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Can trauma cause psychosis?

Based on my own experiences of psychoses and healing, I would say yes. My personal experience is that it was indeed a hidden trauma that caused my psychotic episodes. 

 

It was not a clear trauma that was behind the first psychosis, however, at age 17. I had had a fairly normal childhood, but been bullied at school and not seen eye to eye with my parents regarding various issues, especially after I entered my teenage years. I had low self-confidence and didn’t have a strong sense of self, or an inner anchor. The trigger to the episode was probably a night of partying that went wrong (I passed out from too much alcohol). I wasn’t left with any cherished memories from that night, or any memories for that matter, but it seemed like that night opened up something in me that had been behind a locked door. In the following weeks my energy, confidence, and creativity burst, and it continued in an upgoing cycle – until it got out of hands, and was followed by the crash. 

 

It was during this crash – the hospitalization, forced treatment, getting tied down and isolated – that I was traumatized quite badly. That was somewhat tragic, because my first psychosis had a good prognosis, and doctors held it likely that I would not have another one. Unless I hadn’t been traumatized by the care I received, that probably would have been the case. 

 

What I experienced during that first stay at a psychiatric hospital, was so traumatizing, that my mind hid those traumatic memories from me for years, until they were triggered while being in the hospital giving birth to my son. After that, it felt like they would no longer stay at bay. They kept popping up. I had no choice but to face my trauma and work through it. 

 

It is my understanding that the hallucinations and visions that a person experiences during certain psychoses are traumatic memories, that the mind has not been able to process. Different things in the surroundings can trigger these memories, and ordinary things in our reality might therefore be experienced as something threatening or terrifying. Something bad that happened long ago still feels like it is present.

Psychiatry’s view

In psychiatry, hallucinations and visions are most often not given any meaning. They are seen as symptoms that should be eradicated. Medication is used to push those things into the back of the mind and keep them from popping up. It is the best that psychiatry can do.

 

It is not difficult to conclude that this approach doesn’t help a person to heal. When the trauma that caused the psychoses is only suppressed, but never dealt with, the person suffering does never fully heal. 

 

I was extremely lucky to find help from someone who had specialized in helping people work through the traumatic material that surfaces during my psychosis. This approach is the opposite of mainstream psychiatric care. Instead of seeing the hallucinations as meaningless, they are seen as the key to the healing process. The material that surfaces during a psychosis, or that can alternatively be brought to the surface through different techniques, is worked through and dealt with. It addresses the root cause of the psychotic symptoms. 

 

Working through traumatic memories is challenging process to go through, but after that, the traumatic events can finally be laid to rest, and will not bother any longer. Healing on a deep level has taken place. 

 

I hope that these healing techniques will find their way into general mental health care. So many people who are now soldiering on with the help of medication could resolve the real cause of their illness, and find lasting healing.

 

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