This is for victims of emotional abuse. I did Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for a while before I realized it was actually harmful. And yet it appeared to be one of the most effective. For trauma, i would instead suggest Cognitive De-traumatization.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy says: Let’s find alternative ways of thinking to your distorted thoughts.
Cognitive De-traumatization says: No, let’s assume your thoughts are correct. Your thoughts may appear distorted in an healthy environment, but in an abusive environment they make perfect sense. In fact not catastrophizing, not having black and white thinking, not personalizing would be the distorted thoughts in an abusive environment. Because with an abuser, catastrophes are often created out of the blue, there are no shades of grey, and all the problems in the world are because of you. Extrapolate this to all the other “distorted” thoughts CBT claims to be distorted.
Example
You: This person seemed angry when I made an innocuous comment.
Helper: Now, what does their reaction make you feel? What do you think it says of you?
You: I feel awful. Like I must have said something really bad. What did i say to deserve such anger? But I’m not sure if I’m reading too much into things.
Helper: Let’s assume your thoughts are correct, that you did indeed read the situation correctly [This encourages the person to trust their gut feeling, their intuition. Victims of abuse ALWAYS suffered gaslighting and therefore distrust their intuition. It is not possible to convince someone of lies without destroying their confidence in their ability to correctly perceive reality. Even if the situation was read incorrectly, it wont matter in the end, because this exercise will diffuse your intense feelings. Also victims of abuse, most commonly have abusers still in their life. So this actually is not far-fetched at all, and in fact may be the most accurate read of the situation.] Instead of suggesting you’re “taking it personally” let’s assume the possibility that the person was indeed angry at you specifically [this is exactly the case with abusers].
You didn’t do anything wrong. Anger is not an appropriate response. Anger is more present in the presence of abuse. Either from the abuser, or from the victim in the form of reaction to the abuse. In either case you weren’t being abusive, so the angry response is not appropriate. A good person wouldn’t have reacted with anger or annoyance. You are used to thinking you are to blame, because you were told so over and over again whenever the abusers in your life got angry. Most likely they didn’t apologize afterwards for their anger, so that belief remained. Which you carry now till adulthood, till this very moment where this person is angry, and you accept what you’ve come to expect: That you did something truly awful that deserves someone to be angry.
But you didn’t. Their anger, is their trigger. It’s their problem, theirs to solve. It only says that they got triggered by what you said. But what you said is ok. [Let’s assume. It may not always be, but for someone who is used to being told all the time the lie that what they do is wrong, they now need to be told the opposite. Even if it won’t be correct all the time, let’s assume it does. Let’s err on the side of assuming the best for you].
Does this help?