The commemoration of ANZAC Day stands as a reminder to remember those who served, those who made the ultimate sacrifice, and those who are serving currently.
The obvious thing about wars and conflicts and all kinds of battles with all kinds of foes—visible and invisible, whether between peoples and all types of violence or the environment, i.e., natural disasters—is they can and so often do cause trauma.
But here’s the thing.
Society often struggles to discuss, and therefore can seem to have little interest in, confounding matters it cannot resolve. Trauma, for one.
Sufferers of many different sorts of maladies can feel alone or are too ashamed or feel too misunderstood to reach out, and therefore those that can help are so often not able to connect with those who could do with the help.
Another very good ‘for instance’ are ministries for men (and women) that deal with pornography addiction. Like pornography, trauma seems such a taboo subject. It seems people don’t want to go there. It scares some, it leaves others feeling awkward, and many people know they’re out of their depth.
It’s like the one who’s grieving, the one who most people studiously avoid, because “what do you say? Do you avoid the topic? But how can you avoid it without feeling awkward?” So it becomes too hard, and it’s easier to avoid the person who could do with even simple measures of support.
Or, here’s another undesirable situation: the person struggling is pulled aside to be given advice—well meaning, of course! No, that kind of ‘support’ is never sought out, never required, almost always not helpful and usually harmful.
The societal void of warmth and connection leaves those who are dealing with terrifyingly hard realities reeling for lack of support.
Trauma occurs as any piece of experience or collection of life experiences or build-up of experiences that overwhelms our personal ability to cope, and it leaves immediate and ongoing tangible and intangible physical, physiological and psychological effects.
A survivor of trauma has the task of living with the trauma and the opportunity of entering a process of healing. Both require immense courage.
So often as far as trauma is concerned, this healing is not an outcome but a process.
Your trauma is valid even if:
1. There are others who have it “worse” – whilst it’s often true, this sort of belief is rarely helpful. While it may help to focus on the fact that others do have it worse, it can tend to cut out the legitimacy of a survivor’s own unique situation and response to their trauma. It happened. It occurred. And it has left its undeniable effects.
2. It occurred a long time ago – time is an enigmatic concept when it comes to things like grief and trauma. To try and squeeze the overwhelming concepts of grief and trauma into such a linear concept that time is, is to do our grief and trauma a definite injustice. “Time heals all wounds” can be a dangerous generalisation, especially when we say to ourselves, “Geez, I should be over this by now!” Sure, time can heal our wounds, but it’s an over-simplification of a very complex concept.
3. I feel “just fine” now – again, this is the perplexing reality of mental health. There are times in the depths when, just for a short period, we’re returned to a place of, “Wow, I feel kinda normal again,” but it’s always short-lived. From the aspect of, “I feel ‘just fine’ now” we can easily be lulled into judging ourselves—“So then, WHY did I overreact just then???” Actually, the ‘overreaction’ was a trauma response and it’s not helpful and it’s wrong to judge ourselves as being weak, hopeless or unworthy.
4. It “could have been avoided” – so much hindsight comes into play, and we’re usually our worst critic when we’re in this mindset. This is why the Substitution Test is handy. Could someone else with the same background, age and life experience, presented with the same situation, have responded the same way? If it’s a ‘yes’ answer, the response of “I should’ve known better” doesn’t hold up. At times in life we see danger coming, and at others we truly don’t, or we don’t realise how bad things can get.
5. Only you know about it – there’s always a lag between the trauma and our recognition and admission of it. Living with trauma requires courage, but getting others involved in the narrative can be terrifying at worst and is complicated at best. Getting others involved changes things. But if it’s only you who knows, the cause of the trauma and its real affects are nonetheless valid.
6. Someone says, “What you experienced/experience is no big deal” – this validates what we ourselves can come to falsely believe. The survivor or trauma is constantly rocked between two worlds—it happened and it’s reprehensible WITH my response to this is over the top. It’s the push-pull world of anger and guilt; the war within the self that so many survivors of trauma battle with. This is why when someone seems to say (usually without words) that what we’ve experienced or face is ‘no big deal’ part of us expects not be believed and part of us is infuriated we’re not believed. Whichever way you slice it, however, what you experienced is a BIG deal. You know it by how much it has cost you and how much it continues to cost.
7. You don’t understand why – if there are two things in life that seem confounding, they’re grief and trauma. We can sort of understand the cause—why they exist. But what we can’t seem to reconcile is how pervasive they are in our lives. To expect to understand why is to expect too much of the human mind and therefore the chasing of the wind.
8. There is never any justice for the injustice suffered – whether it was a person or organisation that perpetrated violence, or it was the effect of your senses being overloaded or for any other reason, there’s the real sense that there’s never justice for the injustices of trauma suffered. It’s a thing we’d have undone that cannot be undone, and living with the new post-trauma reality, and finding the purpose in it, is a realistic goal. Hang on to that hope; there’s a purpose to be found.
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