The Story Lives: Repetition of the Traumatic Experience
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| Painting by the author |
There is a lot written about this already. I have been reading about it for years, and yet I am struck by the ways that we carry that which has shattered our sense of self and the world. Human beings are so profoundly creative: if the trauma doesn't fit into our world view, we weave it into the way we move, our tone of voice, the colors we paint with, the stories we tell, and hope no one, including ourselves, is the wiser. And so it lives on in the very building blocks of a life, biding its time until we are able and somewhat willing to look at it and try to resolve it.
Not everyone has the resources to look at and resolve their trauma. In considering the entire world, I would say many people, particularly those in areas plagued with war, disease, and poverty, do not have those resources. Some persevere nonetheless and work through the trauma, but many cannot. In the latter cases these trauma stories stay lodged where they are "safe," becoming normal ways of being in a collectively traumatized culture. These stories are also passed down through families until someone can resolve them.
Those who are blessed (or cursed, depending on how you feel about it) to have the resources and resiliency to resolve their trauma are often surprised to find the breadcrumbs of said trauma scattered in random parts of their being and lives. Gathering those breadcrumbs is part of the trauma resolution process. Gathering the pieces of our shattered sense of self and the world gives us the opportunity to remember and pay tribute to who we were pre-trauma and reconstruct who we are and how we see our world post-trauma.
Ways to gather these breadcrumbs are subtle and may initially feel useless or harmless. Once rolling, however, this process can get intense and feel overwhelming. So if you are doing this for yourself, make sure that your life feels stable and that you have people to lean on. If you are planning on doing this with a client, be clear that the client has the internal and external resources to support them through this.
With the above warning given, I'd like to share some ways to notice and access these trauma stories.
Worries
What we worry about on a regular basis is very revealing in terms of both our personal trauma and our historic family trauma. Does one worry about betrayal, rejection, sudden crises, disorganization, loss, ending up alone? An example of this would be a new mother who has exaggerated and irrational worries of neglecting her child: until having children herself and investigating this worry, she was not aware of the preverbal neglect she herself experienced. Another example would be a middle class man's constant concern that he will end up in poverty when there is no evidence that this is likely to occur. His grandparents' experience in the Depression, however, caused so much intergenerational distress that a family fear of returning to that state was passed two generations forward.
When using the term "irrational," I don't mean to invalidate the worry or fear. To me when I identify a worry as irrational in myself or a client, that is a indicator to me that the concern is connected to some degree of trauma, with roots reaching to the past rather than the present.
Directive: Write down your greatest worry, your deepest fear. Put it in the simplest and most accurate way possible. Find an etymology dictionary online or at a library and look up the root meaning of every word in your statement of worry. There will be multiple roots to chose from: choose the one which feels best to you. Jumble all of the new words and use them, out of the original order, to create a new statement that is a response to your greatest worry.
Lies
What feels necessary to hide from friends, family and acquaintances? From ourselves? Lies can follow themes for people, where they find themselves omitting or changing certain information repeatedly. Some of this is of course force of social habit: saying "I'm fine" when you're unwell or not sharing about financial difficulties are part of social norms. Other more specific unrevealed information, however, can be an arrow pointing in the direction of trauma. An example of this would be a young man with a sister who finds himself answering "No" when asked if he has siblings. His older sister was emotionally abusive toward him during childhood, and rather than acknowledging her existence to himself or others and facing the pain associated with her he bypasses the issue altogether by deleting her from his history when possible.
I believe lies are important defense mechanisms that help us function in an increasingly public social world. Asking people to reveal their lies is asking people to be their most vulnerable and that may be too much for them. It is only when those lies are distressing to us or a client, or they surface as elaborate avoidance strategies, should we look more closely at the history behind the lie. If the man in the above example wasn't in therapy for symptoms associated with trauma from his sister's abuse and feeling tired of keeping up the lie there may be little reason to open this up.
Directive: Look through magazine images and find at least five, preferably more, that refer to something in your life you are frequently dishonest about. Draw on a piece of paper a container for these images: a shape that feels right for holding these hidden parts of your life or self. Glue the images inside your drawn container. Another option is to find an actual container and glue the images to the inside of it. Whichever way you chose, paint or collage the outside of the drawn or actual container in a way that leaves you feeling like the container can safely hold these images, these secret references.
Images
What images are we attracted to? This may be in art, our own or others, or it may be in the media we consume. Noticing what feels appealing, validating, troubling, or outright disturbing to look at can give us information about how our trauma manifests within. Look at white American culture's attraction to images of high drama and people deeply angry or sad. White American culture as a general rule is not one where anger and grief are regularly expressed openly and certainly not publicly. Many people are wounded or emotionally stunted as a result of unexpressed feelings.
In a more individual example a woman may paint an image in therapy of a mountain lion: this is an image that has cropped up repeatedly in her dreams. When following this image through a series of paintings and drawings, she realizes she identifies with the mountain lion as a creature of power that hides from the world most of the time. In giving this image space to exist, she realizes her own power was quelled and sometimes stomped out by her parents who could not tolerate it in a girl.
Art is an incredible way to give unconscious content a safe place to breathe air. It is often indirect, a sideways approach to trauma or shadow aspects of self. Our imagination can conjure a reference to parts of ourselves or buried trauma that is more accurate and powerful than the prose of talk therapy. Creative writing, music, and dance are naturally included in my reference to art.
Directive: Draw/paint a picture of an animal, person, or object that has been repeating itself in your life through dreams, tv, art, etc. Perhaps you find yourself attracted to tv shows about prisoners or zombies, or you have been dreaming about highways or fish. Whatever the image is, draw it for yourself. Write in the margins or within the image thoughts and feelings that pop up as you are drawing - track what else seems connected to this image for you. Repeat this, create a series until the meaning of this becomes clearer to you. It may take several art pieces to get to the deeper meanings and references within this image, and one image may lead to others that are more powerful and accurate for you: trust and follow the art.
Repeated Stories
There can be stories we find ourselves telling others regularly that speak indirectly to our trauma, whether it hides it or sugar-coats it or justifies it. It could be a woman talking fondly about her mother criticizing her choice of clothing and hair styles: to her this story has always been proof of how close she is with her mother, until one day she realizes that it sounds dysfunctional. In examining it she realizes that this is the hurtful way love manifests in her family, exemplified by her parents and carried on in herself and in her relationships. It could also be a repeated theme in a story (e.g. "So of course this guy betrays me too...") that attracts a person's attention over time.
Every individual and family has repeated stories. These stories are manifestations of family and personal ethos, and even more benign ones may speak in some way to intergenerational trauma that has affected the group and individuals profoundly. With that said, not every family trauma generates further trauma. But every family trauma generates meaning, habits, and lessons carried down through the generations.
Directive: Take a story that you tell people regularly about yourself or someone close to you and write it out. Look closely at it and tell it in a different way: draw it as a cartoon, write it as a script for a play or movie, act it out through movement, whatever new way you want to tell it. What new meanings crop up for you around this story? What feelings, what thoughts?
At the end of the day we are our own healers. We carry the trauma of our lives or our family to keep it safe until it can be healed. Sometimes the carrying gets to be too much and it hurts: if we can, letting the trauma see the light of day outside of us and feeling the feelings associated with it can ultimately lighten the burden. That is what therapy can do, and what the expressive therapies can do with great sophistication and finesse.
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