2. As I continuein my quest for meaning in suffering the
consequences of trauma, I continuallyturn to traumatic
experiences as the root of all behavioraldifficulties.
This drives me with a passion that grows the more I see my
peers in the mental healthsystem consumed with questionsof
why or simply absorbed by complacency to the point of a
“personal nonexistence”. Because of this, I myself ask the
question again and again “why?”
What do I mean by “personal nonexistence”?
It is aboutthe right to choose, the right to one’s own sense of
“meaning and of being”. It is my belief that this is a learned
thing, deeplyingrained as the familiarloss of control, which is
the first loss of trauma, where the loss of one’s inherent right
to choose is taken away.
When an individual receivingservices in the mental health
care system gives up that right to choose, whether by
compliance,persuasion, lack of provisionsor resources, they
lose their “voice for choice”, they lose another part of their
sense of meaning and being. I do not deny that for many this is
where they find their comfort and sense of security. Perhaps
that is the problem, that they can only feel belongingat the
mental health center. Does that say something about the
greater community?
3. What if they could feel they belonged at the neighborhood
civic association meeting, at the neighborhoodblock party, or
dinner at your house.
In these other places would they be able to have their right
to choose, be welcomed, be safe and feel a sense of meaning
and being? Couldthey then feel empowered to be other than
mentally ill?
90% of people with a mental diagnosisreport having
experienced trauma, how many don’t know that hurtful things
they experienced WAS trauma, or re-traumatization. People
with a mental illnessare more often the victims of violence
then the cause of violence. If you consider their learned and
expected loss of voice and choice, how easily will they become
vulnerableto abuse and violence?
All people face challengesin their lives, all are uniquein how
they experience and address their challenges. All will
experience some kind of mental health challenges, and as a
person in this world, it is highlylikely that most will directly
experience trauma in the future, a nearer future than expected.
We find this common thread runs through all people,for as we
look more closely at adverse experiences, expandingon what
defines trauma (physical or psychological,in the broadest sense
in context within traumatic effect), we see now that everyone is
affected by trauma.
4. So where do we go from here?
As children continueto be subjected to abuse and violence,
as it comes from areas that are often undetected and
unexpected, especially by the childwho’s most fundamental
need is safety, they are not as safe as we might think. These
children often fall into a cycle of self-destruction, fueled by a
lack of recognition of how their experiences are manifesting as
they grow, a lack of affectively addressing their challenges in
attempting to adapt to trauma.
There is an urgent need for trauma awareness, an
imperative need for trauma educationto be brought into
the very fabric of community, every nationalpolicy, and in
every culture that claimsthe goal of peace and acceptance.
The most evidentaspect of human survival from the earliest
time of our conception,be it believedto be by evolutionor God
created, was to work together to acquire resources for the
greater needs of the community, thus providingfor all
members efficiently. The unfortunate decline of our values as a
people has come from deviationsfrom focusing on that greater
need.
While individualneeds are very important, it is shown
throughout our histories that the emphasishas become more
and more on individual wants, overpowering the greater need.
5. In following the path of wars, nationagainst nation,culture
against culture, religion against religion, individualandgroup
persecution, family dysfunctions, fuels the advent of trauma
and from there how many ways the possibilitiesof
traumatizationexpands from historicaltrauma down through
family generations and whole civilizations.With this in mind,
we turn to see it in the violence on our streets, in the homes of
our neighbors behindclosed doors, in our schools, through
social media networks, naturaland manmade disasters.
Trauma exists everywhere, threatening to overwhelm us
and destroy us.
UNLESS WE COME TOGETHER, WHAT CAUSES TRAUMA WILL
CONTINUE TO EAT AWAY AT EVERYTHING WE ARE.
The most baffling thing of all, now in the light of trauma
awareness, is how our societies, our communities, have so
defined the “wrongness” of trauma adaptations.
When a child, say a five year old boy, is subjected to
something so outside the realm of safety that his mind cannot
conceive it’s realty, therefore his mind naturallycreates his
own world of safety, a reality he can tolerate. Then later his
world emerges and conflicts with our reality, he is diagnosed
“schizophrenic”, told to take medicationsthat cause him to
drool, has trouble staying awake and cannot focus or
concentrate. Now his inner world has become manipulatedand
6. warped with bits and pieces of the one he tried so desperately
to escape. He becomes fearful at what peoplethink about him,
he wants to stay in his room and sleep to be oblivious.
He is told he’s not allowed to sleep at the day program at the
mental health center, told to stay awake and focus, because
those are the rules. He can’t wait to leave and go home, back to
sleep, back to oblivion.Even though there are good things that
are being offered, this approach is not working.
When a person’s psyche is jolted so severely through
trauma, the mind adapts in many ways, sometimes leaving a
person in an altered state, and/orin a place where emotions
become agonizing and magnified a hundred fold. At times your
body feels the awful sensations your consciousmind tried to
forget, and so you react, or shut down completely.
What if the medicationsdon’t work? How will you function,
how can you find a way to continue?Is it worth going on living
this way?
If YOU see someone panhandlingon the street corner and
you think, if I give them some money for food, will they just get
drunk or buy drugs? Why would they rather get drunk or get
high than eat, when they look so hungry? What if you asked
them, “May I ask what happenedto you?”, “Were you hurt?”.
What if you sat down with them on the street corner, and
7. asked them what they really needed, a place to live, someone
to talk to, someone to care, someone to believe in them!
Have we so denied the existence of trauma as a personal
struggle, because it is unacceptableto express any kind of
weakness, therefore causing it to be a hiddenthing, now
covered up when it emerges as unacceptablebehaviorand
labeleda genetic defect! There has been little verified evidence
of this in over 30 years of psychiatric genome testing. People
who survive this are strong, not weak!
We as a peoplemust take personal responsibility,and
together collective responsibility,to bring this back to the
forefront of our thoughts and actionsto save our peoples, to
save our most precious resource, our children.In doing this we
move to accept, embrace and heal those who have been
hiddenaway by our society’s denialof responsibility.
Remember, all peoplewill be subject directly or indirectly by
trauma in their lifetime, and all will have mental health
challenges.
What comes from trauma?
Normal responses to Abnormal circumstances!
8. If violence and abuse continues to run rampant what people
usuallythink of normal will be no more, actuallyI suppose the
cruelest fact of all is that trauma is NOW an EXPECTED NORM.
Thisis wrong!
How do we begin to change this? When we begin to make
sense of this, we become empowered to change it.
As individuals,as communities, as nations we were meant to
accept each other, embrace each other in harmony of
humanity,enjoying a secure sense of meaning and being that
nurtures the greater purpose of belonging. To go beyond
individualsurvival,to build on the hope of change, and make it
happen!
However, if one by one we continue to turn away, to say this
has nothing to do with me or mine, we unknowinglyinviteit to
slowly infect us, to invade us in ways we will never realize.
Think about this deeply.
How many ways is this possible?
All could say livingthrough war is traumatic, but how many
ways does war affect your life? Think about the effect it has on
acquiring your basic resources. Let’s start with the food on your
table, the quality,the cost. This in turn is affected by your work,
how you get there, how you get home. What aboutpeople you
9. work with, the type of work you do? How does this trauma
affect your kids at school, or at their work?
Stop and think for a moment.
Now, without judging yourself, or me for asking this,
consider your own life experiences, from a child until today.
Examine even the minute detailsof your own “behavior”,what
you feel, why you feel the way you do. Think about how far
back you’ve had those feelings, and how you think that might
reflect on the things you do that are emotionallydriven,and
everything we do is emotionallydriven to varying degrees.
Only you hear the answers in your mind, you don’t have to
tell anyone if you don’t want to, but if you start feeling bad
about something, you might want to share it with someone you
trust that you are very comfortable with, someone good at
listening nonjudgmentally.
As normal reactions to abnormal circumstances, adaptations
will vary from person to person even though they experience
the exact same traumatic event.
Neuroplasticityin brain function allowsfor the real
possibilitiesfor recovery. The brain has been proven to adapt,
or readapt, to physicallychange it’s make up. That proves there
10. is hope for us as individuals,the question is can we change as a
people, to broaden our humanity.
If we see and accept that trauma affects us all in unending
ways, we cannot turn away from it, there becomes only one
reasonablechoice.
Trauma awareness is imperative
to our continued existence!
There is much that shows, both in the far past and today, that
it takes a village to heal a village.Each individualisan
important and necessary part of the village, thus all are
affected by the health of the individual.
To bolsterthe healthof the village,the individualneedsto be
nurtured as a valuableresource to the village in order for the
village to thrive as a whole.
How do we define community?
Webster accounts first that a community is “a body of
people livingin the same place under the same laws”. It goes
on to describe a more lawfully cohesive example; “a natural
population ofplantsand animalsthat interact ecologically
(“relationallyfunctioningas a unit”) and live in one place”. This
is the true law of the naturalworld.
