Читать книгу The Cosmic Ocean - Paul K. Chappell - Страница 10

The article’s first misconception is not distinguishing between different causes of trauma. The article says, “Roughly 35 to 65 percent of people who experience a disaster return to their normal routine shortly after [emphasis added] the event and stay there.” The article then discusses soldiers in war, a mudslide in Mexico, and the September 11 attacks. However, a person’s ability to recover psychologically depends on the cause of the disaster, because a disastrous event is far more traumatizing when caused by a human being.

For example, what is more traumatizing, falling off your bike and breaking your leg or a group of attackers holding you down and breaking your leg with a baseball bat? Even though the physical outcome—a broken leg—is the same in both scenarios, harm inflicted on us by a human being is much more traumatizing than an injury resulting from an accident or natural disaster. What is more traumatizing, being a black family in the South and having your house burned down by a wildfire, or being a black family in the South and having your house burned down by the Ku Klux Klan? Even though the physical outcome—a destroyed house—is the same in both scenarios, the Ku Klux Klan exceeds natural disasters in the ability to inflict psychological trauma on human beings.

If you and your family were hospitalized due to injuries caused by a tornado, it would be less traumatizing than a gang breaking into your house, tying up you and your family, and viciously beating you, your spouse, and children to the point where you all end up in the hospital. You might recover psychologically from a tornado after a few weeks, but it might take years or even your entire life to recover psychologically from the gang invasion scenario.3

In his groundbreaking book, On Killing, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman tells us:

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III-R), the bible of psychology, states that in post-traumatic stress disorders “the disorder is apparently more severe and longer lasting when the stressor is of human design.” We want desperately to be liked, loved, and in control of our lives; and intentional, overt, human hostility and aggression—more than anything else in life—assaults our self-image, our sense of control, our sense of the world as a meaningful and comprehensible place, and ultimately, our mental and physical health.

The ultimate fear and horror in most modern lives is to be raped or beaten, to be physically degraded in front of our loved ones, to have our family harmed and the sanctity of our homes invaded by aggressive and hateful intruders. Death and debilitation by disease or accident are statistically far more likely to occur than death and debilitation by malicious action, but the statistics do not calm our basically irrational fears. It is not fear of death and injury from disease or accident but rather acts of personal depredation and domination by our fellow human beings that strike terror and loathing in our hearts.

In rape the psychological harm usually far exceeds the physical injury … far more damaging is the impotence, shock, and horror in being so hated and despised as to be debased and abused by a fellow human being.4

In fact, we are so vulnerable to human-induced trauma that a person does not even have to physically touch us to traumatize us. A person can harm our long-term psychological health by betraying us, humiliating us, calling us a racial slur, spitting in our face, verbally abusing us, spreading malicious rumors about us, and even shunning us. Many people would prefer to break their leg in an accident rather than be publically humiliated or betrayed by those closest to them. People crave nurturing relationships,* and abusive relationships are a significant source of trauma.

In 2013 I attended a nonviolence workshop with participants from many countries. To help us understand the differences and similarities between our various cultures, the workshop organizers had us break into small groups and discuss how our culture responds to the death of a loved one. All of the participants in my group said that when a relative dies, the person’s life is remembered and celebrated with compassion.

I interjected, “But doesn’t it depend on the cause of the person’s death? If a grandmother dies of old age, the funeral might be a celebration of the person’s life, but what if a family member is kidnapped, tortured, and murdered? Doesn’t that tend to be more difficult to celebrate and far more traumatic for the family? What if a loved one is killed in a terrorist attack? Some people may react to the death not with compassion, but with a desire for revenge.”

This changed the nature of the discussion. We began to talk about how most people—regardless of their race, religion, or nationality—would be devastated if a loved one was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered. This helped us see our shared humanity, and how the violent death of a family member can traumatize people regardless of whether they are American, Vietnamese, Japanese, British, Russian, Iraqi, or Iranian.

War propaganda often tells us that people in other countries don’t love their children or value human life.* General Westmoreland, who commanded U.S. military forces in Vietnam, said, “The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does a Westerner … Life is cheap in the Orient. As the philosophy of the Orient expresses it, life is not important.”5 To see this propaganda refuted, a useful place to start is the film Hearts and Minds, which won the Academy Award for best documentary feature in 1974. By understanding trauma and our shared humanity, we can all work to refute the illusions of war propaganda.

Trauma will be more severe if we see any human being as the cause of the traumatic event, even if the human being is ourselves. If a family member dies in an accident and we blame ourselves for the accident, the trauma will be more severe because forgiving ourselves can be as difficult as forgiving another person. When we blame ourselves for a tragedy or feel like we should have suffered instead of the victims, this is known as survivor’s guilt.

People can experience survivor’s guilt when someone is hurt or killed by a natural disaster, illness, accident, animal attack, or human attack. When any tragedy occurs, survivor’s guilt can be very difficult to overcome. Many soldiers who survive a war blame themselves for the deaths of their comrades, and survivor’s guilt can be so painful that many people wish they could die and take the place of their deceased loved one.