it was ok and important to just take it very slowly.

He said something that made a big impression on me and helped me see how "processing trauma" isn't going to be some kind of separate thing that we're going to do (that I can't stand the thought of and would like to avoid). He said that the most important thing is that we (the parts) take care of each other, and if someone was hurt, then we need to help them with that. That puts everything in perspective for me and feels much more doable.