If you watched the Olympics or the news about our most accomplished gymnast of all time and were left wondering why she withdrew from competition, this blog post is an attempt to get insight into how trauma, avoidance, and retraumatization can help explain things.  It’s not so much to explain her behavior, but more to gain insight into your own.

Avoidance and Retraumatization Are Huge Problems Right Now

We live in a world where upsetting events are happening all the time at a seemingly accelerating pace:  from natural disasters to pandemics to political violence.  We live in a time where anything could possibly cause us to be shocked and traumatized at any given time.  Whatever it is that jars you or shocks you somehow can cause trauma, which is an extreme negative reaction to some unpleasant event.  What follows is a dance between trying to avoid the cause of the trauma and risking retraumatizing yourself by going back to ‘the scene of the crime’ and the same thing happening again.

How Avoidance and Retraumatization Dance with Each Other

While I don’t have any clear insight into what happened with Simone, suffice it to say that gymnastics was at least indirectly related to the sexual abuse she suffered years ago because of Larry Nassar.  Her passion was tainted by the abuse, and so it can be for any of us.  You may suffer some trauma at work, or in your homes, or in your car, and then spend an inordinate amount of time and energy trying to avoid the situation you were traumatized in.  You may stay home from work, avoid a certain room in your house, or take a different route to work from the one your car accident was in.  Eventually you do wind up going back to work, going in that room, or going past that intersection.  What winds up happening is that often the same feelings you had when you first were traumatized may come flooding back on you, and this is what is called retraumatization.  Sometimes it just happens by accident, but other times it is brought on unconsciously.  You want to avoid the source of the trauma with your conscious mind, but your unconscious mind may tend to gravitate towards retraumatizing yourself.  

Why Do You Retraumatize Yourself?

The unconscious intent in exposing yourself to the source of your trauma is basically because it is telling you that you need to heal the trauma, but you can’t do it by just recreating the same situation that caused the trauma in the first place.  There are even some forms of therapy that rely on this to try to help people recover from the trauma.  People may recover from the trauma in such instances or they may not, but the intention is generally good.  There just aren’t a lot of good ways to help yourself recover from trauma:  it’s not something self-help is very good at...at all!

How To Stop Retraumatizing Yourself

The key here is to not keep repeating the same avoidance and retraumatization behaviors.  Instead it starts with talking to a trusted friend, family member, or mental health professional.  That is when you start to open the door to healing.  Avoidance and retraumatization then becomes replaced by healthy coping, including confronting uncomfortable situations when they arise.  Only with professional help does the trauma heal.

How I Can Help You Recover from Retraumatization

I’ve been helping people recover from trauma for my entire social work career, and use several different methods to do this.  I use EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), as well as Image Transformation Therapy (ImTT) to help people heal from traumatic events in their life, and this allows the avoidance and retraumatization to fade as they heal.  I would be happy to talk to you about how I can help you as well and can offer a free 20-minute phone consult to help you get a better idea about whether I can help you or not.  Please call me at my number at the top of the page or fill out the form below and I can arrange a time to talk and help you get a better idea about this.  You certainly have nothing to lose, except maybe to get back some of the time you would have otherwise lost getting caught up in the terrible cycle you’ve been stuck in for so long.  

Visit our page on trauma therapy to find out how Scott can help you with avoidance and retraumatization. 

About the author:  Scott Kampschaefer, LCSW is a private practice therapist in Frederick, Maryland.  He has an extensive background in working with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder at a clinic for older adults with these disorders in Austin.  He now works with adults and adolescents 14 and up in private practice. His most recent book is titled The 5 Pillars of Addiction Recovery and is available for purchase on Amazon and in paperback on this website.