Trauma is often treated with a combination of behavioral therapy and more specific techniques to process the trauma. There are areas where CBT or other therapies that focus on behavior like DBT can interact with our own trauma-related patterns and reinforce abusive lessons we learned as children. These aren’t always obvious reenactments and our Ts might miss that it is happening. In this post we will focus on controlled behavior.
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Trauma-related over-control
When we grew up in an abusive environment we quickly learned that there is ‘good’ behavior and ‘bad’ behavior. We were allowed or encouraged to act in very specific ways and got punished or neglected for behaving in different ways. A lot of survivors are very sensitive to unwritten rules about accepted behavior and do their best to comply and control themselves to match the demands. We learned that how we feel doesn’t matter. All that matters is what is seen on the outside.
In extreme cases we learned to hold back all natural behavior a child or healthy human would show. Instead, we have a set of rules of how things are supposed to be, how we are supposed to act, what we are supposed to say. These rules can be deeply entrenched in our behavior so that we are not making choices anymore, we follow the script of how we are supposed to be. Sometimes these scripts are not things we randomly picked up as children, they were taught and conditioned by abusers. Acting outside such a script for the ‘right’ behavior can cause intense fear. We are stuck in artificial control that doesn’t allow for life to unfold.
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Behavioral control through ‘therapy’
Behavioral therapies usually work on identifying problematic behavior and then finding ways to replace it with more helpful behavior. They don’t always seek to understand why we show a certain behavior and how it might be rooted in trauma. In some cases the only goal is to make us act differently and when we manage that, we have reached our goal and are sent home as healed. There is no more problem behavior, so the problem is solved. We were personally told several times that how we feel doesn’t matter as long as we just don’t act on it and instead do as we are told. Sometimes patients are treated like they are robots whose AI learned the wrong pattern and once they are trained to behave better they can function again. It took me 10 years before I encountered a different approach, one where how I feel while I behave actually matters and that was when I started body work therapy. This is a structural problem in behavior-focussed therapies. And one might wonder if maybe it is a problem in society as a whole.
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Reenacting control patterns
These shortcuts in behavioral approaches interact with the patterns we already have. Only the person who tells us how to behave has changed. It is all still about being accepted and praised for the ‘right’ behavior and being seen as resistant or troublesome when we show the ‘wrong’ behavior. Even if our Ts intend to go deeper and really help us to change from the inside out and not through mere control of behavior, we might slip into the already existing pattern of control and only present the new behavioral script we learned in therapy. Ts might be happy with us and not realize that our inside hasn’t changed at all. The problem is still existing unchanged. We just increased our control of our behavior. We are not healed, we are worse. CBT translates as Control Behavior Therapy for us.
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This picture was drawn by someone from our system who wanted to show how behavioral therapy feels for us.
Whenever we act in a ‘bad’ way another screw gets added to the doll to control that behavior. When problematic behavior shows up again the screw just gets tightened. It hurts. When we just can’t stop acting out a screw clamp gets added. We need to hold still and not move that way again. Holding still is traumatizing.
Ts who are not careful will communicate just that. It is still all about controlling behavior, like during TraumaTime. The trauma pattern is reinforced, the traumatic relationship reenacted. Behavior might get ‘fixed’, but the effects of trauma don’t change a bit: we are not free.
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How do we avoid reinforcing trauma-related over-control?
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The goal of therapy
When we are already dealing with a trauma pattern of over-control the goal of therapy has to be to create options we can choose from. We don’t replace one script with another one. Instead we can explore all the different ways we could behave, ways that are beyond the one thing we learned is ‘the right way’ to act. The goal is not to take away the old script at all, it is to add more and more options to it so that we have a whole collection of behaviors to choose from.
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What we are trying to learn
We are not trying to learn proper behavior. The ideas of right and wrong can soften and blur a bit. The lesson we have to learn first is that there is more than one way to do things and be successful. There are things beyond the script we were taught and it is ok to try them. We need to learn that there actually is freedom of choice. We will see consequences that are of more or less advantage for us but we will not be punished.
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How it is achieved
We don’t achieve this by replacing a ‘bad’ behavior with a ‘good’ behavior the way CBT is usually done. What we need more than anything are experiments. The new experience, that we can choose a different option and that there really is the freedom to do things the way we want, is what will resolve the pattern of over-control and also open up new ways to behave that are more adaptive than what we used to do.
Ts need to give us options instead of instruction, invite us to try out ideas instead of telling us what to do. And sometimes they need to help us to come up with ideas when we are so stuck in our script that we can’t even imagine other options.
With chronic childhood trauma it is a lot more important to learn about freedom of behavior than it is to fix a behavior. We don’t have to act the old way and we don’t have to act in a specific new way. We can just do whatever we want. We need to set aside the scripts for good. Otherwise Ts will just condition us the way we have always been conditioned. They end up in the role of an abuser who adds screws to our already existing pattern of control.
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A word for therapists
I know that there are more than just a couple of Ts reading this. Pay attention. This is very, very common and it is a real problem for many survivors. I know it can be scary to teach freedom of choice when we could make ‘bad’ choices and it can be hard to keep in mind that we respond with controlled obedience when we encounter rules. We might even push you into the role of the one who has to give us new scripts to follow and you will have to keep in mind that we need freedom more than we need a quick solution. Remember, it is quite terrible to live with screws that get tightened all the time, even if that is all we are used to and what we seem to want. We will do much better in life when we learn about the behavioral options we can choose from. Artificial control is keeping us from being fully alive. It is not therapeutic only because it looks good on the outside. What is happening inside matters too.
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More about impulses and over-control
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