In order to deal with a bad experience, we often switch to an emergency program. This helps you survive difficult situations, but it can interfere with your normal life.
Why do problems develop after experiencing violence?
If you've experienced something bad – for example, physical, emotional or sexual violence – you can feel really bad: fearful, jumpy, nervous, tense, helpless. You look for ways to calm yourself down and cope with the crisis. You seek help and get support from other people. In addition, you may know good ways to soothe and comfort yourself. This helps you to better process the traumatic experience.
But maybe none of this is possible. You may be alone and overwhelmed. Maybe you live in an environment where violence continues to happen. Or you feel that you can't trust other people. Or people don't believe you. So you have to switch on an emergency program, so to speak, and develop strategies to cope with the bad feelings and situations and to somehow keep yourself and your life under control. These strategies help in the short term, but are problematic in the long term: Emergency programs are only suitable for emergency situations. In normal life, they become a burden.
Which emergency programs are problematic?
Every person reacts differently in a crisis. Perhaps you recognize yourself in here somewhere:
- You have an excessive need for control. Everything has to work exactly according to a certain plan. That gives you security. Maybe you also develop compulsive behaviors.
- You split off parts of yourself and no longer experience yourself as a whole. This is called dissociation. Maybe one part works very well. You've split off anything that is suffering. It's as if it is no longer there. Maybe it comes up occasionally as flashbacks. Or perhaps you “switch”, which means that different parts of you surface depending on the situation.
- You completely split off from your body and hardly feel it. This way you can more easily ignore it.
- You harm yourself in order to deal with your internal pain, to feel anything at all, or perhaps to punish yourself.
- You develop disordered eating behaviors. Maybe you eat too little so that you will feel less and be less and gain a sense of control. Or you eat too much in order to comfort yourself and perhaps build a protective wall around yourself. Maybe you throw up afterwards to get rid of restlessness and tension, or to punish yourself.
- You repress your feelings and experience them only as physical pain.
- You try to calm yourself or numb your pain with alcohol, drugs, or other addictive behaviors.
- You withdraw and avoid personal or sexual relationships.
- You look for relationships and situations where you are humiliated, tormented and mistreated. This world feels “right” for you, you feel you deserve the punishment, and you get a sense of control because you “want” it this way.
- You act tough and strong and despise everything “weak” and suffering within yourself and perhaps also in others. You may become overly aggressive and violent.
- You inwardly escape. You flee into fantasy worlds and may no longer even know what is true or false.
You may also have been diagnosed with a psychological disorder, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, or an eating disorder. You may also have psychosomatic complaints. You can read more about all these disorders in this text.
What if I experienced violence as a child?
Experiencing violence as a child is particularly bad. Because you didn't yet have the understanding or life experience to deal with bad situations. Maybe your parents didn't help you. Or maybe they were the ones inflicting the violence. You had to develop strategies to survive in that situation. Maybe you learned to dismiss yourself and your feelings. Maybe you put on a pair of distortion goggles that showed only the good things. Maybe you blamed yourself for everything so that you could still see your parents as good people. Maybe you slipped into a role that "fit" and split off everything else. You can read more about these strategies in this text.
How do I break away from my coping strategies?
No matter how strange or difficult your behavior or experience may be, you've developed it for a reason. Because it worked for you at one time, you've kept it. It became a habit. To overcome this, the first step is to understand and acknowledge why your experience and behavior is the way it is. It's important that you develop compassion for yourself and your suffering, and that you give yourself credit for the fact that you managed to survive. At the same time, you should recognize that it is not easy to change your experience and behavior. We therefore recommend psychotherapeutic support. You may want to contact a victim support organization to get addresses.
But I've had this for so long...
It's never too late to leave the emergency program behind and develop a new way of dealing with yourself and your life. Even if you've had your problems for decades. For a start, you could write us your thoughts anonymously using our question window.