We\u2019ve all experienced it in some form. The sweaty palms, the pounding chest, the gasp of breath: the reliving of some unfortunate memory. Maybe it was a trip up the stairs, or a poorly executed class speech. These minor traumas delay our hectic lives for a moment; give us a second\u2019s pause. But for some people, that pause lasts years instead of seconds.<\/p>\n
So where is the distinction between these inconsequential daily events and a true trauma? What constitutes a true trauma for people our age? In 2006, Dorthe Berntsen and David Rubin designed a study to establish that distinction between a trip up the stairs and Post Traumatic Stress. The formal American Psychiatric Association (APA) definition for PTSD is \u201ca history of exposure to a traumatic event meeting two criteria and symptoms from each of three symptom clusters: intrusive recollections, avoidant\/numbing symptoms, and hyper-arousal symptoms\u201d (APA, 2000). In other words, a mental roadblock.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In \u201cWhen Trauma Becomes a Key to Identity\u201d Berntsen and Rubin take the distinction between PTSD and small traumas a step further. The focus of their study is the point in time when a stressful past becomes engrained in the way people see themselves and the world. For example, say a Maine snowstorm caused your car to skid off the road. Instead of getting the damage repaired and moving on, you are unable to get behind the wheel of a car. The accident has become part of your identity as a driver, and is interfering with your daily life. We traditionally believe that the less we acknowledge the memory causing us pain, the more<\/i> it will affect us. The idea of repressed memories working their way to the surface and causing problems permeates popular culture and psychological TV dramas. Bernsten and Rubin agree that traumatic events change our perceptions, but hypothesize that further integration (thinking about them more) actually escalates the symptoms of PTSD (Berntsen and Rubin, 2006). They judge this by creating the Centrality of Event Scale (CES) which has participants rate the truthfulness of a statement like \u201cI feel that this event has become part of my identity\u201d on a scale of 1-5 (Berntsen and Rubin, 2006). The CES is meant to gauge the significance of a traumatic event on a person\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
Two studies were conducted. The first included 247 Danish psychology students (mean age of 26.8). Each undergraduate took the CES quiz, the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist (PCL), and the Dissociative Experience Scale (DES). Each of these are meant to categorize an event as traumatizing or ordinary. The participants were grouped, and each subset received an additional stress test to ensure their categorization was correct. In the first study, correlations were found between the PCL and the CES, and the PCL and the DES. This meant that the CES (the rating of how significant an event is) is undeniably related to symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress. However, the first study failed to qualify if the traumas they were testing for satisfied the APA definition of PTSD. Thus, a second study was developed. This time around, 442 Duke college students participated (mean age of 17.8). The same tests were used as in the first trial, with an added assessment to determine the level of trauma sustained by the students (if they fit the APA definition). This step was taken to ensure that one 18-year-old student didn\u2019t classify failing a chemistry test as trauma, while another worked off of a car crash trauma.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, Bernsten and Rubin\u2019s study aimed to disprove the traditional stereotype that the only way to cognitively address emotional trauma is to fully integrate it into our memories. Instead, they found that when the undergraduates rated these incidents high on the CES scale (how much influence it has on them), they also tested positively for signs of PTSD across the board. They had reached mental roadblocks. These roadblocks meant that the students had integrated the traumatic events into their identities and relationships with other people \u2013 and they displayed symptoms such as anxiety and depression.<\/p>\n
What does this mean? Integrating the traumatic incident makes it an anchor for our future interactions, and the way we live our lives. It becomes part of our identity. The more credit we give these experiences, the more difficult it is for us to cognitively progress. When we get stuck, mentally revisiting the trauma is counterproductive, and we should instead focus our energies on moving forward.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bernsten, Dorthe and David C. Rubin (2006). When a Trauma Becomes a Key to Identity: Enhanced Integration of Trauma Memories Predicts Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 21, <\/i>417-431.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We\u2019ve all experienced it in some form. The sweaty palms, the pounding chest, the gasp of breath: the reliving of some unfortunate memory. Maybe it was a trip up the stairs, or a poorly executed class speech. These minor traumas delay our hectic lives for a moment; give us a second\u2019s pause. But for some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4689,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80215],"tags":[26529,370831,150447],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4689"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":943,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions\/943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}