Confirmation Bias in Trauma Recovery
In previous blogs, I’ve written about how attachment is impacted by trauma. Another nuance impacting attachment is confirmation bias. This might seem a bit random in the context of trauma, but there is a strong correlation between confirmation bias and resistance to change, thus resistance to healing. What we’ve deeply learned, both intrinsically and extrinsically, determines what we seek, expect, and perceive. When there is a gap in our understanding, we fill it in with our own narrative based upon previous learning. Most often we fill in those blanks with negativity and suspicion. Trauma teaches us what to watch for, what to expect, and how to perceive it.
How Trauma Influences Confirmation Bias
We find, and compile supportive evidence for, what we’re looking for.
Confirmation bias through a lens of trauma ignores and dismisses good in the external world and good within oneself. It reads everything negatively, with a persuasion toward danger, and extraneous information that doesn’t fit the narrative is considered irrelevant. More simply put, trauma makes us unable to see the good around us.
The Impact of Trauma on Perception
For example, the lens of trauma filters out anything that might look like safety. It is unsafe to acknowledge that there might be safety somewhere. And, historically trauma-impacted people have had to be hypervigilant about danger because it has or had been a very real component of their lives and no one else was protecting them. Even if the danger is past and no longer occurring, the intrinsic learning runs deep and is resistant to adjusting to viewing the world with more optimism. Everything is perceived as unsafe, dangerous, a trick, a trap, or has strings attached.
Learned Helplessness and Confirmation Bias
Another example would be that learned helplessness has taught them that no matter what they try, nothing stops the harm. So they cannot see opportunities in front of them. They cannot see that they have the agency to do differently. If given the chance to take action, all they can see is the potential harm that will come to them rather than the potential good. We overlook and deny what we don’t want to see or what doesn’t fit what we’re looking for. A lens of trauma tells us to look for danger at every turn.
Do you see how this can make healing complicated? If we get what we’re “looking for,” and trauma has taught us to be vigilant about danger and evil… but healing requires being able to see safety and good… then our own mind can be warring against itself in the healing process.
The Role of Internal Change in Healing
This implies that the healing process is not to simply eliminate the trauma or the toxic person or environment. Those externally referenced elements are only part of the equation. There also have to be proactive changes within the victim of abuse/trauma to challenge their narratives and look beyond their “truth” to make sure they are standing on Truth not changed by trauma. Part of resilience is telling yourself what to think and telling your feelings where to go because you are reaching for a story that is bigger than the one you’ve lived thus far.
Overcoming Self-Protective Behaviors
The takeaway is that past trauma predisposes us to become self-protective in ways that disable the connection we were designed by God to experience. We hide ourselves behind a mask, or a shield, or fear, making our emotional world really small and fragmented. No heart can find healing from this place. And no relationship can find real connection from this place.
Next Steps for Trauma Recovery
If you would like to gently begin to unpack what your own trauma has done to your heart, we’d love to help!
