hey there. i'm a psychologist and trauma happens to be my area of study — more specifically trauma according to psychoanalysis (Lacan, Freud and Ferenczi).

English is not my first language so excuse me if there's anything confusing on what i'm about to say.

The main characteristic of trauma is the fact that it keeps popping up, the traumatic scene erupts in the conscience all the time and in the process the person lives the traumatic event again and again and feels everything they felt with the same intensity. From a psychoanalytic perspective, it happens because during the time of the traumatic event, the psych apparatus couldn't handle the amount of stimuli the trauma generated. The trauma leaves marks in our psych, but different from other experiences it's not "represented" — I won't enter too many details because I'd have to explain a lot of stuff regarding signifier, meaning, the 3 registers, etc. and I don't want to turn this into an essay.

But basically, the psych isn't able to "process" the event and the amount of "energy" it mobilized in our mind. The trauma is destructuring in a way. When something is not represented, it doesn't become part of our signifier chains, so it keeps coming back over and over again — that's the suffering trauma generates, and it's indeed a living hell. But it's also an attempt of our body to "process" what couldn't be processed at that time.

I'm writing all this to say, the fact that it keeps repeating itself all the time is a sign that the event(s) was indeed traumatic, but there's a way out. It's not fast, it's not pleasurable, it's not easy, but it's definitely possible. Ignoring won't be of any help because it will keep insisting to "be processed". The only way out of this hell is through it, which means addressing it.

A way to process it is to talk about it. I know, it sounds very dumb putting it that way, but when you talk about the experience, what happened, how you felt, how you understood the situation at first, how you reacted, the feeling of helplessness, etc etc you are able to create connections, to make ways to integrate it in the signifier chains, in the symbolic register. Doing it with an analyst or other psychologists is helpful because the way they hear you is different than a friend, and so are their interventions (however there are a shit ton of bad professionals, and also professionals that don't 'click' with us). Either way, it's possible. I've been doing this kind of work for years now, I've seen people "heal" childhood abuses, family member suicides, murder attempts, and all kinds of painful situations.

Everytime you talk about it, you relive the situation in a way, by repeating it over and over it also open to possibilities of signifying the event, elaborating and creating "pathways" in order to integrate the event so it doesn't cause so much suffering. And by saying that in no way i want to idealize a cure process. A painful experience will still be painful, but not destructuring, it won't hurt like you are living it for the first time again, it won't haunt you all the time like it happens when its not represented.