How to avoid relapse after self-healing

To avoid relapse after self-healing, the core is never to completely eliminate all negative triggers, nor to force yourself to desensitize yourself to trauma, but to establish a set of "emotional pre-response mechanisms" that are unique to you, and intervene when the early signs of relapse first appear, without waiting for the problem to worsen before dealing with it.

Regarding this point, there are actually two completely opposite voices in the practitioner circle. One is to do "zero maintenance", and to eliminate all people and things that have triggered trauma from life, and not even touch them, in order to ensure absolute safety.； The other is that deliberate avoidance means that the trauma is still controlling you, and you must do "desensitization training" to actively encounter the triggering scenes in the past. Only when you don't feel anything can you be truly healed.

I met two friends who had completed basic healing in the past two years, and they happened to choose these two paths respectively. The girl was ridiculed by her relatives for her appearance when she was a child. After she recovered, she immediately refused to attend all family gatherings and deleted content related to appearance anxiety as soon as she saw it. Even when buying clothes, she only dared to buy fixed styles. The first two years were really stable until the company arranged for her to appear in a short video last month. There was a comment under the first video saying that her face shape was strange. She immediately collapsed and stayed at home for three days without leaving the house. Another young man had failed to start a business and was in debt, which triggered a severe panic attack. After he recovered, he deliberately searched for other people's failed business cases. He also took the initiative to participate in a venture capital bureau to discuss risks. Last month, the talks with investors about divestment failed, which immediately triggered heart palpitations. He squatted at the door of the conference room and waited for almost an hour before he recovered.

You see, both of these ideas are correct, but they both mean "seeking from the outside", focusing on external triggers and forgetting that what we can best control is actually our own physical and emotional reactions. The year before last, I suffered from moderate anxiety because I had to work on a project for four consecutive months. I also tried the zero-life style in the early stage of treatment. I was nervous even if I worked overtime for half an hour. Later, I felt it was too restrictive, so I deliberately stayed up late to try my best. It wasn’t until I almost fainted at the company one time that I slowly found a rhythm that suited me.

I didn’t turn off all high-pressure work, nor did I force myself to practice the so-called ability to withstand stress. I just slowly figured out a few fixed signs before my emotional collapse: For example, when I didn’t sleep for less than 6 hours for three consecutive days, I would feel like throwing things for no reason. After discovering these patterns, I didn't set any strict rules for myself that I must implement. I just put aside what I was doing every time I noticed these signals, and either ordered a takeaway of my favorite sweets, or walked downstairs for twenty minutes to bask in the sun. I didn't have to force myself to "get better immediately", even if I just stopped to catch my breath for five minutes.

Some people say that my approach is to treat the symptoms rather than the root cause. It will still break down if something serious happens. They say that true healing must be immune to all poisons. In fact, I have talked with several counselors who have been doing trauma intervention for more than ten years. The consensus is that the so-called "never relapse" itself is a false proposition. Just like you cannot ask yourself to never catch a cold again in your life, there is no need to regard "never being affected by negative events again" as the ultimate goal of healing. What is often said in psychology is "identification of prodromal symptoms". To put it bluntly, this is what it is. You don't have to be invulnerable. As long as you can accurately identify your own "premonitory symptoms of a cold", know how to put on clothes when it's cold, drink hot water when you feel uncomfortable, and don't burn out until you develop pneumonia, that's enough.

In the past two years, I haven't had the same out-of-breath or sleepless nights that I had before. Even though I worked on a project for a week last month, I gave myself half a day off as soon as I started to feel irritable, and I recovered after a full night's sleep. To put it bluntly, healing does not make you a superman without weaknesses, but rather makes you the "personal doctor" who understands you best. You can handle small problems by yourself and naturally they will not turn into major relapses.