Читать книгу The Cosmic Ocean - Paul K. Chappell - Страница 16

The seventh factor that increases the severity of trauma is lack of a support network. Although the excerpt I quoted from Eric Jaffe’s article contains numerous misconceptions about trauma, later in his article he skillfully addresses how the presence of a support network can reduce trauma. He says, “Silvia Koller of Rio Grande do Sul Federal University in Brazil, studies the concept of resilience as it applies to her native country … [Koller and her colleagues found that] promoting these positive social elements might increase resilience even among a very disadvantaged population.”13

To better understand how a support network can counterbalance trauma, let’s consider animal attacks. When a child is severely bitten by just one dog, that child may develop a fear of all dogs that lasts for many years. A Rottweiler bit me when I was twenty-one, and although twelve years have passed since then (I am thirty-three as I write this), I still get a little nervous around big dogs. In a similar way, when we are violently attacked by just one human being, this can damage our ability to trust all human beings.

However, if we have positive experiences with many other dogs, this can counterbalance the negative experience of being bitten, just as having many loving and trustworthy human beings in our life can counterbalance the trauma caused by those who hurt us. I call these people counterbalancers because their positive influence can counterbalance the negative effects of trauma. A counterbalancer can be a relative, coach, teacher, neighbor, or friend.

Counterbalancers create a support network and provide nurturing relationships. When they do not exist in a traumatized person’s life, the trauma becomes much more severe. A support network does not have to consist of many people, because sometimes the presence of just one loving and trustworthy person can have a significant positive impact on someone suffering from trauma.

The following diagram illustrates the seven factors that increase the severity of trauma:

Figure 1.1: Seven Factors That Increase Trauma

Because my father ruptured my ability to trust human beings, I have difficulty trusting all people. If my father—the man who was supposed to protect me—could beat me to the point where I feared for my life, who could I really trust? Someone once asked me, “Your father hurt you, but he is just one person. How can you let one man influence your perception of all human beings?”

I responded, “Toward the end of elementary school, my father stopped letting me visit with friends, and as a child I had very little contact with extended family and neighbors. My father did not socialize with people because his trauma caused him to view everyone around him as a threat, so my social group growing up was mostly just two people—my parents. How could I trust my father when he threatened to kill me, and how could I trust my mother when she could not protect me? When the only two people closest to you make you feel unsafe, it can affect how you see all human beings.”

Later in this book I will discuss the counterbalancers I met much later in my life, and how a lack of human counterbalancers during my childhood reduced my resilience to trauma, allowing trauma to shape my brain in dangerous ways. George Bonanno’s research into people’s resilience to traumatic events is useful, because he shows that natural disasters and illnesses are not as traumatizing as the harm caused by human beings. Bonanno may never have intended for his research to result in inaccurate generalizations about resilience to all forms of trauma, but it is important that I clear up these misconceptions, because a society that does not understand trauma is at great risk.

However, I must emphasize that people can still experience trauma, even if their trauma does not contain all seven factors in the diagram shown. No matter what kind of trauma we are experiencing, there are helpful and harmful ways to acknowledge it. It is harmful to let our trauma trap us in a “helpless victim mentality” where we blame all our problems on our trauma and constantly look for pity, and it is also harmful to turn our trauma into a competition where we denigrate the suffering of others. In his book Achilles in Vietnam, Jonathan Shay explains the dangers of turning trauma into a competition:

One would think that severe psychological injury would give rise naturally to shared compassion and mutual respect among the many diverse groups of trauma survivors, such as have lived through genocide, political torture, domestic battering, incest, war, abusive religious cults, and coerced prostitution. Unfortunately, it has not. Veterans call it “pissing contests” when one veteran denies the validity of another veteran’s war trauma. Different survivor groups eagerly start these competitions as well, each claiming that their experience is the only significant one.

An intern in our [veterans] program approached a battered women’s shelter for further training opportunities; when she spoke of her experience with combat veterans, the person at the shelter scoffed and said, “That was twenty years ago. This is now!” Holocaust scholars have disparaged the writings of incest survivors as merely “confessional.” These pissing contests only serve the interests of perpetrators, all perpetrators. It gives me great pain whenever I hear such disparagement among veterans or among survivor groups. No person’s suffering is commensurable with any other.14

These seven factors should not be used to compare our trauma with other people’s trauma, because other factors unrelated to the traumatic event and its aftermath (such as upbringing and personality traits) can make some people less resilient to trauma. Instead, these seven factors can help us understand the human condition, our shared humanity, and the nature of trauma.

Exploring trauma also offers additional evidence that humanity is not naturally violent. When a child is raised in a peaceful and loving environment, it is good for the human brain. That is a scientific fact. When a child is raised in a violent and abusive environment, it is not good for the human brain. That is also a scientific fact. But if human beings were naturally violent, why wouldn’t the opposite be true? Later in this book I will discuss why violence can have such a seductive scent, despite its traumatizing taste.

The suicide dream I had at age five gave me an early glimpse into the trauma that would later become both my fiercest opponent and greatest teacher. The dream contained metaphorical insights that have increased my understanding of trauma, the human condition, and the road to peace. In the language of metaphors and symbols, my dream seemed to be saying, “The parents who once protected you are dead. Now you must die with them, because life has become terrifying and confusing and no one can protect you anymore.”

In the suicide dream I stabbed myself in the chest with a pair of scissors, but I did not die. I woke up in my bed, surrounded by darkness, alone and afraid. The suicide dream had ended abruptly, but the real nightmare was being alive.