1.1. Mental Representations and Trauma
trauma, PTSD, traumatic
MITCHELL, POSITIVE
According to Mitchell and Black (2016) [The way in which one anticipates the responses they will receive from others (manifested in their mental representations) is a key factor in determining the severity of a traumatic experience. Positive mental representations can protect an individual from reacting to and recovering from trauma in an unhelpful or disabling manner. An analysis of the use of the Object Relations Inventory (ORI)—a tool used for collecting mental representations—revealed that adults with more affectively positive mental representations of themselves and others had more beneficial outcomes in both clinical and everyday life than those with more affectively negative mental representations [Focusing on positive mental representations in interventions for young adolescents dealing with PTSD may lead to more positive outcomes. Having positive mental representations of a supportive figure can help youth process stressful situations more quickly [Regarding the self, people who have more positive mental representations of the self were able to draw comfort through self-soothing or soothing from others, in contrast to those with more negative mental representations of the self, who had more difficulty self-soothing or looking to others for comfort [