Here’s the real potential harm that can be done if Mr. Avoidance is allowed to operate: whatever it is that you, the trauma sufferer, believe (regardless of its validity or invalidity) will become your reality, and you may become stuck there. In the following stories, you’ll hear about how people become stuck in their thinking and how that prevents them from reframing and healing. Becoming stuck and avoiding are the ingredients needed to fuel the fires of guilt, depression, anxiety, shame, or any negative emotion. And as you’ll read, those fires can burn indefinitely if the pain is never expressed, reframed, and released.
How to Reframe
Nate’s story isn’t unique. Throughout this book, you have read how people will desperately hang onto things like alcohol, guilt, and resentment to avoid letting go of loved ones. To let go, you must not only say goodbye, but you must also reframe your pain in the past.
To reframe, you must first become aware of where you have become stuck in the first place. In the first session with clients, I usually ask them to communicate what happened in the past that has hurt them. After they’ve expressed their pain, I can gain insight into their thinking and what has prevented them from healing. I can see where they have become stuck. Once they’ve identified their stuck place, they can then reframe that particular belief.
What does it means to “reframe” something? Putting a new frame on an old picture creates a brand-new look by altering the appearance of the picture. Similarly, putting a new frame on a painful experience, trauma, or loss is necessary to release the power of the hold that this experience has over you. In each of the following stories, I’ll lay out both where the individual got stuck and how the Reframe is done to help unstick the client.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to the Rescue
Martin Seligman, who is truly a giant of modern psychology and an expert on positive psychology, uses the term “explanatory style.”47 According to Seligman, how you explain the world to yourself is more important than what is really happening. His research demonstrates, for instance, that depressed people explain their reality with more self-blame, negativity, and pessimism about the future than non-depressed people. Conversely, he has discovered optimistic thinking is associated with many positive outcomes, including with cancer, pregnancy, and surgeries, in addition to improved mental and emotional health.47 So, where, how, and when would you inject optimism in your explanations to yourself regarding a traumatic event? When is at any time from the moment that trauma occurs to now. Thinking well about your trauma—reframing—is listed as the fifth step of the Fritz, but in practice, it’s a component of every step. Even during the trauma, it is vital to self-instruct in a healthy, problem-solving, rational way, as you will see below.
Let’s take another look at the two types of categories alluded to earlier, the traumatized and the grief-stricken. We understand that these categories often overlap, as in Jim’s case from chapter one—we will return to Jim in a bit.
The traumatized individual, you will recall, needs to somehow digest the horror of the experience by remembering, feeling, expressing, and then deciding to release the incident(s). But to finish the story, you will need to explain the story to yourself in a different and healthier manner than you have to this point.
Dan, Continued
Let’s return to Dan, the Vietnam veteran who lost his friend in combat (see Chapter 4), literally inches away from him in a rice paddy. The self-instructions in the situation included the following: Stay down and in control. Be calm, Dan. I’m just going to wait until there’s a break in the shooting and drag him out of here. I can get him back to the medics, and he’ll be okay. Just follow the orders!
From what Dan told me, it appears that his thinking and reacting in the moment was similar to the above and largely responsible for his survival. He didn’t stand up angrily and charge the enemy for killing his friend. And during this worst-case scenario, his training took over, and his thinking was about nothing other than survival.
The trouble for Dan and for so many others is how they explain the trauma to themselves afterwards (which is where he became stuck). Let’s peek into some of those cognitions and Dan’s explanation of that trauma:
I don’t know why he had to die, it should have been me. I don’t deserve to live—what have I done with my life to make a difference? It was my fault anyway. What kind of a friend am I when I allowed him to die in front of me like an animal? Those f***ing gooks deserve to die for killing him, and I wish I had killed more of them, at least that would have been something. Instead, I shot and missed repeatedly. If I had done my job well, he’d probably be alive. I don’t deserve to be alive, let alone happy.
Note the emergence of guilt (survivor’s guilt) in Dan’s thinking. Dan became stuck in self-blame, self-punishment, and an unwillingness to accept that his friend had died. Dan’s cognitions help illuminate where he had become stuck. Beliefs like “It was my fault, I shot and missed, if only I had done better” perpetuated the guilt and kept him trapped in the past. Again, it is here that Mr. Avoidance helped to solidify these beliefs. Maybe if Dan had talked about his horrible tragedy with a close family member they could’ve helped him see that his friend’s death was, indeed, not Dan’s fault. But as stated earlier, Vietnam veterans as a group did not talk about their experiences. Granted, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered if Dan had talked with someone else about it. Keeping the guilt helped Dan to feel powerful (I could have saved him), rather than powerless (There are untold casualties in war). Also, as long as Dan remained stuck in self-flagellation (guilt), he didn’t have to say goodbye to his friend. Stay focused on the guilt and you’ll never have to grieve your losses. Maybe Dan simply did not want to give up the guilt, because at that point, accepting what had happened (that his friend was dead) would be his only option. Mr. Avoidance (not expressing) prevents that opportunity from even happening. If Dan had talked about this experience earlier in his life, he might have been able to reframe and release it then, instead of forty years after the fact.
Once Dan identified the self-blame, self-punishment, and unwillingness to accept reality as the place he had become stuck, Dan could reframe his combat experience as if he were suddenly possessed by the spirit of the healthiest person in the world (a wonderful technique, you should try it).
The Vietnam War was not my fault. I joined because I support this country. I did not cause that battle, nor did I give the orders to go through this rice paddy. I did not order anyone to shoot at him. I simply followed protocol as I was expected to do, I did not deviate from it one bit. In fact, I was no more to blame than the poor guy who shot my friend, and he, too, was following orders. People die in wars, thousands of people died in this war. My friend was only one of them. I was fortunate enough to survive. It is up to me now to live the life I still have and find meaning in my losses and in having participated in a futile war like Vietnam. I’m physically healthy and capable of living a productive life. But I need to first say goodbye to the losses in my life, including both people and my innocence.
Expect to have thousands of thoughts regarding the trauma you experienced and your part in it. But to reframe that trauma in a healthy way is to think about it in a realistic problem-solving fashion. Realistically, Dan was not responsible for his friend’s death or the deaths of more than 50,000 American soldiers in that war. The responsibility and guilt that Dan felt didn’t belong to him, but for many years, Dan assumed the responsibility for his friend’s death, and by so doing, blocked the grieving process. He never had to grieve the loss or even accept that he had been “used as pawn by his government in a meaningless war.” To accept those realities removes the barrier of guilt and allows Dan to grieve those losses. Then he can choose to say goodbye to what is gone and hello to the responsibility of living a meaningful, productive life. If he continues to hang on to the guilt, he never has to make his life count for anything, because bad people (as Dan believed he was) aren’t expected
to live meaningful, productive lives. Be aware, though, this this is just one step—as important as it is to reframe your trauma, you must also remember, feel, express, and release it as well.
Tamika’s Story
Like Dan, Tamika suffered a horrible trauma (see Chapter 4) and feared that she would never live to tell about it. Recall that she was abducted and held against her will, raped, and threatened until she managed to escape. Tamika also needed to reframe her “three days of hell” after feeling, expressing, and releasing (evicting) her perpetrator from her head with the goodbye letter.
For Tamika, the reframe became necessary after the abduction, because like Dan, she was remarkably composed and rational during her three-day abduction. She remembered telling herself survival-oriented statements like: Stay calm. Don’t oppose or incite him. There will be a chance to escape, and I will take that chance when it’s time. In the meantime, don’t give him any reason to hurt you. (During rape scenes, she told herself:) Go somewhere else in your mind. He is doing that, and it’ll all be over soon. (And after the fact, she reminded herself:) If you get pregnant, you will have an abortion, just survive. You can and you will escape at the first opportunity.
Despite this healthy, problem-solving thinking, Tamika suffered greatly during and after her abduction. Like Dan, she reexperienced her three days of trauma very frequently. (Recall that intrusive recollection of the event is one of the most prominent symptoms of PTSD, including frightening nightmares and spontaneous recalling of images, sensations, and feelings of the trauma.3) But as much as she had in common with Dan regarding his trauma, there were also some significant differences. Tamika’s life was not dominated by survivor’s guilt. In fact, she didn’t feel guilty at all. If anything, she was righteously indignant that she didn’t deserve the set of experiences that made up her trauma.
For Tamika, the emotions that so dominated her life (in which she had become stuck) were fear and rage. The fear she experienced consisted of feeling that “the world was unsafe now” because she had been abducted and tortured for three days and that this ugly experience was now part of her reality and life story and would never go away. Her reluctance to accept that this had happened to her essentially created another “part” of her that wasn’t fully integrated into her consciousness. It was as if she were saying someone else had been abducted. (Tamika did not suffer from Dissociative Identify Disorder, though a fractured self can catalyze this disorder, which was previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder, and which I’ll discuss later.)
Despite having distanced part of herself, Tamika felt rage toward the perpetrator, and she had become trapped in that anger. Why? Because forgiving and releasing him felt like condoning what happened, and she couldn’t do that. Again, all behavior is purposeful, and staying angry at him constantly reminded her that what had happened to her was not okay.46 Obviously, nothing about kidnapping and rape is okay, but Tamika’s perpetual anger served to keep the stress response switch on (see Chapter 1). Mark Twain said it best: “Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”24
The goodbye letter was designed to help Tamika move out of the traumatic scene and release the images and the control that the perpetrator had over her mind. She needed to express that rage and release it, because hating him would only ensure his continued dominance in her mind and her life. If that meant that he got away with it, Tamika would need to rethink and reframe that too. We explored her religious roots to discover a thought that brought some comfort. “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” (Romans 12:19, King James Version) And it was just as imperative in her recovery for Tamika to reprocess and reframe the world around her. Just as it had once been an idyllic place to live, it had become a treacherous place of imminent danger, scary people, and potential bondage.
Reframing for Tamika (which was partly encapsulated in her actual goodbye letter) would contain thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs like the following:
What happened to me was a very unusual experience. It is not likely to happen again. I will be more cautious as a result, but not hypervigilant (overly cautious) or paranoid. I will continue to live my life as a confident and happy young woman. I will not hate that man, because hating him only guarantees that he will continue to own me. I dismiss intrusive thoughts of him and will walk him to the door of my mind and re-release him. He has no place in my head anymore. I can find meaning in suffering; a lot of great people have. I will use the experience to learn more compassion for others, more patience, and more mercy. I will pray that God uses me to help others as a result of what I’ve been through. I will learn appropriate boundaries with people to use in all of my relationships. I will no longer live in fear! It is time now to put away the trauma.
Again, reframing the event allows you, Dan, Tamika—or anyone—to rethink the meaning of the trauma(s) and weave the experience into the greater fabric that is your life. As Syd and Suzanne Simon26 have taught, it is no longer the central piece of your life, just one thing that happened to you in your life.
Reframing the Grief-Stricken
Reframing is also necessary if your pain in the past is related to grief. You have read how Marc was able to alter his self-explanation regarding Matthew’s death, but let’s look at where he became stuck in the first place and how the reframe helped him heal. Marc did what every parent who has an addicted child does—everything he could. After Mark expressed his pain to me, I agreed that Marc had indeed, done everything right, and thus, when he asked me “What else could I have done?” I replied “Nothing!” Marc became trapped in the belief that If I do everything right, I should be able to change the outcome. The “just world” belief assumes that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. So when Marc’s son Matthew died, it was a stark contrast to this belief system. Marc was trapped in a “How could this happen to me, when I did everything right?” belief that prevented him from accepting his son’s death and letting go of the guilt and anguish. His reframe took place during the guided imagery and has never wavered since that exercise. When he thinks of Matthew now, he claims:
“I know my son did the best he could, but he could never get past the problem he had with drugs (opioids). His twenties were one long battle with drugs, which honestly made us all quite miserable, especially Matthew. I realize there wasn’t anything I could do to save him, I tried everything. I guess it’s like they taught me that time I went to the twelve-step meeting, I didn’t cause it, couldn’t control it, and couldn’t cure it. I was as powerless over Matthew as he was over the drugs. So now, I tell myself that we all did the best we could, even Matt, but sometimes that’s just how things end up. I’m okay with it, I just keep seeing him smiling, happy to be on that Rainbow Bridge with the dogs licking him and fetching sticks in the water.
I don’t think of his life as a waste anymore, I see it more as a struggle that finally came to an end… If I think of God’s part, I think of God as merciful, not punitive. I don’t think that God ‘took Matt,’ I see it as God allowing Matthew to escape his suffering and move on to a better place. My wife struggles more with Matt’s death than I do, but she never did that thing we did (guided imagery) where we put Matthew on the bridge. That was so real to me that I haven’t questioned where he is or whether he is okay. Since that day, I’m all good with that. You know it does help to know that his brothers are okay, because I realize that all three boys were different even though we raised them the same. You know what else is helpful to me? The boys who are doing well in life are still here. And the one who struggled and suffered has moved on to a better place. I’m quite able to live with that, and rather than being guilty like I used to be, I’ve learned to be grateful instead.”
Joe’s Struggle to Reframe
Joe, father of Joey, also needed to reframe his son’s death, especially to make sense as to why a father should have to bury a son and how to
give meaning to Joey’s life and premature death. At first, of course, he kept returning to his “life is good” toast as if that had triggered the heavens to swallow Joey up. But it wasn’t so much self-blame and self-criticism that consumed Joe, it was trying to make sense of the tragedy, as if there was some concealed meaning as to why kids can be taken from their parents. Joe, like Marc, was stuck in what felt like unfairness; that while Joe and Joey were both, by every measure of the concept, good people, still Joey had died. But in addition to being stuck in unfairness, Joe had become stuck because he couldn’t figure out a meaning or a purpose for his son’s death, and without this meaning, Joe found it difficult to let go and accept what had happened.
Reframing for Joe was about trusting that things happen in life that make no sense to anyone. The loss of his son was truly senseless, and it wouldn’t help Joe to believe that God wanted Joey or had a purpose to call him home. What made more sense to him was that Joey died because he fell off a mountain. Nothing more, nothing less. He could accept that, because it prevented him from agonizing about why God didn’t reach out a hand and catch or save Joey. God didn’t work that way, Joe recognized. Things happen. And yes, bad things do happen to good people, much like in Harold Kushner’s book When Bad Things Happen to Good People.22 It was not because God didn’t love Joey or his parents, and it was not because of anything that Joe or Joey had done that deserved punishment. Joe had to accept that uncertainty and that no logic existed that explained his son’s death, other than that it was an accident. With that in mind, Joe still needed purpose or reason to get involved in life again. Guided imagery was a reminder of several things for Joe, and he was quick to spell them out for me:
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