So you spend a lot of time and money talking to a therapist… You have behaviors/reactions that adversely affect your life… Therapist figures out its a traumatic event… How does that discovery help you change your behavior/reactions?
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In the sense you’re talking about, it normally doesn’t.
Identifying a traumatic event makes for great drama, but it ultimately doesn’t really matter much in terms of how you behave/react in the modern day because you can’t change that past event – all you can do is change your current behavior/reaction.
In terms of changing your current *reactions*, it’s mostly a matter of just slowing down and recognizing where that reaction is coming from so you can deal with it intellectually rather than simply reacting emotionally. It’s a matter of continually forcing yourself examine *why* you’re doing something rather than simply doing something.
Behavior is harder to adjust and normally involves ‘tricking’ yourself in various ways. Let’s say you want to lose weight. Instead of jumping into a comprehensive diet and exercise program that up-ends your entire life, you’re better of starting with something really simple. For example, instead of your morning latte, you simply change to drinking black coffee. This is an easy change that almost anyone can make and will start your down the road.
Therapists can also serve as reinforcement for such changes. Think of the difference of keeping to an exercise regimen working with a trainer vs. working by yourself. If you’re not feeling up to it one day and you work by yourself, you skip the workout. But if you’re working with a trainer, you are – in some sense – responsible to that trainer and you drag yourself out of bed because of that responsibility to another human being.
If part of your regimen of addressing such changes is to review your actions, having someone who keeps you focused on regularly performing that review can be helpful.
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