...some of those other people who got really into Processing Trauma seemed to… end up falling into a Process Trauma Hole and never come out. They seemed (to me) to get addicted to little microepiphanies, and processing emotions for the sake of processing emotions.
Personally most of the emotion-processing stuff that I do tends to be aimed at specific internal or external goals, like fix anxiety X or become capable of doing Y. I do think that there’s also value in doing emotional processing for its own sake, since that can help reveal issues one didn’t know were issues, but it’s good to keep checking whether you’re making progress on your Xs and Ys. Endless processing can also be a way to avoid facing the actually really hard issues while focusing on something easier, and that becomes easier to notice if it’s clear to you that you’re still stalling on your goals.
My most memorable example is one occasion when I managed to take a significant amount of time off work and also found an introspective technique that seemed to work fantastic. Everything felt so much better.
Until I needed to return to work and most of the gains seemed to vanish.
Now I do think that the technique did work. It wasn’t only that I got to take some time off: that by itself wouldn’t have allowed me to feel so much better.
It’s more that returning to work triggered some traumas and issues so strong, they shattered the gains.
As a somewhat similar experience, I was unemployed for most of 2021 and that allowed me to feel truly satisfied. Only, it wasn’t long-term sustainable and it was enabled because I had no job and also felt like I didn’t need to achieve anything else. Once I get back to work, that triggered other issues and made me less happy overall… but with more long-term satisfaction about doing something right and not just being happy because I’m sitting at home doing nothing.
That said, I do definitely also agree with some of the other commenters on some kinds of endless processing coming from the fact that the stuff is simply very deep and huge to work through.
And to be clear, I don’t think that the progress would need to be short-sighted. It doesn’t mean every session with one’s therapist (or whatever) should immediately translate into being able to do something more. Progress can be “there were 12 things about the thought of doing X that gave me overwhelming anxiety and prevented me from even trying it, and now there are only 11 such things”.
The main thing is that if I care about being able to do X, then my progress comes from actually trying to tackle X, as opposed to feeling better because I am—say—just going on endless silent retreats where I feel better because I can just meditate and do nothing else. (That is not a criticism of silent retreats. I’ve found them to have some value and may go on future ones. It is a criticism of the failure mode where you use them to avoid your problems and never even ask the question of how to translate the gains into real life.)
And I also don’t think that I was making a mistake when I spent most of 2021 unemployed. It was necessary for me to reorient, catch some breath, and get a sense of what the heck I want to do with my life. A person does also need to take breaks and just rest.
Personally most of the emotion-processing stuff that I do tends to be aimed at specific internal or external goals, like fix anxiety X or become capable of doing Y. I do think that there’s also value in doing emotional processing for its own sake, since that can help reveal issues one didn’t know were issues, but it’s good to keep checking whether you’re making progress on your Xs and Ys. Endless processing can also be a way to avoid facing the actually really hard issues while focusing on something easier, and that becomes easier to notice if it’s clear to you that you’re still stalling on your goals.
My most memorable example is one occasion when I managed to take a significant amount of time off work and also found an introspective technique that seemed to work fantastic. Everything felt so much better.
Until I needed to return to work and most of the gains seemed to vanish.
Now I do think that the technique did work. It wasn’t only that I got to take some time off: that by itself wouldn’t have allowed me to feel so much better.
It’s more that returning to work triggered some traumas and issues so strong, they shattered the gains.
As a somewhat similar experience, I was unemployed for most of 2021 and that allowed me to feel truly satisfied. Only, it wasn’t long-term sustainable and it was enabled because I had no job and also felt like I didn’t need to achieve anything else. Once I get back to work, that triggered other issues and made me less happy overall… but with more long-term satisfaction about doing something right and not just being happy because I’m sitting at home doing nothing.
That said, I do definitely also agree with some of the other commenters on some kinds of endless processing coming from the fact that the stuff is simply very deep and huge to work through.
And to be clear, I don’t think that the progress would need to be short-sighted. It doesn’t mean every session with one’s therapist (or whatever) should immediately translate into being able to do something more. Progress can be “there were 12 things about the thought of doing X that gave me overwhelming anxiety and prevented me from even trying it, and now there are only 11 such things”.
The main thing is that if I care about being able to do X, then my progress comes from actually trying to tackle X, as opposed to feeling better because I am—say—just going on endless silent retreats where I feel better because I can just meditate and do nothing else. (That is not a criticism of silent retreats. I’ve found them to have some value and may go on future ones. It is a criticism of the failure mode where you use them to avoid your problems and never even ask the question of how to translate the gains into real life.)
And I also don’t think that I was making a mistake when I spent most of 2021 unemployed. It was necessary for me to reorient, catch some breath, and get a sense of what the heck I want to do with my life. A person does also need to take breaks and just rest.