Your eyes are the window to your past trauma

CW Research Team — Sun, 19 Jul 2020 14:36:21 +0000

It is believed that your eyes give you away; they are a window into your soul. Indeed, it is difficult to pretend with the eyes—they reveal the truth of your emotional state, despite what you say or how much you deny.

This belief just got a shot in its arm. New research shows how a person’s pupils respond to threatening images reveals if they have suffered a traumatic experience in the past.

The research, led by Dr Aimee McKinnon at Cardiff University and published in the journal Biological Psychology, looked for traces of these traumatic events in the eyes of patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They measured the pupil of the eye while participants were shown threatening images such as vicious animals or weapons, as well as other images that showed neutral events, or even pleasant images.

When you experience a traumatic event such as a car crash, combat stress, or any kind of abuse, it can lead to PTSD and can leave you with a greater sensitivity, or hyperarousal, to everyday events and an inability to switch off and relax.

The response of those with PTSD was different compared to other people, including those who had been traumatised but did not have PTSD.

Also read » Eternal bliss of a spotless mind

Positive and negative stimuli

During the experiment, at first the pupils failed to show the normal sharp constriction that is caused by changes in light level—but then their pupils grew even larger to the emotional stimuli than for the other participants.

What’s more, the exaggerated response of the pupils of patients with PTSD was not limited only to threatening stimuli, but also to stimuli that depicted positive images, such as exciting sports scenes.

Professor Nicola Gray believes this is an important finding. Gray, who is from Swansea University, co-authored the paper along with Professor Robert Snowden of Cardiff University. She said, “This shows that the hyper-response of the pupil is in response to any arousing stimulus, and not just threatening ones. This may allow us to use these positive pictures in therapy, rather than relying upon negative images, that can be quite upsetting to the patient, and therefore make therapy more acceptable and bearable. This idea now needs testing empirically before it is put into clinical practice.”

A tremendous burden

Dr McKinnon, who is now at Oxford University, believes that being primed for threat and fear responses in any uncertain emotional context is a tremendous burden those who have PTSD.

He added, “It also suggests that it is important for us to recognise that, in therapy, it is not just the fear-based stimuli that need deliberately re-appraising.

“If someone with PTSD is faced with any high-level of emotional stimulation, even if this is positive emotion, it can immediately trigger the threat system. Clinicians need to understand this impact of positive stimuli in order to support their service-users overcome the significant challenges they face.”

The post Your eyes are the window to your past trauma appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Here’s What You Need to Know About Post Traumatic Growth

Michaela Haas — Sun, 20 May 2018 04:30:24 +0000

When suffering strikes, running the opposite direction as fast as we can seems to make so much sense, doesn’t it? After all, nobody wants suffering in their life. So we avoid it at all costs. We dodge and duck and bargain. But does pushing pain away cut it?

As Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron says, “No one ever tells us to stop running away from fear. We are very rarely told to move closer, to just be there, to become familiar with fear.” When I once asked Pema how she dealt with her own debilitating chronic fatigue, she said she tried to apply the advice her teacher had given her. “Lean into it. Stay present. Stay curious. Go through it paying meticulous attention as if you wanted to describe it in great detail to someone who’s never heard of it.”

What would happen if we stayed to pay attention?

Most people have heard of post traumatic stress. Yet, beyond the medical community, few are aware of the evidence of post traumatic growth. It may seem paradoxical to even put the words “trauma” and “growth” next to each other in one sentence. And yet, survivors and experts begin to focus increasingly on the possibility that we could use even the most harrowing experiences for a greater good in our own life and to impact the world.

According to psychologist Richard Tedeschi, post traumatic growth’s leading researcher, as many as 90 per cent of survivors report at least one aspect of post traumatic growth, such as a renewed appreciation for life or a deeper connection to their heart’s purpose. This does not happen immediately or easily. We need to actively work towards positive change, and we need the right tools and support in order to transform a bad break into a breakthrough.

When I visited Tedeschi at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, I learned that he didn’t invent a fancy theory and then try to prove it with studies; it was the other way around. He was consulting with trauma survivors, initially bereaved parents, then people who had lost the loves of their lives or were severely injured, cancer survivors, veterans, and prisoners. Again and again, people shared a perplexing insight: While they were not happy about what had happened to them, they felt they had learned valuable lessons from the experience and these lessons eventually changed their lives for the better. Of course they would prefer to have their loved ones back or their health restored, but they felt that rather than just survive, they thrived. They became better parents, better partners, and more compassionate friends; they discovered a new purpose in life.

The paradox of experiencing trauma

“What is revealed here is the dual nature of trauma: first, its destructive ability to rob victims of their capacity to live and enjoy life. The paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the power to transform and resurrect,” writes trauma therapist Peter Levine.

We obviously don’t need suffering to find our calling, but it happens to be where we often discover it. “In brief, people’s sense of themselves, their relationships with others and their philosophy of life changes,” Tedeschi says. “Perhaps one of the most common growth experiences triggered by a major stressor is an increased appreciation of life. But it is important to make clear that not everybody experiences growth, and we are not implying that traumatic events are a good thing,” Richard Tedeschi stresses. “They are not. In the wake of trauma, people become more aware of the futility in life and that unsettles some while it focuses others. This is the paradox of growth: people become more vulnerable, yet stronger.”

Ultimately, it’s a choice you make

It is crucial to distinguish between the event and the outcome. There is nothing positive about trauma itself; we wouldn’t choose it, then or now. Nevertheless, we might be able to reap something beneficial out of the sorrow. The good only comes from what we decide to do with it ― from our struggle that unveils what needs to change in us and in our society, from honing our ability to make meaning out of events that seem senseless, from not trying to rebuild an exact replica of what was lost, but to engineer a stronger, sturdier foundation for our life. A crisis is not a cul-de-sac, but rather a watershed moment. What we do next matters: advance or retreat, take a turn south or north, run or hide, crawl or fly. We can avert our eyes or dig deeper, try harder or grow softer, close down or break open.

Related » Coping with crisis

As civil rights icon Maya Angelou told me when I got to speak to her about her childhood traumas months before her death, “Nothing will work unless you do.” Let’s get to work.

Adapted with permission from Bouncing Forward by Michaela Haas published by Atria/Enliven books

The post Here’s What You Need to Know About Post Traumatic Growth appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.