When unpleasant and even traumatic events happen in our lives, our step goal is to get through the situation and heal from any damage to our body or mental health. But it is important to view healing much more of a process or a journey rather than simply a destination. Healing can be a necessary way to get to the desired destination and a vehicle to take us where we want to go. Many individuals who have experienced trauma have their dreams and hopes in life shattered. Certainly if we stay in a traumatized place, we can forget about reaching our true potential. This is where healing is critically important. However, too many people who have gone through significant trauma, and too many people who help them in the process, forget that healing is not their full potential but rather a necessary process to regain hope in reaching full potential and a positive future.
The tendency of human beings is to define ourselves and others by what we have been through, by how we are different than others, or by some disability. We consider some people alcoholics, rather than a person with alcoholism. We talk about a disabled person rather than a person challenged by a disability. This may seem a subtle difference in terminology, but it is a major difference in meaning. Is the blind woman defined by the fact that she does not have sight as others do? Is an epileptic the same as someone who has epilepsy? The major difference in thinking is in definition. We do not all have obvious disabilities, but at times in our lives all of us have others define us by some event, some condition, or some challenge that does not come close to defining who we are as a total person. It is even more concerning when the individual self- defines by some characteristic or condition.
I have worked over the years with people in the process of dying. This can be very instructive to see how people handle being around someone facing imminent death, and to see how the person facing death handles this as well. I have always felt that dying is one time in your life that you should be able to do it your way. However, I am always struck by the person who gives into the temptation to be defined by the dying process. Equally poignant is the situation where the family or medical staff do not tell the person that they are about to die. This is just another way to have the significance of the dying process take over our experience for us, rather than us determining our experience. Of all the conditions that people find themselves facing, dying is hard to ignore and equally hard to get beyond its symbolic stature. We all have to die, but some people seem to be busy being the dying person days, months or even years before the time comes. There are others who know that death may be at the door, but they are too busy living to answer the door just yet; death may just have to wait until they have lived a bit longer.
The example of the dying process and healing process has been used because although both are required of us, we have some say over whether it defines us, or we define it. Healing is a great rest stop along the highway of life, but don’t get so used to the rest stop that you forget to get back on the highway toward your dreams and your potential.
Breaking Through The Limitations Of Trauma
If we are going to really live, we need to not be too distracted with the inevitability that we will die at some point. At the same time, there is a Far Eastern saying that to fully appreciate living, keep death just over your shoulder. Or as the Zen master commented to the student, “See this glass, when I look at it, I see it already broken so I appreciate it all the more while it is whole.” This points out the balance of living, we can neither be overwhelmed with the inevitability of death to the point we cease to fully live, nor can we live in denial that life will keep getter better all the time, and there will always be another day, another month or another year—because at some point there will not be.
To reach one’s potential, we must move beyond the symbolic importance of events in our lives. We never forget our favorite pet that died when we were growing up, but such a significant event cannot mute our ability to live fully, including the possibility of embracing another pet at some point. There is always a temptation to be overwhelmed, stuck, or defined by things that we face in life. Trauma is one of the most tempting life events that can do this.
It may be a fact that so few people fully heal from trauma that we as a society have held up limited goals and expectations for people who have faced traumatic experiences. Perhaps we can get over losing a pet as a child, but can we go through the trauma of losing a child? Such an experience is often said to be the hardest thing anyone can face in life. Some who have faced this have said that they emerged more dead than alive afterward. While we can understand this, we certainly hate to see this happen. Death has been used in several examples, but there are many little deaths involved in living. It is our attachment to loved ones that makes it so difficult to let go when we have no choice. But we get attached to more than loved ones and pets, we get attached to our routines, our familiar patterns of living, and our internal sense of safety and security. Traumatic experiences can quickly rob us of such attachments. When trauma takes away our familiar patterns of loving, we grieve not entirely differently than when a loved one dies. We wonder if we can go on, and if it makes any sense to go on.
Trauma brings with it an experience of a type of death. We have lost something special, at the least we are not able to go back to how life was before the trauma. Trauma can bring with it major changes in our lives. It can make us feel as if we are no longer ourselves. It can make us think, feel and act differently so that we don’t know who we are any longer. Trauma can change our sense of meaning and purpose in life, usually in a negative direction. In a sense, these are some of the emotional, psychological and even spiritual impacts of trauma. Trauma can change how our brain responds to the world around us, seldom in a positive way. Trauma can impact us in ways we don’t even realize or notice. There is no question that traumatic experiences can bring many potential limitations to the person involved. It must be the goal of traumatized individuals to overcome or reduce the impact of the limitations to fully live the rest of their lives.
As helpers we have a careful balance to strike in our support of those who have experienced trauma. We cannot act like a motivational speaker in an auditorium of businessmen and women. That would not be supportive. But neither can we permanently wrinkle our brow and say how incredibly sorry we are that the individual is going through what they are facing. This approach can support the person in being unable to move much beyond taking in another breath or getting through another day. We must have the true supportive empathy of a mother I once worked with. She had a young child who was blinded in an accident. In my office the young child dropped a toy, I immediately wanted to pick it up to help the young man. This would have made me feel better and eliminated my stress in the situation. However, the mother motioned me away. There was a pause while the boy waited for someone to step in and hand him the toy. When no one did, he asked for help. However his mother said, “I know you can find it on your own.” She loved her child enough to teach him how to fish rather than hand him a fish, and in doing so she taught him to be a little more independent. I found her strength a real inspiration in the face of the symbolic heaviness of a child dealing with having no sight. I ask myself often if I am strong enough to help others work with their own forms of blindness?
Many clients come to therapy to achieve “healing.” It is the job of the helper to point out that healing is needed each day and in each situation. It is not a static state of a lack of stress or emotional challenge, because there will never be a time in life of a sustained state of lack of stress. Healing is therefore a process and not a state of being. It is continual effort directed to live in the present having learned from the past and looking forward to the future with optimism.
It must be the goal of all of us who help traumatized individuals to set the bar high in overcoming the limitations of a traumatic event. Some people are self-starters and you can’t keep them down if you try. But most people, this is particularly true of children, pick up from others a sense of how far they can be expected to go, and how high they will be able to fly. As helpers we must encourage these individuals to set their goals high.
[Excerpt from Beyond Healing, The path to personal contentment after trauma. (2009). D. L. Ziegler]