When Stuffing It Down Stops Working

When you’re on the job, you know that you can’t stop and make sense of what’s happening, because the work’s not done yet.  Active duty, retired, & first responders know this all too well. However, the spouses of a service members and first responders also know that they can’t stop to dwell on their fears and concerns about their loved one, because there’s a household to manage every day or even their own career.  

Maybe you were told: “there’s no time for that”, “stuff it down”, or “move on” or maybe you just knew it instinctively.  You learned quickly that dwelling on what happened wasn't going to get the mission accomplished, help the next patient, answer the next call, pay your bills, or get you safely home at the end of your tour.  

And so you did. 

Not because you wanted to, but because you had to.  

Because it was the difference between life and death, there was a mission or another call you had to respond to, or a household to manage or maybe you just wanted to go home and not let your family and friends “carry the burden” that you do. 

And stuffing it down, moving past it, or whatever you want to call it (in therapy we call it compartmentalizing) helped in the moment; it got you through, but what happens when we keep shoving stuff down, pretending it didn’t happen or isn’t affecting us?  As I tell clients “It’s like a pressure-cooker… keep shoving more stuff into it, adding more pressure to it, and eventually the top is going to blow clear off and as you can imagine, it won’t be a pretty sight!” 

Our brains and our bodies can only handle so much. As that pressure builds, the cracks start to form. Sometimes those cracks show up as irritability, difficulty sleeping, anxiety, emotional numbness, relationship problems, chronic pain, or symptoms of PTSD. That’s why learning to acknowledge your feelings and experiences without judgement is so important. 

You may be thinking “Sure, cause rehashing the whole thing is so great, right?” or “It’s over & in the past, what good is talking about it now?”.  I get it… who would want to relive a trauma?!  But what if I told you that you don’t have to rehash every gory detail? 

As a matter of fact, in most trauma therapies, the goal is not to share every single detail.  In fact, sometimes it's about giving a brief overview and allowing your brain to do what it naturally knows how to do when it's no longer carrying the weight alone..  And even decades after the trauma has occurred, doing exactly that, processing it can lead to real changes.  I have seen people navigate the effects of their trauma from 40 years ago and they notice a significant change in pain levels, feeling better overall, reacting to situations in a healthier way, and the list goes on. 

The skills that helped you survive difficult situations are not weaknesses. Compartmentalization, pushing through, and staying focused often served an important purpose. Therapy isn't about taking those skills away and processing your trauma doesn’t mean that you will forget what happened. It's about helping you recognize when it's safe to set them down, not feeling the trauma as intensely, and giving you additional tools to carry the weight you've been carrying alone. 

Victoria OShea, LMHC, LPC, M-CASAC

About the Author:

Vickie is a licensed mental health therapist with more than 25 years of experience in the mental health and substance abuse fields. She is licensed in both New York and Virginia and provides therapy to adults through her private practice, Rooted Balance Therapy. Vickie is trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Brainspotting, and Motivational Interviewing, with a particular focus on trauma, PTSD, anxiety, depression, and addiction. She has extensive experience working with veterans, first responders, and their families.