BN#64 How Trauma Creates Adaptive Patterns and Shapes Our Perception: A Self_Perpetuating Cycle of Beliefs

If you are angry, its most likely your anger has something to do with your trauma

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How Trauma Creates Adaptive Patterns and Shapes Our Perception: A Self_Perpetuating Cycle of Beliefs

“Being Traumatized means continuing to organize your life as if the trauma were the still going on - unchanged and immutable – as every new encounter or event is contaminated by the past”

Bessel Van Dar Kolk

Trauma, whether from early childhood experiences or later life events, leaves a lasting imprint on our psyche. Often, we may not be consciously aware of how it shapes our perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors. However, trauma creates internal saboteurs, self-defeating patterns of thought and behavior that emerge as a defense mechanism to protect us from further harm. These saboteurs, though initially adaptive, can become self-perpetuating, become a part of personality, creating a cycle that reinforces negative beliefs and limits our capacity to thrive.

The best example of this I have ever seen that illustrates this point, is in the above interview where Dr. Gabor Mate did an exercise with Tim Ferris on how to reframe a challenging moment. Essentially, the exercise starts by asking Tim about a recent moment when he was angry and Gabor Mate traces it back to Tim Ferris childhood. Most importantly, the root of the anger was that Tim Ferris was upset with himself. This is actually the root cause of most people’s anger. Trauma makes people exhibit anger (fight), anxiety (flight) or depressive states (freeze) as ways of coping with the world. The video is below and worth watching.

How Adaptive Patterns Become Self-Perpetuating

This flowchart illustrates a self-perpetuating cycle of beliefs, where adaptive patterns, behavioral or thought patterns developed for survival—shape and reinforce each other over time. Here’s a breakdown of each stage:

1. Adaptive Pattern Shapes Attention:

The mind, conditioned by past experiences and survival mechanisms, directs attention towards certain stimuli while filtering out others. These adaptive patterns are mental shortcuts developed over time to cope with perceived threats or opportunities in one's environment.

2. Attention Shapes Perception:

What you focus on affects how you perceive the world. For example, if you’re attuned to danger due to an adaptive pattern, you may view neutral situations as more threatening, shaping your perception in a biased way.

3. Perception Shapes Experience of Reality:

Your perception of events and people around you directly impact your interpretation of reality. The way you process external events becomes your subjective reality. If you perceive the world through a lens of caution or fear, your experience of reality aligns with those emotions.

4. Experience Shapes Beliefs:

Repeated experiences, influenced by your perceptions, reinforce your underlying beliefs. These beliefs are the conclusions you draw from your perceived reality, and they become ingrained over time, either reinforcing positivity, fear, or any other worldview.

5. Beliefs Reinforce Adaptive Patterns:

Your beliefs, now deeply rooted, influence your future behavior. They feed back into the adaptive patterns, strengthening the way your mind directs attention and processes new information. This cycle ensures that adaptive patterns continue to govern behavior unless disrupted.

Finally, the flowchart shows that Beliefs and Adaptive Patterns continuously reinforce each other, creating a loop. This loop can be positive or negative, depending on the nature of the adaptive patterns and beliefs. This cycle is crucial to understand because it explains why certain thought or behavior patterns are difficult to change—they are deeply intertwined with one another in a reinforcing loop.

Example from Case Study:

Let’s have a look on sarah case-study to illustrate how trauma creates self-perpetuating saboteurs that shape perception and reinforce limiting beliefs.

Sarah’s Background and Trauma

Sarah, a successful business woman in her early 40s, experienced significant emotional neglect and criticism growing up. Her parents rarely expressed affection or approval and had high expectations for success, particularly in academics and career. Sarah internalized the belief that she needed to constantly prove herself worthy of love by achieving external success, which led to the formation of deep-rooted survival patterns.

In her teenage years, Sarah also witnessed frequent conflicts at home, which were often followed by long periods of emotional distance between family members. To cope, Sarah learned to avoid expressing her own emotions, keeping everything bottled up. This combination of un-met emotional needs and learned avoidance shaped the survival mechanisms that now dominate her adult life.

Trauma and the Creation of Adaptive Patterns

Trauma can come in many forms—like neglect, emotional abuse, loss, or even witnessing something distressing. The brain responds to trauma in a protective way, trying to shield us from the painful emotions tied to those experiences. As a result, our mind develops adaptive patterns to help us cope.

These adaptive patterns are often altered or exaggerated versions of healthy coping strategies. For example:

·         The Hyper-Achiever Adaptive Pattern: A person who has experienced trauma might cope by becoming a high achiever. They overwork themselves, constantly seeking validation from others to prove their worth and avoid facing their inner pain.

These adaptive patterns usually develop from early experiences of fear, rejection, or feelings of not being good enough. However, their influence goes far beyond the original trauma, shaping how we view the world, ourselves, and others in a distorted way.

Example, the primary saboteur Sarah developed was the Hyper-Achiever, born from the constant pressure to excel. Early in life, Sarah’s worth became synonymous with external accomplishments, as these were the only things that earned her parents’ attention. This survival mechanism led her to work tirelessly and focus almost exclusively on success, whether in academics, career, or social standing. Over time, this pattern shaped her perception, distorting her view of self-worth: success meant she was worthy, and failure confirmed her fears of inadequacy.

How Adaptive Patterns Shape Perception

Trauma and its resulting saboteurs shape our perception in two key ways:

1.      Hyper-vigilance and Focus on Threats: Trauma makes us hyper-aware of potential dangers or sources of emotional pain. The brain is wired to constantly scan for threats, which shapes our attention. We tend to notice only what reinforces our fears or confirms our internal adaptive patterns’ narratives. For instance, if we have a deep-seated belief that we are not good enough (often a result of early emotional neglect or criticism), we may focus only on experiences that confirm this belief while dismissing any evidence to the contrary.

2.      Filtering Information to Match Our Beliefs: Our perceptions become colored by the belief’s trauma has instilled in us. These beliefs act like filters, determining which information we accept and which we discard. For example, if we have a belief that people will always let us down, we will tend to overemphasize instances where others fail us, while downplaying moments of genuine care or support.

Over time, these distorted perceptions become self-fulfilling. We see the world through the lens of trauma and saboteurs, further reinforcing the negative beliefs they have created.

Example, Sarah’s trauma-based adaptive patterns shaped her perception of the world in ways that became self-perpetuating. Her Hyper-Achiever filtered her experience, reinforcing the belief that her worth depended on her success and ability to meet others’ needs.

When she did not meet her high expectations or received criticism, it confirmed her deepest fears that she wasn’t good enough. She selectively filtered out any positive feedback or personal satisfaction, focusing instead on the times she didn’t perform perfectly. This only made her work harder, continuing the cycle of striving without fulfillment.

The Self-Perpetuating Cycle in Action

Sarah’s trauma-induced saboteurs created a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle. Here’s how the process unfolded:

1.      Trauma Shapes Adaptive Patterns (Hyper-Achiever): Sarah’s childhood experiences of emotional neglect, criticism, and conflict avoidance shaped her survival patterns. These saboteurs (Hyper-Achiever) emerged as ways to cope with her early trauma.

2.      Adaptive Patterns Shape Attention: Sarah’s Hyper-Achiever Adaptive Pattern directed her attention toward success, career achievements, and seeking external validation. her adaptive patterns shaped where Sarah directed her attention, influencing her behavior and choices.

3.      Attention Shapes Perception: Her adaptive behavior distorted Sarah’s perception of reality. Her Hyper-Achiever made her perceive even small setbacks as personal failures, leading her to perceive emotional expression as dangerous.

4.      Perception Shapes Experience of Reality: Because of the distorted perceptions, Sarah's experiences continually confirmed her fears. Even when she achieved professional success, it didn’t bring lasting fulfillment.

5.      Experience Shapes Beliefs: These repeated experiences reinforced Sarah’s core beliefs: that she was only as good as her last achievement.

6.      Beliefs Reinforce Saboteurs: These limiting beliefs reinforced the power of her saboteurs. Her Hyper-Achiever demanded constant striving for success.

 To heal from this self-perpetuating cycle, Sarah needed to recognize and confront the ways her adaptive pattern distorted her perception. Through deep personal work, she began to challenge these survival patterns by:

·         Acknowledging her Trauma: Sarah first recognized how her childhood trauma shaped her beliefs and saboteurs. This awareness allowed her to see how her striving for achievement, were coping mechanisms rooted in fear.

·         Developing Self-Compassion: She learned to give herself the compassion and validation she never received from her parents. By practicing self-compassion, she began to quiet the Hyper-Achiever, realizing that her worth wasn’t tied to success or others’ approval.

By dismantling these adaptive behaviors, Sarah gradually began to break the self-perpetuating cycle, moving toward a life grounded in authenticity, emotional resilience, and self-worth.

For further exploration on this topic, consider reading works by Shirzad Chamine on Positive Intelligence, which delves into saboteurs and how they impact behavior, and Peter Levine’s work on trauma and its physiological effects in "Waking the Tiger." Bessel van der Kolk's “The Body Keeps the Score” is another excellent resource that explores how trauma shapes perception and experience.

Note: The term "saboteurs" comes from Positive Intelligence (PQ), where it refers to negative mental patterns that undermine our happiness and success. While "saboteurs" highlights the harmful impact of these patterns, it can make them seem purely destructive or adversarial.

In contrast, we use the term "adaptive patterns" because it emphasizes the original purpose of these behaviors—they were developed to help us cope with challenging or traumatic experiences. These patterns are often distorted or exaggerated versions of healthy coping mechanisms. Although they can become limiting or harmful over time, they initially served to protect us from emotional pain or perceived threats.