Avoidance: An Important and Overlooked PTSD Symptom

If you are reading my blogs, maybe you have a history of trauma and a part of you wants to work on the trauma and a part of you wants to avoid it. This is totally normal. Why would anyone want to confront some of the worst moments in their lives? Maybe you’re thinking - the trauma will just heal on it’s own. Maybe I don’t need trauma treatment. Maybe I can treat the symptoms like insomnia, anxiety, and depression with medication or drugs and alcohol rather than focusing on the underlying source of the distress.

You are not alone, most people spend years or even decades avoiding working on their trauma hoping that it’ll get better in spite of their actual symptoms getting worse. Avoidance may feel good in the short term, but it prolongs the natural healing process your mind and body are waiting for you to begin.  

Part of having Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), is either avoiding thoughts or feelings that remind you of the trauma or avoiding external triggers. For example, some people with PTSD numb their intense reexperiencing feelings with substances, are workaholics or perfectionists, run away from their emotions, or are extremely disassociated in their bodies. Others will go out of their way to avoid any reminders of the traumatic event. For example, I had a patient who the sight of dust would trigger a memory of the Northridge earthquake and was terrified of the dust in my office. He was not just remembering the earthquake in my office, he was reliving it. That is an important hallmark of trauma and part of why healing from it is so intense. In the moment of trauma, you are unable to process the emotions and so they stay locked inside of your body in an unprocessed form.

First, most trauma treatments recognize the fundamental truth that trauma is stored in your body so a somatic approach is necessary to help release the bodily sensations, the emotions, the negative thought patterns, and to let your whole system learn from the experience. When the trauma is stuck in this highy emotionally, unprocessed state, it feels like the trauma is happening again now in the present, even though it actually ended a long time ago.

How do people even begin to work on the avoidance symptoms of PTSD? First, I don’t believe that anyone with trauma can heal alone even though ultra independence is a common trauma response. I recommend finding a licensed professional specialized in trauma treatment who can help guide the process of healing. You need to find a modality that feels right to you and do it at a time in your life where you feel ready to embark on a more intense form of therapy. Remember, you are in control of your own healing process. Often, when people feel as though they are in a relatively stable place in their life professionally, emotionally, and physically, they are able to devote the time and energy to confronting the traumatic moments that they have been so carefully and persistently avoiding.