Читать книгу The Art of Waging Peace - Paul K. Chappell - Страница 14

To me the army was more than just a profession. It was also a family. I grew up as an only child in Alabama, and by sixth grade my father’s paranoia had become so severe that he stopped letting me visit with friends. In my parents’ house I ate all my meals alone. I spent most of my time alone. I felt alone in society, drifting in a sea of strangers. Other children bullied me because of my racial background, and I received countless beatings from my father. But in the army I found a group of people who would not only die for me, but they would kill in order to protect me. This is a powerful experience for anyone who has ever been beaten, bullied, or abused. It is one among many reasons why troubled young people join gangs.

The army is not a perfect organization, nor is it filled with perfect people. Soldiers are vulnerable to the same problems that affected my father, so what reason did I have to trust them? If my own father could beat me to a point where I feared for my life, what reason did I have to trust anyone? When I went to West Point in 1998 I had difficulty trusting my classmates, but I quickly realized that the military allowed me to test people’s trustworthiness.

An army unit functions as a team, and soldiers must trust each other with their lives. The army relies heavily on cooperation to accomplish its objectives, and even to complete mundane tasks. This gave me numerous opportunities to test people’s trustworthiness. Would my comrades come through for me when I was relying on them? Would they fulfill their responsibilities to help the group succeed? Did they have my back, or would they instead stab me in the back?

My father severely damaged my ability to trust, and in the army I learned to trust people for the first time since my early childhood. But when I left the army in 2009 I again lost my ability to trust. Embarking on a new life as a civilian, I moved from El Paso, Texas, (where I was stationed at Fort Bliss) to Santa Barbara, California. I had never been to this city before. As I drove along the radiant California coast to my new home, the ocean looked magical and otherworldly. The sunlight danced across deep shades of blue in ways that were primordial and hypnotic.

California seemed like a different planet compared to Alabama, but that soon changed. After a few days something happened that I never expected. Santa Barbara began to remind me of my childhood for various reasons, causing my old psychological wounds to reopen. Painful memories began to replay in my mind, like a bad song stuck in my head. Although I was surrounded by beautiful California beaches, my mind was far away. Physically I lived in Santa Barbara, but mentally I was lost in the labyrinth of trauma.

By exploring the story of the labyrinth from Greek mythology, we can better understand the nature of trauma, and why it can be so difficult to escape its wrath. According to Greek legend, the labyrinth was created because of a traumatic event. The Greek god Poseidon gave King Minos a white bull, on the condition that Minos would sacrifice the bull to Poseidon. However, the animal was so beautiful that Minos refused to sacrifice it. To punish the king for not sacrificing the bull, Poseidon put a curse on Minos’s wife, Pasiphae, by making her feel lust for the animal. After she mated with the bull, she produced an offspring known as the Minotaur, a creature with the head of a bull and body of a man.

Horrified by what happened, Minos consulted an oracle for advice. She advised him to build a maze where the monstrous Minotaur could be hidden. Anxious to protect his wife from disgrace, Minos had the master craftsman Daedalus build a maze, known as the labyrinth, to contain the Minotaur. Every year Minos ordered the Athenians to offer him seven boys and seven girls, whom he sent into the labyrinth as food for the monster. Anyone entering the labyrinth found it impossible to escape because of its many winding passages.²

Around every psychological wound, a labyrinth is built deep in our unconscious mind. The more traumatic the wound, the more complex the labyrinth. The Minotaur symbolizes our psychological wounds, agonizing humiliations, and dark secrets. Like sacrificial children trapped in the labyrinth of the Minotaur, soldiers who return from war can wander lost and alone in the winding tunnels of trauma for the remainder of their lives. Just as the Minotaur kills people in its labyrinth, our psychological wounds can destroy us when we become lost in the labyrinth of trauma. The Minotaur kills with horns, fists, and rage, while trauma kills by driving people to madness, drug addiction, and suicide.

Like the Minotaur, trauma is a beast that has ended many lives. Trauma is also a monster that can assume countless shapes and sizes, and war trauma is only one among many forms of trauma. In his book The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog, psychiatrist Bruce Perry describes the common misconceptions about childhood trauma that he noticed during his work in the 1980s:

Unfortunately, the prevailing view of children and trauma at the time—one that persists to a large degree to this day—is that “children are resilient.” . . . If anything, children are more vulnerable to trauma than adults; I knew this from Seymour Levine’s work and the work of dozens of others by then . . . The developing brain is most malleable and most sensitive to experience—both good and bad—early in life. (This is why we so easily and rapidly learn language, social nuance, motor skills and dozens of other things in childhood, and why we speak of “formative” experiences.) . . . Consequently, we are also rapidly and easily transformed by trauma when we are young. Though its effects may not always be visible to the untrained eye, when you know what trauma can do to children, sadly, you begin to see its aftermath everywhere . . .

In sensitization a pattern of stimulus leads to increased sensitivity to future similar stimulus. This is what is seen in the Vietnam veterans and the rats that were genetically oversensitive to stress or became that way because of early exposure to it. When the brain becomes sensitized, even small stressors can provoke large responses.³

During my childhood my brain became sensitized to violence. “Sensitization” means that our mind has been wounded by a traumatic event. Just as an open flesh wound is so sensitive that gently touching it can cause immense pain, a situation that remotely reminds us of past trauma can inflame sensitive psychological wounds. To protect these wounds our mind often develops defense mechanisms. For example, when I was four years old I was beaten by my father to the point where I feared for my life, and these beatings continued throughout most of my childhood. One defense mechanism I developed was an inability to trust people. My inability to trust is actually a survival technique. As I mentioned earlier, trauma has its own language and logic. When the people closest to us have made us fear for our lives, being distrustful and not letting others get too close to us makes complete sense within the distorted logic of trauma.

Before moving to Santa Barbara, I had spent my entire adult life in the military. I went to West Point in 1998 when I was eighteen years old, graduated in 2002, and stayed on active duty until 2009. The army allowed me to test people’s trustworthiness, but when I left the army and moved to Santa Barbara as a civilian, I could no longer test whether I could trust people. To keep me safe, the old defense mechanisms from my childhood reemerged. I kept people at a distance, becoming a recluse. I again found myself drifting alone in a sea of strangers, and I perceived everyone around me as a potential threat. I was lost in the labyrinth of trauma, unable to find my way home. I was searching for trust, not realizing how difficult it would be to find again.

To better understand why it can be so difficult to escape the labyrinth of trauma, consider the following scenario. Imagine how difficult it would be for someone with a phobia of cockroaches, nonpoisonous spiders, or harmless snakes to lie next to these creatures. Most people with such a phobia would find it unbearable. Now imagine if the creatures that frightened these people were not harmless, but had repeatedly hurt them over a long period of time and even come close to killing them. This is how traumatized war veterans and abused children can feel around other human beings.^*

As I explained earlier, the three forms of change are societal, spiritual, and ideological. Understanding the nature of trauma can help us achieve spiritual change. Those who have not experienced severe trauma can still benefit from learning about it, because human beings share many common experiences. Although my trauma is based on betrayal, mistrust, anger, and loneliness, doesn’t every person experience these forms of suffering to at least some extent? By experiencing them in extreme amounts, I have been able to thoroughly study these aspects of our existence and shed new light on these problems.

To achieve spiritual change, we must also understand how trauma from our past can inhibit our ability to wage peace. A violent upbringing led to my obsession with peace, and during my interactions with the peace movement I was surprised to learn that I am not an anomaly. I have met many peace activists who are drawn to activism because of painful life experiences. However, if we do not learn to navigate the labyrinth of trauma and heal our agony, the anger we bring into the peace movement can destroy the very cause we are trying to promote.

How can we navigate the labyrinth of trauma and achieve spiritual change? I know firsthand how difficult this can be, and I do not underestimate the challenge of overcoming trauma. I have seen many self-help gurus offer shallow and oversimplistic solutions, which can be harmful to those with severe trauma. A psychological wound by itself can be dangerous, and several wounds have a way of getting tangled together. I spent most of my childhood living in fear, believing that at any moment my father could lose his temper and beat me to death. When I deployed to Iraq in 2006, I again felt that people were trying to kill me. This exacerbated my earlier trauma and led to other psychological problems. Since trauma is a complex maze that leads countless people to madness, drug addiction, and suicide, is there any hope for me and so many others?

In Greek mythology the hero Theseus volunteered to enter the labyrinth, taking the place of a child about to be sacrificed. With sword in hand, he found his way to the Minotaur and killed the beast. I wish overcoming trauma were that simple. I wish I could metaphorically kill the parts of my mind that were in agony. According to the two psychiatrists I quoted earlier, Jonathan Shay and Bruce Perry, a person never completely gets rid of their trauma. It leaves a mark in the brain, like metaphorical scar tissue. But as I will explain in this book, I am hopeful because I have seen that it is possible to live with trauma and still find meaning and fulfillment. Even if we have been lost in the labyrinth of trauma for many years, we can learn to trust and love humanity. Even if we have suffered deeply, we can make peace with the wounded parts of ourselves.