“For years it lay in an iron box buried so deep inside me that I was never sure just what it was. I knew it carried slippery, combustible things more secret than sex and more dangerous than any shadow or ghost. … I saw things I knew no little girl should see. Blood and shattered glass. Piles of skeletons and blackened barbed wire with bits of flesh stuck to it…The iron box contained a special room for my mother and father, warm and moist as a greenhouse. They lived there inside me, rare and separate from other beings. … I knew my parents had crossed over a chasm … The box became a vault, collecting in darkness, always collecting; pictures, words, my parent’s glances, becoming loaded with weight. It sank deeper as I grew older, so packed with undigested things that finally it became impossible to ignore.”
-Helen Epstein, Children of the Holocaust
Last month we looked at why it’s important to let ourselves “wallow” in our feelings; it helps us know ourselves better and get over difficult patches faster. It also helps us to reintegrate the parts of us that had to be cut off in order not to hurt so much. Once we’re whole, we can enjoy the self-esteem that comes from knowing and respecting ourselves.
As a therapist, I often hear variations on the following from clients: “I’m sick to death of wallowing in my feelings. How do I let this go and move forward?”
Have you ever had a similar thought? Has it ever seemed to you that if you could just handle your emotions better, you wouldn’t feel so bad?
Do you sometimes consciously let yourself wallow, only to find you just feel worse? If so, you may not be wallowing constructively. Truly constructive wallowing always leads to relief.
The hardest part of wallowing is the part after the initial “w”: the allowing.
When you say you’re “wallowing,” are you allowing yourself to truly and simply just have your feelings? Are you avoiding self-criticism – avoiding kicking yourself when you’re already down?
Here are some behaviors that torpedo the healing power of wallowing:
- You set a timer, either literally or in your head, after which you think you should be done.
- You dislike yourself while doing it.
- You ruminate, turning thoughts about the problem over and over in your mind, instead of simply feeling.
- You try to figure out whether your feelings are justified.
- You act out your pain through destructive behaviors that only leave you feeling worse.
If you are wallowing constructively, you will feel better afterward. When your unedited, no-need-for-justification feelings are allowed to be inside you without interference, they will move through you smoothly of their own accord.
What a lot of people call wallowing is really either distraction or rumination.
Distraction comes in the form of using substances like food or alcohol or drugs, or performing obsessive behaviors like exercising or worrying, having sex, shopping, cutting, reading, or even doing housework instead of sitting with your feelings and tolerating them.
Whenever we “do” instead of “be,” we run the risk of shutting the door on feelings that need us to listen to them. Sitting with, and witnessing feelings is the only constructive way to wallow.
Rumination is a kind of repetitive thinking. Instead of having our feelings about something, we think about the situation, the other person or people involved, what happened or didn’t happen, etc. in an effort to make sense of, or talk ourselves out of our feelings – instead of just having them.
We turn the situation over and over again in our minds, concocting plans designed to shield us from further harm; the problem is, we haven’t acknowledge the actual harm done so far.
True wallowing, which is constructive and healing, is what’s left after we remove all distractions and all obsessive behaviors, and all rumination in our minds. There is nothing left but to feel our feelings in our hearts. To tolerate them patiently. And to do so with compassion for ourselves, rather than judgment.
If you have a big backlog of uncomfortable feelings to feel, it will take longer for them to dissipate. Have patience with yourself during this process. You may experience waves of uncomfortable feelings off and on over time. This is normal when you have a backlog of feelings you haven’t felt yet. Embrace each feeling in your heart as it presents itself, and know you’re doing something positive for yourself.
In my practice, people trace depression back to trauma most of the time. Emotional trauma is an overwhelming shock to a person’s equilibrium. Trauma might be linked to an emotional, physical, or sexual attack or witnessing such an attack. War, rape, murder, accidents, and even well-intentioned medical procedures might all lead to trauma. So can single or repeated incidents of shaming and other emotional and verbal attacks. Trauma can also happen when heartbreaking losses of any kind occur.
When people are traumatized, it often shapes their beliefs about themselves or life. These trauma-induced beliefs—such as “I’m never safe,” “I’m unlovable,” “I’m a monster,” “love is dangerous,” “I’m a failure,” “I’m helpless”—affect how people feel and often contribute to depression. Sometimes an individual’s belief is based on something that was true at the moment of the trauma: “I’m helpless” is true when a person is in surgery under anesthesia (where unconsciously-remembered thoughts can still affect us).
But beliefs that formed during a traumatic event are stored without information about what that means over time. So “I’m helpless at this moment” can become “I’m always helpless.” This underlying belief may contribute to depression and helpless behavior indefinitely. If this person doesn’t get a chance to talk about their helpless feelings and express their emotions, they could carry that belief into the rest of their life. It is trauma that turns time-limited events into a part of people’s belief system and identity. It makes sense that people would be depressed when they believe they have no personal power to create the life they want.
“I’m a Coward”
Trauma-related beliefs can be a formative part of a person’s personality, particularly if trauma occurs in childhood. The trauma-related beliefs can be so painful that the traumatized person has to develop ways to coping with the belief—and then the methods for coping become a new part of who the person is.
For example, say a child watches his mother get mugged and freezes in fear until it’s over. Perhaps in his child mind, he concludes, “I’m a coward.” Living with the belief that he is a coward is so painful that he deals with it by trying to prove he’s brave: picking fights and engaging in high-risk behavior. These behaviors give him a euphoric feeling of self-confidence and he gets some relief from the pain of the “I’m a coward” belief. The combination of euphoria and the desire to avoid the shame of believing he’s a coward keeps him trying risky things.
He is new to taking risks, so he and others begin to think of him with a new identity. Risky behaviors get him in trouble in school, which means other kids in trouble gravitate toward him while cautious kids avoid him. This makes it hard for him to do well in school and he develops an identity as a tough street kid with crime rather than college in his future. This trauma-belief comes to shape every decision he makes and pretty much everything about him: who he dates, what he does for money, where he lives, who his friends are.
In situations where he might feel vulnerable or scared, he doesn’t dare show it for fear of revealing himself as a “coward.” So when he experiences other trauma, he can’t express his vulnerable feelings, which keeps him from processing the trauma, causing each new trauma to incapacitate him further. When he does start to feel vulnerable, afraid, or sad, he uses drugs or alcohol to suppress the feelings and give him the high of confidence again.
At some point, this man may realize he is depressed, perhaps when a friend dies of an overdose, a woman he loves leaves him, or he ends up in jail or a hospital. At this point, unraveling his story to find what is causing the depression will be complicated. The depression he feels is caused by this most recent loss, but it’s also caused by drugs and alcohol, living a life that keeps him from reaching his potential, and the self-hate that has developed over the years through taking risks despite serious consequences. But ultimately, the depression began when he watched his mother get mugged. When that is resolved, and he realizes he never was a coward, that freezing was normal and even wise at that moment, he will feel much better. He will probably begin to feel free to redefine himself and make different choices for his life. But because his whole life has been based on the way he reacted to trauma and the way he continued to react to his reaction, he will also have to unravel and replace all the aspects of his life and self-image that were created by that initial belief and shame that he was a coward.
“I’m Worthless”
Another example: imagine a child who is sexually assaulted by an adult. That child may respond to the trauma by believing “I’m only worth something if I’m being used for someone’s sexual satisfaction.” It’s not hard to imagine that this child might become an adult who deals with this belief by being sexually available to many people, who she may not even find attractive, as a way of getting some temporary relief from feeling worthless.
Being sexual with many people becomes part of her personality and identity, both of which would have been very different if she hadn’t been assaulted as a child. When this method of coping with trauma stops working—maybe because she can’t find lovers anymore, or she gets caught compulsively having sex outside her marriage and loses her husband—she may become depressed. She will be depressed about the recent changes in her life, but again, ultimately, the depression comes from the original trauma, and from the problems caused by trying to cope with the original trauma.
As complicated as these scenarios may seem, the origins of a given person’s depression can be even more complicated. Sometimes trauma isn’t involved in the origins of depression, but most of the time, with enough exploration, I find the roots of depression in trauma.
Perceived favoritism on the part of a mother can cause long-term psychological effects on all her children well into adulthood, according to new research. Gerontologist Karl Pillemer from Cornell University looked at 275 mothers and their 671 adult children and found that in families with a perceived sense of favoritism, children were more likely to exhibit depressive symptoms as adults. Interesting, this applied to both the favored children and non-favored children. The study found that it’s not the type of treatment each child receives that matters so much as being raised in an environment where a sense of unequal treatment is present.
For those battling depression, both cognitive-behavioral therapy and interpersonal psychotherapy have long been recognized as very effective means of overcoming depression. A new study printed in the British Journal of Psychiatry and published on PsychiatryOnline.org shows that differing personality traits can affect how responsive people are to these two main types of therapy. The researchers wanted to know if certain personality traits made treatment less effective. Their conclusion: the success of interpersonal therapy seemed to vary based on the individual’s personality and temperament, while the success of cognitive-behavioral therapy showed no difference based on personality traits. This can help therapists further match clients with the best form of treatment not only for their struggles (e.g. depression), but their personality as well.