How to avoid relapse after self-healing

The core is never to wrap yourself up tightly to eliminate all negative emotional triggers. Instead, you must first break the misunderstanding of "healing = never being affected by old injuries again" and allow yourself to coexist with residual emotional signals, which can actually minimize the probability of extreme rebound.

Don't tell me, I've seen too many people get through the trough with great difficulty, but because they are too afraid of relapse, they will be scared to death if there is even the slightest sign of the previous emotions, and instead suppress the small emotions into a big rebound. A girl I talked to before spent 8 months getting out of the internal friction of a pleaser personality, and finally dared to clearly refuse to blame her colleagues. As a result, she subconsciously paid for everyone at a department dinner. On the way home, she remembered that she had clearly said that she should "put herself first." She cried while sitting on the subway. She felt that all her previous efforts were in vain. She returned to the state of not daring to say no for three days in a row, but it was even worse than before.

When I was studying with counselors from different schools, I heard two completely opposite views. Psychoanalytically oriented teachers insisted that as long as the root complex is not completely repaired, relapse is inevitable. For example, the essence of pleasing is that you were emotionally neglected by your parents in childhood, and you can only gain attention by pleasing yourself. If you don't untie this knot, sooner or later you will return to your original shape.； However, teachers who accept commitment therapy believe that there is no need to pursue "complete elimination of traces of trauma." Just like the place where you fell will be sore on a rainy day, this is a normal body memory. As long as you are not unable to walk because of this soreness, it is not considered a recurrence at all.

Judging from the cases I have come into contact with, both statements are actually correct, but the states of adaptation are different. If your mood breaks down as soon as you encounter a triggering scene, and you cannot recover for a week or two, and it even seriously affects your ability to eat, sleep, and work, then you really need to dig down to the root cause and clean up the old wounds that have not been dealt with. ； If you just occasionally get emotional about something and feel stuck in your heart for ten or twenty minutes, turning around and doing whatever you want to do, there is really no need to blame yourself and say, "Why did you go back again?"

The girl before did not force herself to "never pay for others again". She just set a very small rule for herself. Whether she agrees to someone else's request or pays for something, she should stop for 30 seconds and ask herself, "If I do this, will I regret it later?" If the answer is hesitant, just put it off and say, "I'll think about it and get back to you." Later, there were times when she took the initiative to bring coffee to colleagues or help friends, but she did it willingly, and she never had that kind of self-attack of "Why am I the same again?" Naturally, she never relapsed.

In fact, to put it bluntly, what many people think of as "relapse" is not a failure of treatment at all, but that you set the standard of treatment too high - you always feel that after treatment, you have to become an invulnerable superman, and you can't even have the slightest bit of old emotions. Instead, you put new shackles on yourself. Just like people who have suffered from bronchitis, they are more likely to cough twice in autumn and winter than others. There is no need for you to feel that your lungs are rotten just because you coughed twice. Drink more warm water, wear a mask, and don't go to crowded and windy places. Live your life how you want. There is no permanent cure. It's just that you slowly understand your own temper and know when to coax yourself and when to be tougher. That's enough.