Psychological trauma can be defined as a negative event so overwhelming that we cannot properly
understand, process or move on from it – but, and this is the devilish aspect to it, nor
can we properly remember it or reflect upon its nature and its effects on us. It is lodged
within us but remains hidden from us, making its presence known only via symptoms and pains,
altering our sense of reality without alerting us to its devilish subterranean operations.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of psychological trauma happens in childhood. Children are especially
vulnerable to being traumatised, because they are congenitally unable to understand themselves
or the world very well – and have to rely
to an uncommon degree on parents who are frequently
less than mature, patient or balanced. A child may, for example, be traumatised by a parent
who – through no particular fault of their
own – becomes heavily depressed shortly
after childbirth. Or a child may be traumatised through exposure to a parent’s titanic rage
or violence. Or, because the widest category of psychological trauma is also the most innocuous,
a child may be traumatised by what psychologists term ‘neglect’, which might mean that,
at a critical age (between 0 and 5, and especially in the first 18 months), it was not properly
cherished, soothed, comforted and, to use
a large but valuable word, loved. Image result
for bridget riley The leading symptom of having been traumatised is fear. Traumatised people
are, above anything else, scared. They are
scared of getting close to others, of being
abandoned, of being humiliated and disgraced, of falling ill, probably of sex, of travelling,
of their bodies, of parties, of key bits of
their mind and – in the broad sense – of
the world. The legacy of having been traumatised is dread, an un nameable, forgotten, unconscious
memory of terror and fear projected outwards into a future. As the psychoanalyst Donald
Winnicott observed: ‘The catastrophe the
traumatised fear will happen has already happened’.
That is why, in order to find out the gist
of what might have occurred to us long ago,
we should ask ourselves not so much about the past (we won’t directly be able to remember),
but about what are we afraid will happen to us going forward. Our apprehension holds the
best clues as to our history. Crucially, and
surprisingly, it can take a very long while
before traumatised people even realise they are such a thing. A leading consequence of
trauma is to have no active memory of what was traumatic – and therefore no sense of
how distorted one’s picture of reality actually now is. Traumatised people don’t go around
thinking that they are unnaturally scared:
they just think that everything is terrifying.
They don’t notice their appallingly low
sense of self-worth: they just assume that
others are likely to mock and dislike them.
They don’t realise how uncomfortable intimacy
is: they merely report not being happy in
this or that relationship. In other words,
trauma colours our view of reality but at
the same time, prevents us from noticing the
extent to which we are peering at life through a highly distorted lense. Only with a lot
of time, luck, self-reflection and perhaps
the odd breakdown do traumatised people come
to a position where they start to notice that the way they think of the world isn’t necessarily
the way it actually is. It is a vast step
towards mental well-being to be able to be
usefully suspicious of one’s first impulses
and to begin to observe how much suspicion,
fear and self-hatred one is bringing to situations that truly don’t warrant them. Working through
trauma usually works best when we can hook up our own malfunctioning and distorted brain
to another more clear-sighted one – and
can test our readings of reality against those
of a wise friend or therapist. We stand to
recognise that – to our great surprise – we
are not perhaps inherently disgusting; maybe not everyone hates us; perhaps everything
isn’t headed for complete disaster; maybe
we are not in line for a horrific punishment.
And crucially, if we do suffer reversals,
maybe we could find our way out of them, because
we are (and this can come as a true revelation) now adults, not the nine month old infant
whose trauma altered our mind. Overcoming trauma is the work of years – but the beginning
of the end starts with a very small step:
coming to realise that we might actually be
traumatised and that the world may not be the dark, fearful, overwhelming and dread-filled
place we had always assumed it had to be.
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