Obsession and Complex Trauma
Consumed by uninvited thoughts
As a complex trauma therapist and survivor, I am well acquainted with the persistent regurgitation of disturbing memories. The intractability implied by the need to go over week after week, month after month and even year after year of injurious occurrences and mortifying motifs is understood as an essential part of the remembrance and mourning stage of recovery in trauma-informed care.
Indeed, restoring one’s dignity in the aftermath of traumatic assault is a prolonged, harrowing and formidable task. Pernicious symptoms such as flooding, dissociation, night terrors and flashbacks continuously remind the survivor of how they were stripped of their essential worth. Along with these afflictions, the trauma survivor is plagued by splintered recollections of what occurred. Recurrent intrusive thoughts comprised of fragments of traumatic remembrances create a schema of their plight.
Paradoxically, perseverating over traumatic experiences is a desperate attempt to decipher inconceivable harm and to regain control.
For those presenting with a form of complex trauma due to narcissistic abuse, the quest for redemption and closure exacerbates the victim’s cognitive dissonance and ignites an obsessive preoccupation with discerning what was real.
