Dealing With Trauma Anniversaries

Approaching trauma anniversaries are never easy to deal with for many of us.  Traumatic events are systematically recorded in our psyches, either consciously or unconsciously.

They have their own calendar and are usually pretty accurate in causing underlying distress preceding the anniversary of the event.

Obviously, the conscious memories are the most painful , because we are fully aware of the them, but even the unconscious ones can manifest anxiety and mood changes without our full knowledge of why.

Death anniversaries of love ones are all difficult, but in this post,  I am referring primarily to traumas other than physical death.

These can involve traumatic breakups, marital separations, betrayals, family blow-ups, any sexual abuse,  accidents, severe sickness,  combat trauma, or any event that involves an unexpected  painful loss or abuse.

Whenever there are sudden occurrences of traumatic  events in our lives, some may be so severe as to  go on to become PTSD.

Every human being has different ways of processing trauma, and whether or not that person will be more prone to  develop PTSD depends on several genetic and personality makeup variables.

Patients may not develop full blown chronic PTSD symptoms, but still have inconsistent occurrences of some, such as occasional flashbacks of the event, mild avoidance behavior, or periodic anxiety or sad moods.

The preceding weeks before the anniversary of a traumatic event start to stir up mounting  emotional distress .  There is usually a preoccupation of the upcoming anniversary, as it rarely  just surprises someone.

Patients are sensitized to seasonal references  to whatever month it occurred.  For example if it was in the autumn, just the minute changes of the angle of sun in late August, early September can trigger it, even before the weather turns cool and the leaves begin to change colour.

There can also be triggers or cues that can set off a flashback, that may occur at multiple times other than the anniversaries.

These may be smells, sounds, tastes, touching certain objects,  passing by a certain geographic location or running into anything that was associated with the traumatic event.   Even your Facebook feed can trigger a cascade of emotional reactions.

There is usually sleep disturbances that start occurring likewise prior to the anniversary.  Mood changes can manifest as blueness, irritability and in some others increased anticipatory anxiety that builds up.

This anticipatory anxiety stems from the memories of the events, much like someone starts to get nervous at the thought of giving an upcoming speech.

It is as though the psyche is trying to prepare you to take flight and fight, as it is already sensitized by unconscious triggers so subtile, they may go  unnoticed by conscious awareness.

Even if the patient is unaware of these, because of pressing distractions in their day to day life,  the psyche does not forget, for the event is imprinted as a tracing in the brain hippocampal and amygdales  area.

As a therapist, I have picked up on these symptoms a lot of times, before the patients even makes the connection that a traumatic event is approaching.

Any therapist that keep good clinical notes and knows the patient well enough to have their history committed to memory will generally be on the lookout for these symptoms, much like a weather forecaster.

In that case,  when they do occur, explaining what is happening is like turning on the light switch and can be a relief to just be able to connect the dots.

There are basically four ways of dealing with trauma anniversaries.  You can limp through them,   you can try to distract yourself, you can perform some healing acts, and or try to use replacement strategies.

The path of least resistance is just to go through the anniversary and allow yourself to grieve.  Trying to pretend that it does not matter,  is not helpful in facing the leftover sadness.

Grieving has its purpose as it gives you a chance to acknowledging in full the residual pain and hurt.    Grief is never fully expressed at once, but is like bubbles that occasionally surface and overwhelm us with the need to be expressed.

Having a therapist to talk to or an understanding friend or family member is helpful in relieving the pent up sadness, fears and anxiety.

Distraction is not necessarily bad, but is just a very human tendency in dealing with any trauma.  Many human beings though, overuse distraction to avoid not only traumatic anniversaries, but any uncomfortable feelings, which is not healthy in the long run.

A better way of using distraction is to acknowledge the grief and pain, while consciously agreeing to do pleasant enough activities despite what you are feeling.

Performing some healing rituals can help in the grieving process.

Lighting specific candles along with appropriate  worded prayers of release and healing are soothing.

Releasing balloons tied to written words of grief and using water in cleansing rituals are also therapeutic.

Healing rituals along with replacement are in my opinion the best and most therapeutic way of dealing with trauma anniversaries.

Basically it  means planning ahead to try to replace the painful memories with very pleasant ones.  It may take some planning, but it is well worth the effort.

This does not mean to deny or distract yourself without giving yourself the time to grieve.

Substituting good memories during a time frame where you had painful ones in the past, is essentially overwriting over the painful ones that have already been engraved in your memory.

This is an excellent way to repair  the traumatic time frame.

But, it does not remove the original trauma tracing!

The more impact your pleasant experiencing has, then the more it does to dim away the painful ones.

Even it you do nothing, time does having a fading effect of taking off the most painful edges, but this does not occur easily, not is it ever successful in diminishing memory.

Even after 20 plus years, traumatic events can be triggered and fully recalled in some almost as vividly as when they occurred, as in a flashback.

These flashbacks, especially seen in PTSD diagnosed combat survivors can  be frightening real to the patient, who may appear to be out of touch with reality or psychotic.

Generally after the trauma anniversary has passed, the intensity of symptoms will be diminished.

Hopefully, healing rituals and replacement strategies along with time will make them less disturbing and distressful, at least till you have to deal with them again next year.