“One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone.”

― Shannon L. Alder

 

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How we distract ourselves from our deeper sources of pain



In my interview with Warriors Heart Healing Center, we discussed the idea of 'presenting problems'.  These are problems that feel much more urgent and obvious to patients coming in (such as losing their job or getting a DUI).  As trauma therapists, however, they understand that there is generally something much deeper going on for patients than only that immediate and current scenario.  They understand that although there may be a lot of stress from something happening now, there are generally patterns of beliefs and reactions to things that have repeated over time... and the current situation may trigger some of those deeply held and invisible wounds and scars from long ago.

Interestingly, in my wilderness first responder training that I attended recently, an important task during various emergency scenarios was to figure out the Mechanism of Injury (MOI).  Understanding how a person got hurt was important for figuring out further steps for assessing what to do next.  (sometimes we weren't able to to know the MOI, so we had to do our best based on our training protocols).

 

What sometimes happened during these scenarios was a 'distracting injury'. 

This was something more obviously painful or noticeable to the patient (for example, an open fracture) but was not as critical as another situation going on (for example, internal bleeding).  In those situations, it was a challenge to help the team and the patient understand that certain things needed to be dealt with first before we could treat the obviously painful injury that was occupying their attention.  When we were able to assess the mechanism of injury, this also helped tune our awareness to pick up on other things in the situation we might have otherwise missed.

 

So much of what we think may be wrong in a moment is related to our level of awareness. 

If our attention gets distracted by something very pinpointed or obvious, we may miss out on a lot of other types of information and noticing of patterns that could actually help us get to a deeper root of what is going on.

An analogy I remember hearing a while back that resonates with this is:  imagine seeing people in a pool of water near a waterfall, and seeing some of these people falling over the waterfall to their potential death.  We need some focus to go to helping those people avoid falling over the edge.  And we need some focus to attempt to save people who may have fallen over the edge.  But we also need some focus to go to why people are jumping in the pool in the first place.   The other levels of focus will always draw our attention.  But it doesn't mean that we shouldn't also include the wider span of awareness needed to understand why problems keep repeating.

This can include not just ideas about our past in terms of childhood or other experiences, but also for example our sleep patterns, what we are eating, the activities we are engaging in.   The more we can pause and take inventory of our habits,