Survivors of complex trauma often see the world as a horrendous place where there is only pain and sorrow. It is very difficult for people like us to step back and see the trees for the forest.

During this season of the year, the thinking patterns of survivors can turn dark as we consider what happened to us and the way our family of origin behaved during the holidays.

To feel better, survivors must change their thinking habits and this article will center on that premise.

What are Cognitive Distortions?

Cognitive distortions are exaggerated patterns of thinking that are not based on fact. Because these thinking patterns are by nature negative, they can lead you to believe and see things as more negative than they truly are.

Cognitive distortions convince you that negative things about your life, world, and self are true when in truth they are not. Another way of stating it is that cognitive distortions can convince your mind to believe negative things about yourself that are not always true.

The way we think greatly impacts how we feel and behave. If you treat the negative thoughts as facts, you will see yourself in that light and act accordingly. Cognitive distortions might include:

“I am no good at anything.”

“I can’t do this.”

“I am doomed to fail”

“I am stupid”

There are four types of cognitive distortions: polarized thinking, catastrophizing, overgeneralizations, and personalization.

Polarized thinking. Also known as black and white thinking, polarized thinking occurs when people are in the habit of always thinking in extremes. You may feel you are either going to be successful or a total failure with no room for any outcome between them. Of course, this type of distortion is unhelpful and unrealistic.

Catastrophizing. This distorted thinking pattern makes people assume the worst when faced with unknown circumstances. People who catastrophize quickly escalate their feelings of doom from ordinary worrying. They may go from considering the fact that a check is in the mail to believing the mail will be late, or worse, the check will never arrive. People who develop catastrophizing cognitive distortions have often developed it in response to having experienced repeated adverse events so that they always fear the worst.

Overgeneralization. This distortion occurs when people reach a conclusion about an event and incorrectly see the conclusion of that event in all other circumstances. For instance, you have a negative experience with another person and develop the thought pattern that you are no good at relationships.

Personalization. In this distorted thinking, you may take events personally when, in reality, they have nothing to do with you. Blaming yourself for circumstances that are not your fault is one example of personalization.

As we shall see, cognitive distortions play a vital role in how we perceive our world and we can change them by acceptance of the past. In this way, we allow ourselves room to make new and wonderful memories.

The Danger of Dwelling in a Traumatic Past

We are all the culmination of our memories as they steer how we react to our present and the future. Humans build their lives on their experiences and those of us who have had traumatic histories are no different. The differences are that those who build on splendid memories do not experience the problems that those who build their lives on traumatic memories do.

There are many dangers to dwelling on a trauma-filled past, as it is incredibly difficult to make a better future if one is a prisoner of terrible memories.

One of the dangers of dwelling on a traumatic past is that we tend to “should” on ourselves. We spend much time and energy thinking of all the things we should have said or done. We say to ourselves we should have said that or done this when we were doing the best we could at the time with what we knew.

Constantly living in the memories of the past and allowing them to control how we feel and behave is a tragic thing to do to ourselves. This trap of the mind can only be escaped if we learn that the trap exists and then find ways to get out of dwelling on old events.

Building a Better Future and Making Good Memories

Now that we have discussed what distorted thinking is and the dangers of living in the past, we can begin a new discourse on building a quality present and future by making happy memories.

There are many things one can do to improve their lives and make good memories and one of them is to build a positive mindset. This mindset means meeting the challenges of living in today by purposefully approaching them with a positive outlook. Positive thinking doesn’t mean you forget the pain of the past; indeed, it honors it. Thinking positively helps you cope better with stress and sets you up for making new memories that overshadow the bad ones.

When I say positive thoughts, I am not saying to go through life faking positivity. False positivity is harmful and hides the pain you are feeling behind a façade of smiles when you feel rotten. True positivity builds up it does not tear down. Below are a few tips you might use to increase your positivity.

Focus on the present moment and do not allow yourself to be dragged down by cognitive distortions, worries, and overthinking
Begin each day with positive affirmations. Find some affirmations on the internet and repeat them 3-5 times as you go through your day. Some examples might be as follows.

“I am positive”

“I am going to have a positive day”

“I am grateful for all that I have”

“I am calm, patient, and at peace

Reframe your experiences as strength-building experiences. Although some will be triggered by this statement because they do not want to make the bad that happened to them have any credit or be called good. I get that, I understand. But I have found in my own life that reframing what occurred in my traumatic past is something that didn’t break me but made me stronger extremely helpful when moving into the future.

The simple act of savoring today can help you build new memories. Enjoy and luxuriate in the small things in life that make you feel good. Marvel at the feeling of awe you have at the life around you. Bask in the pride you feel for how far you have come and for having survived.

Once you are in the mood, to make new memories start by doing things that you enjoy either alone or with a friend or family member that stimulate all five senses. For instance, bake cookies and pay attention to how they smell, the sounds of laughter about you, and how they taste when they are done. Once you do this, your brain has made an episodic memory that will return every time you smell cookies or eat one. When those memories do return they will be vivid and make you feel you are back there again.

Another thing to do to build and remember good memories is to add emotion into the mix so that, following the scenario above, you can remember how good it felt to be with family or friends.

In essence, to build better memories today that will last and make you feel good in the future, build into your events of the present as many triggers as you can so they will pop up at a later date and make you smile.

Ending Our Time Together

We have learned in this article about cognitive distortions and how they can hamper our making good memories today and affect our behaviors tomorrow. We have also touched briefly on how destructive dwelling on the past can be to our future.

However, I would like to leave you with the following takeaway thought.

I wish you to understand that it is okay to attend to bad memories, it is healthy and normal. However, living forever in the past traps you in a life that no one would want to live. Breaking free from stinking thinking takes effort. One must recognize it when it occurs and take steps, such as repeating positive affirmations, to escape.

I wish to add a personal note to the end of this post.

Christmas and other holidays are difficult for many of us because we are labored by the occurrences in our histories. I too have had difficulties but these past few years I have broken free from the negativity that haunted me. I finally realized that Christmas and other holidays are what I make them. Just as Abraham Lincoln once quipped, “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

I wish to invite you to join me in making a Christmas full of new memories of peace and love if not for others, then for ourselves.

Merry Christmas! Shirley

“I have a simple philosophy: Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. Scratch where it itches.” – Alice Roosevelt Longworth

“We must each lead a way of life with self-awareness and compassion, to do as much as we can. Then, whatever happens, we will have no regrets.” – Dalai Lama

Holiday Encouragement from CPTSD Foundation

Could you use some extra encouragement during the holiday season? How about one email a day to help you navigate the stress of the holiday season? Sign up for FREE at https://cptsdfoundation.org/winter

CPTSD Foundation Awareness Wristbands

Official CPTSD Foundation wristbands to show the world you support awareness, research, and healing from complex trauma.

The official CPTSD Foundation wristbands were designed by our Executive Director, Athena Moberg, with the idea that promoting healing and awareness benefits all survivors. We hope you’ll consider purchasing one for yourself and perhaps one for a family member, friend, or other safe people who could help raise awareness for complex trauma research and healing.

Each purchase of $12 helps fund our scholarship program, which provides access to our programs and resources to survivors in need.

https://cptsdfoundation.org/cptsd-awareness-wristband/

If you’ve been wondering how our programs work, now you can try out a free sample to see if they’re right for you. We’d love to have you join us in our safe healing space.

You are always worth healing!

Weekly Creative Group

Do you like to color, paint, sew, arts & crafts? How about drawing, model building, or maybe cross stitch? Whatever creative activity you prefer, come to join us in the Weekly Creative Group. Learn more at https://cptsdfoundation.org/weeklycreativegroup

Support Groups

As always, if you or a loved one live in the despair and isolation that comes with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, please come to us for help. CPTSD Foundation offers a wide range of services, including:

All our services are reasonably priced, and some are even free. So, to gain more insight into how complex post-traumatic stress disorder is altering your life and how you can overcome it, sign-up; we will be glad to help you. If you cannot afford to pay, go to www.cptsdfoundation.org/scholarship to apply for aid. We only wish to serve you.

The Choice of Gratitude

10 Ways to Handle Trauma Triggers During the Holiday Season

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Shirley Davis

My name is Shirley Davis and I am a freelance writer with over 40-years- experience writing short stories and poetry. Living as I do among the corn and bean fields of Illinois (USA), working from home using the Internet has become the best way to communicate with the world. My interests are wide and varied. I love any kind of science and read several research papers per week to satisfy my curiosity. I have earned an Associate Degree in Psychology and enjoy writing books on the subjects that most interest me.

Frank Sterle Jr. on March 2, 2022 at 10:29 pm

Though it may be clinically labelled as some other disorder, I have a self-diagnosed condition involving ACE trauma, ASD and high sensitivity — which I freely refer to as a perfect storm of train wrecks. It’s one with which I greatly struggle(d) while unaware, until I was a half-century old, that its component dysfunctions had official names. When around their neurotypical peers, young people with ASD typically feel compelled to “camouflage” or “mask”, terms used to describe their attempts at appearing to naturally fit in when around their neurotypical peers, an effort known to cause their already high anxiety and/or depression levels to worsen. And, of course, this exacerbation is reflected in the disproportionately high rate of suicide among ASD people.

I still cannot afford to have a formal diagnosis made on my condition, due to having to pay for a specialized shrink, in our (Canada’s) supposedly universal health-care system. Within that system, there are important health treatments that are universally inaccessible, except for those with a bunch of extra money. … If one has diagnosed and treated such a formidable condition when one is very young, he/she will likely be much better able to deal with it through life.

Nonetheless, my experience has revealed to me that high-scoring adverse childhood experience trauma that essentially results from a highly sensitive introverted existence notably exacerbated by an accompanying autism spectrum disorder, can readily lead an adolescent to a substance-abuse/self-medicating disorder, including through eating. Though I’ve not been personally affected by the addiction/overdose crisis, I have suffered enough unrelenting ACE-related hyper-anxiety to have known and enjoyed the euphoric release upon consuming alcohol and/or THC. The self-medicating method I utilized during most of my pre-teen years, however, was eating.

I also now know that my brain basically uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammatory stress hormones and chemicals, even in non-stressful daily routines. It’s like a discomforting anticipation of ‘the other shoe dropping’ and simultaneously being scared of how badly I will deal with the upsetting event, which usually never transpires. It is like a form of brain damage.

Perhaps not surprising, I’d like to see child-development science curriculum implemented for secondary high school students, which could also include neurodiversity, albeit not overly complicated. If nothing else, the curriculum would offer students an idea/clue as to whether they’re emotionally/mentally compatible with the immense responsibility and strains of parenthood. … Really, the best gift a child can receive is a healthy, properly functioning brain thus mind for life.

1 Comment

Frank Sterle Jr. on March 2, 2022 at 10:29 pm

Though it may be clinically labelled as some other disorder, I have a self-diagnosed condition involving ACE trauma, ASD and high sensitivity — which I freely refer to as a perfect storm of train wrecks. It’s one with which I greatly struggle(d) while unaware, until I was a half-century old, that its component dysfunctions had official names. When around their neurotypical peers, young people with ASD typically feel compelled to “camouflage” or “mask”, terms used to describe their attempts at appearing to naturally fit in when around their neurotypical peers, an effort known to cause their already high anxiety and/or depression levels to worsen. And, of course, this exacerbation is reflected in the disproportionately high rate of suicide among ASD people.

I still cannot afford to have a formal diagnosis made on my condition, due to having to pay for a specialized shrink, in our (Canada’s) supposedly universal health-care system. Within that system, there are important health treatments that are universally inaccessible, except for those with a bunch of extra money. … If one has diagnosed and treated such a formidable condition when one is very young, he/she will likely be much better able to deal with it through life.

Nonetheless, my experience has revealed to me that high-scoring adverse childhood experience trauma that essentially results from a highly sensitive introverted existence notably exacerbated by an accompanying autism spectrum disorder, can readily lead an adolescent to a substance-abuse/self-medicating disorder, including through eating. Though I’ve not been personally affected by the addiction/overdose crisis, I have suffered enough unrelenting ACE-related hyper-anxiety to have known and enjoyed the euphoric release upon consuming alcohol and/or THC. The self-medicating method I utilized during most of my pre-teen years, however, was eating.

I also now know that my brain basically uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammatory stress hormones and chemicals, even in non-stressful daily routines. It’s like a discomforting anticipation of ‘the other shoe dropping’ and simultaneously being scared of how badly I will deal with the upsetting event, which usually never transpires. It is like a form of brain damage.

Perhaps not surprising, I’d like to see child-development science curriculum implemented for secondary high school students, which could also include neurodiversity, albeit not overly complicated. If nothing else, the curriculum would offer students an idea/clue as to whether they’re emotionally/mentally compatible with the immense responsibility and strains of parenthood. … Really, the best gift a child can receive is a healthy, properly functioning brain thus mind for life.