What Is An Abreaction?
by Marissa Pomerance
Our subconscious mind is a powerful thing.
It is the source of our most inexplicable emotional reactions and outbursts.
One of which is called an “abreaction,” which can look like spontaneously lashing out in rage, bursting into tears, or a survivor of physical abuse who flinches anytime they’re touched.
And it has everything to do with our past traumas.
What IS an abreaction?
As much as we love to overuse the word “triggered,” an “abreaction” is basically our response to being triggered.
It’s an unconscious emotional reaction to a situation that brings up or mimics a painful memory or traumatic past experience. According to EMDR psychotherapist and trauma specialist, Gillian O’Shea Brown, “an abreaction is a form of release or catharsis that occurs when a person accesses past pain and releases its ‘pent up’ charge.”
Here’s an example. “A child who has endured rejection may begin to associate proximity with fear and relationships with pain. As a result, they may find ways to protect themselves from past pain and hurt by distancing/zoning out, or at the other extreme, exhibiting control and dominance in their relationships,” describes O’Shea Brown.
How are they related to trauma?
Abreactions are not disconnected, random expressions of emotions. Instead, they’re responses to stimuli, and these stimuli are directly connected to our past traumas.
“Trauma leaves behind clues,” says O’Shea Brown. “Unresolved and unexpressed trauma remains dormant in the body, festering long after the threat has passed. When an individual is unable to feel, to express, or to release past pain or trauma, it remains internalized and causes long-term dysregulation in the mind and nervous system.”
And this dormant, unresolved trauma can rear its ugly head when we’re least expecting it, because “the brain has the remarkable ability to link a current situation with anything that looks like, feels like, smells like, or tastes like a previous threatening event. Even if a person does not have a vivid memory of an event, they may still have the ability to tie a sensory cue to a feeling state.”
Being teased or criticized or rejected might unconsciously invoke the childhood trauma of being teased, criticized, and rejected by our parents. Loud noises might unconsciously remind a veteran of the sounds of gunfire and exploding bombs. Being playfully touched might unconsciously remind a domestic abuse survivor of the violence they suffered.
So even if we don’t consciously make the connection, the smallest of gestures or events might provoke a trauma response, and our abreactions cause us to respond in whatever way best protects us—by screaming or crying, or by running when we hear a loud noise, or by forcefully swatting away a hand that was trying to touch us.
Abreactions and dissociation.
Trauma can also cause us to dissociate from our feelings, thoughts, and memories. And when we start to compartmentalize all of these aspects of our mental states, “‘a fog’ emerges to shroud certain parts of experiences that are too overwhelming and painful to be faced fully,” says O’Shea Brown. “This protective fog attempts to shield an individual from the magnitude of trauma associated with the distressing event.”
O’Shea Brown gives an example of a 9/11 survivor who “may distinctly remember the smell of burnt rubber, but may report that many aspects or parts of the day feel blurred.”
Dissociation makes it even harder to understand and process these traumatic memories and emotions, because we’re burying these thoughts and memories and emotions deep, deep down. So this dissociation needs to be dealt with in order to work through our trauma and abreactions.
We can actually use our abreactions to process trauma.
According to O’Shea Brown, there are actually two types of abreactions; “'planned’ abreactions or ‘spontaneous’ abreactions.” So far, we’ve been talking about our spontaneous abreactions—the ones that occur unconsciously, without awareness or prompting, as a response to trauma-mimicking stimuli.
But therapists can actually provoke and harness our abreactions, or “planned abreactions,” to help us recognize, understand, and process trauma.
By noticing, or even inducing (with consent), a client’s abreaction, a therapist can work with a client to release pent-up emotions, which might help the client get to the source of their trauma. “In treatment, abreactions can serve as a gateway of exploration. As we gently peel back the layers in therapy, we can begin to learn where this deep pain originated from, perhaps even tying it to ‘key memories.’ This facilitates a process of release and unburdening for the survivor. This work is generally slow and gentle, with a lot of consent seeking which allows the survivor to go deeper and process their unresolved pain from a more empowered place,” explains O’Shea Brown.
Noticing and processing our abreactions can be a kind of catharsis. According to O’Shea Brown, “when a survivor is encouraged to notice the sensations of their abreaction, they are less focused on fighting or suppressing them. The body becomes their friend rather than their foe, their protector rather than their unpredictable, irrational enemy.” This work can help us better regulate our emotions, as well as our physical reactions to triggering stimuli.
Of course, it’s best to work through our abreactions with the help of a trained therapist or trauma-informed mental health professional. EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is one of the most evidence-based modalities for understanding and processing our abreactions, as it is “designed to resolve unprocessed traumatic memories in the body and nervous system. EMDR works with memories of distressing experiences which are dysfunctionally stored in the brain,” O’Shea Brown says.
Gillian O’Shea Brown is the author of the forthcoming book Healing Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Clinician’s Guide. She currently serves as Adjunct Faculty at New York University and maintains a private practice in NYC.
Marissa Pomerance is the Managing Editor of The Candidly. She’s a Los Angeles native and lover of all things food, style, beauty, and wellness. You can find more of her articles here.
