“ptsd patients can’t differentiate between a minimum-level smell and a threat-level smell,” li said in an interview with msrc. “they see a little bit of ‘red’ in everything. they pay attention to the small amount of red signal, while in healthy controls this will be dismissed. we want to train them to dismiss this small amount of threat signal while maintaining their ability to detect something that is truly a threat.”
li’s exercise involved “morphing” odours, for example, taking something that might be an anxiety-causing scent, like gasoline, and mixing with something else to weaken the smell to create “a psychological distance between a minimal, insignificant [threat] signal and a real signal.”
unfortunately, li’s work lost funding and she wasn’t able to continue the study, but she told msrc that she hoped “retraining” would someday be another way psychologists can help reduce the risk of suicide among veterans.
of course, there are other ways to manage traumatic memories such as meditation, identifying and avoiding triggers, and therapy. talking to others, writing down your thoughts and a healthy lifestyle can also help, brandon van niekerk writes for overcomers counseling. he suggests that how long you struggle with triggers that bring on disturbing thoughts and feelings can depend on things like how much support you have, how long ago the event happened and whether or not you have received professional help.
still, even with strategies to manage them, traumatic memories don’t just disappear — for many people they barely fade. and regardless of how they are triggered, whether by something that’s heard, tasted or smelled,
if we’re lucky, we find a way to cope and move through them. and
if we are luckier, there are more good memories to be reminded of in our lives than bad.