[wordup] Speaking Truth to Trauma

[Adam Shand]

Personally I've lived a remarkably trauma free life (touch wood) so I  
can't personally identify with that side of things.  However I did  
grow up with some foster brothers that came from abusive families and  
my parents were group home parents for abused children for a few  
years, so as a young child I saw first hand the effects of abuse and  
trauma on children.

I don't know what the answers are, but the only way I can imagine  
that violence and war is going to create peace is if we kill everyone  
that threatens us, and that seems like a lonely existence to me.

Adam.

Via: Brett Shand <brett at earthlight...>
Source: http://tqe.quaker.org/2007/TQE156-EN-Trauma.html
Speaking Truth to Trauma

by Loren Cobb

Persistent news reports of rapes, torture, and war atrocities  
perpetrated by American soldiers in Iraq continue to bring us  
enormous pain and sadness. The facts and rumors filtering out of Iraq  
are sickening, but I believe there is an alternative to yet another  
round of blame and guilt, of angry defense and deadpan denial. It  
concerns trauma.
This is a very personal letter, on a matter with which I have too  
much experience.

Forty years ago today, at 4:30 in the morning, I awoke from my bed in  
a Cornell University dormitory to find the building on fire and  
filled with smoke. I escaped, but nine of my friends lost their  
lives. It was the beginning of a series of homicidal arson attacks  
that Spring, attacks for which no one was ever charged. I was burned  
out of my living quarters not once but twice, and we lived in a state  
of constant fear and paranoia. Like most of my friends, I was left  
with a permanent case of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),  
somewhat helped by years of psychotherapy.

The PTSD that I acquired is little different from that suffered by  
the targets of child abuse, prison rape, family violence, and  
military combat. Though I denied it for years, I have common ground  
with traumatized people everywhere. Our numbers are legion, whether  
we recognize it or not. Mostly not.

Quakers and other pacifists have long "spoken truth to power," in a  
brave but unsuccessful attempt to alter public attitudes towards war  
and the use of violent force. I have a different idea: let's start  
speaking truth to trauma.

It is time, indeed long past time, for every nation to come to some  
difficult realizations:

  * that even our finest soldiers can and will commit atrocities when  
pushed too far,
  * that evil deeds in this and every conflict are done primarily by  
traumatized individuals,
  * that an epidemic of unseen trauma in our culture warps even our  
perceptions of war.
The profound traumas of military combat push some soldiers into  
complete dissociation, a state in which the world shrinks down to  
just a soldier's own small unit, surrounded by faceless inhuman  
enemies, when all moral issues reduce to black or white, life or  
death. In this primitive psychological state, some soldiers become  
berserkers, like the crazed but infinitely deadly Norse and Celtic  
warriors of the Dark Ages, feeding their rage on blood-lust and  
destruction. Others turn their anger inwards, becoming suicidal, or  
blind or mute or crippled with no physical cause.

Achilles in Iraq

Dr. Jonathan Shay's book Achilles in Vietnam notes the close  
parallels between the behavior of the Athenian hero Achilles during  
the Trojan War, as told by Homer, and the berserk behavior of some  
traumatized American troops in Vietnam, as told by his soldier  
patients. This is the stuff of extreme tragedy, of men crazed beyond  
all limits by the traumas of war and childhood. It is here that we  
find the true origin of atrocities in warfare.

Even so, the symptoms of PTSD — hypervigilance, aggression,  
dissociation, flashbacks, addictions, depression, insomnia,  
apocalyptic thinking — are just the bare beginning of the story.  
Every war generates millions of new cases of PTSD, among soldiers and  
civilians alike. Very few understand their own symptoms, and enormous  
numbers become addicted to alcohol and opiates while in search of  
relief.

It is a sad fact that addicted and alcoholic parents are neglectful  
parents. The children of untreated traumatized adults grow up in  
difficult households, secondary victims of the original traumas of  
their parents. Some of these children may suffer beatings and abuse  
of their own, but many more will live with the consequences of  
chronic neglect, the attachment disorders: fear of intimacy, lack of  
trust, chronic feelings of being bad or worthless or shameful or  
sinful. Some psychiatric social workers have told me that neglect is  
more damaging to the psyche than abuse, that long-term attachment  
disorders can be far worse even than PTSD.

Private Stephen Green was diagnosed in 2006 as a homicidal threat by  
a military mental health team, who were well aware of these  
psychological dangers. Nevertheless, he was returned to duty with  
instructions to get more sleep. Three months later, according to  
official charges, he raped and set fire to a 14-year-old Iraqi girl,  
then slaughtered her family. In between he is reported to have set  
fire to a puppy — a classic warning sign of extremely violent  
behavior, and an indicator of possible childhood abuse.

In an earlier era people might have said that he was possessed by  
demons, which must be exorcized. Nowadays many say that people like  
him are evil, and must be punished. I say that he is merely one in an  
endless stream of severely traumatized young men and women, lost in a  
fog of dissociation and paranoia.

For every Private Green there are hundreds of millions less severely  
afflicted. These are the walking wounded, functioning as best they  
can while beset by inner terrors and urges they can neither admit to  
nor seek help for.

Effects on Society

If the psychological effects of war are bad but only dimly  
recognized, the effects on society as a whole are, I believe, hidden  
but profound.

Prison psychiatrist James Gilligan has a theory that many badly  
traumatized and neglected children lose the ability to form any  
internal sense of self-worth, and therefore come to depend solely on  
the opinions of others. Their sense of honor and pride is brittle and  
easily threatened, by real or imagined disrespect from those around  
them. If, as young adults, they are shamed by others, then they are  
more likely to react with violence than those who were not  
traumatized as children.

A nation with more than its share of such adults will, I believe,  
develop institutions that are quick to see threats to its security,  
slow to trust other nations, jealous of pride and honor. Its  
religions will evolve to see the world in black and white, good and  
evil. Their doctrines may naturally come to emphasize the inherent  
sinfulness of mankind — because these feelings spring from attachment  
disorders — and they may take on a somewhat paranoid and apocalyptic  
flavor, in parallel with the feelings caused by PTSD.

Most unfortunate of all, a nation with epidemic PTSD and attachment  
disorders will, I am sure, be armed and ready to go to war at a  
moment's notice — allowing the desperate cycle of war and trauma to  
turn and return forever... or until we finally wake up and see what  
is happening. Democracy itself is threatened by this cycle, as  
observed in this quote from Jonathan Shay:

> "Democratic process entails debate, persuasion, and compromise.  
> These presuppose the trustworthiness of words. The moral dimension  
> of severe trauma, the betrayal of 'what's right,' obliterates the  
> capacity for trust. The customary meanings of words are exchanged  
> for new ones; fair offers from opponents are scrutinized for traps;  
> every smile conceals a dagger. Unhealed combat trauma — and I  
> suspect unhealed trauma from any source — destroys the unnoticed  
> substructure of democracy, the cognitive and social capacities that  
> enable a group of people to freely construct a cohesive narrative  
> of their own future." [Shay, 1994, p.181]
Is the problem Power or is it Trauma?

When a democratic nation is enmeshed in a vicious cycle of war and  
trauma, what kind of leaders rise to the top of the power structure?

The answer, I fear, is that the people will vote for leaders who  
speak in the coded language of trauma. Speeches will ring with words  
of honor and pride, of good vs. evil, with colors and undertones of  
hypervigilance, distrust, and apocalyptic thinking. Gentle diplomacy  
will be abandoned in favor of unilateral gestures of power and  
strength. Movies like Rambo and The 300 will command our rapt  
attention. Our leaders will lace their rhetoric with thinly-veiled  
paranoia, they will be touchy and quick to take offense, preferring  
to use military force and blunt threats rather than diplomacy and  
conflict resolution.

What does it really mean, in the final analysis, to confront such  
leaders and their followers with the truth? Do we address them as  
rational, ethical human beings who will see the error of their ways  
when it is displayed in front of them? Can they even see what we are  
showing them?

If it is true, as I believe, that both the people and the leadership  
of many nations are struggling under multiple layers of trauma and  
denial, then something more than calm and rational discourse is  
required. The rational truth is not sufficient, we must also address  
the cycle of trauma itself, at its deeper psychological roots.

Speaking truth to a nation whose citizens are largely in denial of  
their own trauma is more subtle by far than speaking truth to power,  
and the focus is not on the powerful.

  * We must listen to returning soldiers and their families about  
their truth however painful — lest they harden in the mold in which  
we cast the next generation of xenophobic warriors;
  * We must stop hiding and address the epidemic of prison violence  
and rape. Our prisons have become universities of crime and hate,  
causing more trauma and dissociation than the original crimes  
themselves;
  * We must understand that waging a "War on Drugs" cannot stop the  
addiction process, because it attacks symptoms but not the disease;
  * We need our modern myth makers — our movie makers — to portray  
the effects of trauma with clear-eyed honesty, rather than pandering  
to "needs" generated by untreated trauma for scenes of graphic violence.
Those are some things we can do, and indeed some pioneers are already  
engaged in this effort. But more than anything else, we need a  
revolution in perception rather than hasty corrective action, no  
matter how well-intentioned. The way ahead will not be clear until we  
can fully see the profound effects of untreated trauma on society, on  
history, and on ourselves.

For more information: (Links on the original site)

  * Cobb, L & B ( 2004) The Persistence of War. Ætheling Consultants.

  *  Cobb, Loren (2006) Warfighting vs. Peacemaking. Ætheling  
Consultants.
  *  Drumsta, Raymond (2007) "Fatal fire burned in memory", Ithaca  
Journal, 7 April 2007.
  *  Gilligan, James (1996) Violence: Reflections on a National  
Epidemic. New York: Vintage Books.
  *  Greven, Philip (1990) Spare the Child: The Religious Roots of  
Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse. New York:  
Vintage Books.
  *  Herman, Judith (1992) Trauma and Recovery. New York: HarperCollins.
  *  Scaer, Robert C. (2005) The Trauma Spectrum: Hidden Wounds and  
Human Resiliency. New York: WW Norton.
  *  Shay, Jonathan (1994) Achilles in Vietnam. New York: Scribner.