Trauma & ED: Is it Possible to Fully Recover from a Traumatic Event?

Contributor: Rachel Sherron, MA, LPC, RYT, Coordinator of Trauma Awareness and Yoga Specialist, Timberline Knolls

Precious few people get through an entire life without some sort of trauma. It could be as seemingly small as a minor car accident to an extremely serious event such as witnessing death during combat.

Regardless, what is crucial to a trauma is how one deals with it. If positive coping strategies are not part of a woman or girl’s repertoire, she may experience post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This may lead to an eating disorder as a method of dealing with emotional pain, especially if she experienced complex or developmental trauma.

If this maladaptive coping strategy lasts months, or even years, is it possible to fully recover?

Defining Recovery

Perhaps the most important issue is to define recovery. We view this as the ability to live with the trauma that occurred without allowing it to impact the person as harshly or negatively as it once did; in essence, it has lost its power over the individual.

In order for this to occur, comprehensive treatment is required, optimally using Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). The three most valuable DBT skills in terms of trauma recovery are mindfulness, distress tolerance and emotion regulation.

Mindfulness in Recovery

Mindfulness encourages her to live in the now, in the present moment. It helps her distinguish between random thoughts in her own mind from actual truths. Distress tolerance helps her live through crisis situations without relying on unhealthy behaviors.

Emotion regulation reveals how to deal with and regulate emotions in productive ways. It is essential for her to learn to tolerate physical sensation as well as manage her stress response.

Establishing Triggers and Diffusing the Sequence Before it Completes

For example, say a woman was involved in a violent burglary and now suffers from flashbacks as part of the PTSD. These flashbacks are so horrific that they cause her to become physically ill and vomit. Whenever called upon to be in a social situation, she restricts food due to the fear of being physically ill in public.

If she can establish what triggers are involved and thereby lessen the severity of the flashback, the entire sequence can be diffused, and hopefully, never progress to the point of vomiting.

Treating the Degrees of Trauma

There are degrees of trauma. It can be emotional, mental, physical or sexual. It can occur once, or repeatedly.

However, it is possible to fully recover from any traumatic experience or event; it may take a long time, but in the end, living free from the symptoms of trauma is worth every step of the journey.

Community Discussion – Share your thoughts here!

Have you or someone you loved recovered from trauma, what does your road to recovery look like?

The opinions and views of our guest contributors are shared to provide a broad perspective of eating disorders. These are not necessarily the views of Eating Disorder Hope, but an effort to offer discussion of various issues by different concerned individuals.

Last Updated & Reviewed By: Jacquelyn Ekern, MS, LPC on February 21st, 2015
Published on EatingDisorderHope.com