Trauma
–Healing From Trauma and
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
 | ||
Trauma is a word that describes a
massive assault on us—one that is overwhelming and
inescapable. Trauma doesn’t strengthen us, it
breaks or almost breaks us. We are not made better for
having been through trauma. Trauma we just endure.
It throws us into shock and may trouble us for weeks,
months or years after. It changes us.
After a shocking, hurtful
event—like a serious car accident—numbness and
disbelief overcome us. It takes a while for us to feel
like ourselves again. This may be a little or a lot.
We know the facts of what happened but our body needs
some time to catch up with what we know—to come to terms
with the meaning of the injury or loss. In the case of a
big loss or big injury or big upset we may need several months,
even a year, to fully metabolize the meaning of our wound.
Gradually we get used to it, some a little quicker than
others.
We are never going to see our
dead loved one again. We have been betrayed by a mate and
never saw it coming. We have a disease that we are going
to have to live with and which is going to limit us for the
rest of our lives.
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
There are, of course, degrees of
woundedness for humans. The folks who ran out of the
world Trade Center buildings on September 11, 2001 and narrowly
escaped death would have been in a very high state of alarm and
be vulnerable to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Those of us who saw the story on TV were shocked and
affected but not as severely. We saw the disasters, and
we were horrified, but we were never in fear of for lives.
We were in our living rooms, watching TV.
An estimated 20% of people
exposed to trauma get PTSD. That means that following
their exposure to an extremely debilitating
event—especially one in which they felt intense fear,
helplessness and/or horror—these people will suffer
involuntary anxiety symptoms that interrupt their lives.
They will be anxious and jumpy. They may startle
easily. They may become weepy for no obvious reason.
They may become numb and spacey, or have a hard time
sleeping. They may overreact to some things, and go to
extreme lengths to avoid memories of the original hurtful
event.
Support, No Support
If a person receives a lot of
support and validation after an overwhelming event, he may get
back to his life without too much disruption. In recent
times we have seen an outpouring of immediate attention and
help for those who suffered big losses in the Asian tsunami and
the hurricanes in the southern US. Some of these dear
folks lost everything they owned. But they endured their
misery with many others who also suffered. And their loss
has been acknowledged, and they have received a measure of
caring assistance from governmental and volunteer agencies.
As bad as those losses were,
imagine how different it is—how much WORSE it
is—for a child who was beaten, or who overheard when his
mother was beaten, for years and never told anyone about it.
Or if a child was sexually abused by a relative and could
never tell. The victim who was subject to horror and
could never tell, never debrief, never get any help—she
will be much more prone to suffering symptoms of post-traumatic
stress later. Her distress may go underground for a
while—for months or years—and then show up at some
future time as anxiety or sleeplessness or irritability or
anger…
Her unconscious brain may have
dissociated–-purposely blocked out the memory—of
the trauma she suffered. That seems to be one of the few
ways that children have to protect themselves when they are
isolated from any other help. Then later in life she may
begin to recall some of her hurts in bits and pieces.
Some of her remembering may be in feeling states: that
is, she may be depressed and not know why. Her life now
may be fine, but her depression may actually be a state she was
able to push away from earlier in her life.
