Introduction
 |
 HEN
natural disasters and other
traumatic events occur, survivors, journalists, and relief workers can be overwhelmed
with horrendous sights and smells and profound scenes of human suffering. In the midst of
profound devastation and helplessness that make immediate relief efforts seem frustratingly
inadequate, these persons can do little more than cast weak sympathetic glances at each
other.
Then the anger
starts to grow. With a show of arrogant bravado, they proclaim, “We’re going
to get the ones who caused this!” Or, if it was a natural disaster, they cry out,
“Why didn’t the government do more to help? We’re going to get those who are
responsible for this!”
In psychological terms, though,
in our anger we confuse the psychological realm of the imaginary with the realm
of the real—and in so doing, we overlook the healing potential of the realm
of the symbolic. For those not familiar with psychology, this needs some explanation,
so follow along with me here.
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The
Realm
Of
The
Imaginary
|
The Realm of the Imaginary derives from the
pre-verbal state of childhood. As children, we need and
desire others to take care of our needs,
but, without language, we conceive of this caretaking imaginally; that is,
as images in our minds. Hence the realm of the imaginary is all in
our heads, so to speak; it’s all based in the expectation that our needs
should be fulfilled, and it provokes anger
when our needs aren’t fulfilled.
|
Now, when a parent
takes care of a helpless infant, the caretaking can be an act of
pure—rather than imaginary—love in which
the parent is concerned only for the infant’s ultimate good.
Once the child becomes
capable of language and independent thought, however,
caretaking can then fall back into the imaginary realm and degenerate into
mere bribery, in which a parent “gives” only to manipulate the
child with game playing and guilt into behaviors
more suited to the parent’s comfort than the child’s
well-being.
Although the realm of
the imaginary begins in childhood, it persists even into
adulthood. For example, the desire for romantic fulfillment in another person
resides in the realm of the imaginary because romantic
fulfillment depends on fantasies of someone giving you what makes you
feel good. As hard as it is to admit it, and as much as it contradicts popular
culture, romantic sentiment is based in
self-indulgence, not in real love.
Furthermore,
the pursuit of happiness, which characterizes our culture, also belongs to the
realm of the imaginary. Whether it be the “happiness” of drugs or alcohol
or food or eroticism or athletic triumph or political triumph, it all points back
to an infant yearning to be wrapped in unconscious bliss,
seemingly protected—at least momentarily—from
the reality of its own vulnerability. |
|
OK. So there is the realm of
the imaginary.
|
The
Realm
Of
The
Real
|
The world is generally quite stable. We go to bed at night
and fully expect our slippers to be there, right where we left them the night before,
when we wake up. Without this sense of stability we would be living in an Alice in
Wonderland type of craziness. We couldn’t function.
 Yet consider just how fragile this
sense of daily security really is. Any number of things—from an earthquake to a car crash—
could happen suddenly, without warning, and leave us
in chaos.
This is reality.
The
Realm of the Real is therefore the place of our essential
fragmentation, vulnerability, and death.
It’s the “place” where every disaster leaves us, wounded and
helpless.
To most persons, the Realm of
the Real is a terrifying place, and so most persons will do most anything
to hide this reality from their own awareness. We try to live secure and
peaceful lives in the moment while pushing away the knowledge that in the
next moment everything and anything worldly that we rely upon—our
possessions and our bodies—can be wiped away.
Psychologically, then, when you
encounter the real you experience a shocking
disruption of your previously secure—and imaginary—sense of self.
Therefore, you will experience a trauma if you encounter the real with
nothing but symptoms and defenses from the Imaginary
Realm.
|
In fact, the
psychological function of a symptom is precisely to hide reality;
a symptom hides an intangible and horrifying reality behind tangible mental
and physical manifestations such as anxiety,
insomnia, lethargy, nightmares,
depressed mood, and so on. |
|
Furthermore, this
encounter can take you right into all the psychological and spiritual dangers of
blame. Why? Because a core dynamic of PTSD is a failure to
forgive the person or persons who hurt you in the
past. |
The
Realm
Of
The
Symbolic
|
The truth is, when you encounter “bad” things, that is
reality. But when you set aside blame and anger
to face your pain honestly, and surrender to the
unconscious, you enter the Realm of the Symbolic. In the symbolic realm, the realm
of language, horror can be given containment, thus allowing you to draw wisdom from pain and
tragedy.
|
This all goes to show that no
one can inflict trauma—or PTSD—upon you. If you develop a psychological disability
because of your encounter with a “bad” event, it’s really because you have
unconsciously chosen to become “traumatized” as a result of your not knowing how
to contain the event in a healthy manner. |
|
So let’s see how to do
this.
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|
Traumatic
Events
|
In medical terminology, a trauma is simply a wound or injury
that happens suddenly or
violently. Analogously, psychological trauma results
when “stress” overwhelms a person and
causes lasting psychological effects.
A traumatic
event, whether a natural disaster such as an earthquake, flood, or fire,
or an accident such as a car or airplane crash, can happen to
anyone.
Fortunately,
most people have a support system that allows for a common sense way of adapting
to the trauma: sharing stories and emotional experiences. In fact, talking
about the event allows a person to “get a handle on it” and so
helps it eventually to slip into place alongside other life
experiences.
|
The debilitating
effects of trauma derive from its ability to overwhelm a person emotionally
while driving out any rational understanding of what is happening
psychologically. By consciously creating a narrative structure for the
trauma—in psychotherapy, in personal journaling, in prayer—you
help to dispel the illusion that the traumatic event has control over you,
and you cease to be a helpless victim. |
|
Without a way
of adapting, however, a person may find that symptoms develop to the point
that they become unmanageable.
The information
contained in this page will help you understand what is happening to you
and will also help you in deciding if you should seek outside assistance
for your distress. |
Trauma
|
The oppressive psychological weight of trauma can result
from a surprisingly diverse range of experiences, some of which you might
never before have stopped to consider:
• |
Accidents |
• |
Childhood physical, sexual, and emotional
abuse |
• |
Criminal assault |
• |
Combat, as it affects military personnel
and civilians |
• |
Domestic
violence and emotional abuse |
• |
Hostage-taking situations |
• |
Motor vehicle crashes |
• |
Surgical medical procedures involving
loss (e.g., amputation),
death (e.g., abortion), or near death |
• |
Natural disasters (earthquakes,
tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, fires, blizzards, etc.) |
• |
Political and military torture |
• |
Rape |
• |
Terrorism |
• |
Workplace violence |
|
The term
Complex PTSD (CPTSD) refers to the fact that the cause
of the PTSD is not one isolated event but involves many events over a long
time (such as child abuse throughout childhood). |
|
A psychologist
trained in treating trauma can help you if you feel especially overwhelmed.
For a person with no history of previous mental health problems,
brief treatment (about 12 sessions) may be all
that is needed.
In conjunction
with psychotherapy, medications may be advised in
helping you to sleep and in temporarily relieving severe anxiety or depression
so that psychotherapy can be effective. Psychiatric medications are not curative,
however; that is, they only suppress symptoms for as long as the medications are
taken. Therefore, it would be a mistake to take medications without using
psychotherapy to understand and resolve the symptoms. Following successful
psychotherapy, medications should be unnecessary. |
Encounter
and
Trauma
|
No matter how much effort a person puts into his or her
image, it’s all a
fraud,
psychologically speaking, because so much of our lives is
unconscious.
Erik Erikson, for example, in his writings on personality development, described
the conscious acquisition of a social identity in adolescence as one of the
“normative crises” of life. But this process of “seeing”
yourself reflected in the world—whether as an adolescent or as an
adult—has its problems. Although developing a social identity has a
certain short-term value, whatever you “think” you are is, ultimately,
nothing but a vague
approximation of what you really are. And what you really are is revealed
in discrete moments of genuine encounter with your inner
life.
In an
encounter with the unexpected, all of us react not according to what will
“look good” to others but according to our deepest—and often
unconscious—value system. So if your values are nothing other than an
imitation of the values the world has created to market itself, then in a
moment of crisis or surprise you will find out quite shockingly how empty
advertising promises really are. If your values are nothing other than an
acquiescence to peer pressure, you will find out how easily your desire
to be accepted by others can send you right into self-destruction. If your
values are not grounded in wisdom and integrity then you will consistently
defile wisdom and integrity.
|
Early in the
1960s, Stanley Milgram, a professor in social psychology at Yale University,
conducted some experiments about
obedience.[1]
Although controversial by today’s ethical standards, the experiments
revealed a dark side of human nature: many persons were quite willing to
obey someone in an apparent position of “authority” even if such
obedience meant inflicting severe pain on another person. Moreover, even
though the experiments were themselves a deception (that is, the electric
shocks the subjects “administered” to the victims were not real,
and the “victims” were actually pretending to feel pain as part
of the experiment), many of the subjects suffered considerable disillusionment
and trauma to discover that they had the capacity within themselves—in
obedience to authority and peer pressure—to inflict such
torture. |
|
This
illustrates an important point: What is revealed
about yourself in an encounter with your inner reality can be
terrifying.
|
As odd as it
might seem, even something as ordinary as having a tooth pulled or extracted
can provoke considerable anxiety.
“A tooth?” you might ask. “I don’t get it.”
Well, think about it. We all cut our hair, and our fingernails, and our toenails.
Notice, however, that these things grow back. Teeth don’t grow back.
Of course, baby teeth are lost and replaced with adult teeth, but once an
adult tooth is lost, that’s it. Extracting a tooth is like the
amputation of an arm or a leg—or a breast due to breast
cancer— a hysterectomy, a miscarriage, or an abortion
of a fetal child.
 Technically, the loss of any body part can provoke a
castration anxiety. We commonly castrate male animals by surgically
removing their testicles so as to make the animals less aggressive or to
make them reproductively sterile. Sigmund Freud, in his philosophy of
psychoanalysis, gave a psychological twist to castration when he assumed
that all young boys felt an anxiety about losing the penis, and that all
young girls felt an anxiety about having lost
it.
Jacques Lacan, however, understood that these
sexual images were just a screen covering an even deeper anxiety. Castration,
for Lacan, meant the horrifying recognition of our human fragmentation, the
very fragmentation that the infant has to “cover up” through its
identifications with the world as it builds up a coherent
personality.[2]
In the loss of
a tooth, then, is a confrontation—an encounter—with the reality
of bodily fragmentation and, ultimately, with death
itself. In essence, the loss says, “You’re not as glamorous and
powerful as you think. You’re just a flesh-covered skeleton that can
break at any time. Your image of yourself is all a lie.”
The loss of any body part, therefore—even a dream
about such a loss should never be minimized. For with the bodily loss comes the
loss of smug confidence in bodily invulnerability. If you don’t understand
what you’ve really lost, trauma will hit, and it will hit
hard. |
|
|
Common
Responses
To
Traumatic
Events
|
Common symptoms following exposure to traumatic events
include any of the following:
• |
An unusual feeling of being easily
startled (e.g.,
“jumpiness”) |
• |
Difficulty falling asleep or staying
asleep; waking up early |
• |
Nightmares
and/or
“flashbacks” |
• |
Repeated bodily sensations of past traumatic events |
• |
Difficulty concentrating or paying
attention |
• |
Carelessness in performing ordinary
tasks |
• |
Outbursts of irritability or
anger, sometimes without apparent reason |
• |
Loss of religious faith because of being
angry
at God |
• |
Family
or work conflicts that were not usually experienced before the trauma |
• |
Unusual bodily fatigue |
• |
Feelings of emotional numbness (such
as being
“in
a
daze,”or
having an “It doesn’t matter” attitude) |
• |
Recurrent anxiety over personal safety
or the safety of loved ones |
• |
Feeling especially
alone (e.g., having a “They weren’t
there” or “They can’t understand”
attitude) |
• |
An inability to let go of distressing
mental images or thoughts |
• |
Feelings of
depression, loss, or sadness |
• |
Feelings of
helplessness, powerlessness, and lack of
control |
• |
Feelings of guilt for not having
suffered as much as others |
• |
Unrelenting
self-criticism for things done or not done during
the event |
• |
Anxiety
about, and avoidance of, specific reminders of the event |
Developing symptoms
after exposure to a threatening event is expected and normal, and things
can often get better without professional help. Yet often clinical problems
can occur.
Clinical Diagnoses
Related to Trauma
If the
trauma did not involve an experience so intense as to warrant a diagnosis
such as Acute Stress Disorder (see below), and if the symptoms do
not represent ordinary bereavement, then
an Adjustment
Disorder may be diagnosed. The predominant symptoms
which characterize an Adjustment Disorder can be
depressed mood,
anxiety, disturbance of conduct (e.g.,
fighting, vandalism, reckless driving), or other maladaptive reactions
(e.g., physical complaints, work or academic inhibition, social withdrawal).
By its definition, an Adjustment Disorder cannot last longer than 6 months,
unless the precipitating experience is ongoing or has ongoing
consequences.
If, however,
the precipitating experience involved actual or threatened death or physical
injury; the symptoms have elements of dissociation,
re-experiencing (i.e., flashbacks), avoidance of reminders
of the experience, and anxiety; and the symptoms persist for several
days and cause a serious impairment in normal daily functioning, a diagnosis
of Acute Stress Disorder
(ASD) may be made. If symptoms persist for longer
than one month, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD) may be
diagnosed.
Children
subject to repeated, on-going abuse may also develop
Dissociative Identity
Disorder, commonly known as
“multiple
personalities.”
All of the above diagnoses, of
course, depend on specific symptoms that must be evaluated by a qualified
clinician. |
|
Coping
Strategies
After
Traumatic
Events
|
The best coping strategy, of course, is to talk about the
event with family, friends, clergy, or co-workers. Other
Positive Coping Strategies after
a traumatic event include:
• |
Maintaining a regular routine of
eating, sleeping, and working |
• |
Avoiding alcohol,
tranquilizers, and caffeine because they interfere with deep sleep (i.e., sleep
stages 3 and 4) |
• |
Getting quiet recreational exercise
in nature, such as walking or hiking. |
• |
Taking extra time to accomplish ordinary
tasks |
• |
Acquiring the training, tools, materials,
etc. that would have made things easier if you had been able to use them
during the event |
• |
Mentally rehearsing the positive
acts you would perform if there’s a
“next
time” |
• |
Interpreting physical symptoms (for
example, shoulder pain could be telling you that you’re “trying
to carry too heavy a burden”) |
• |
Asking yourself what
emotions you are actually experiencing. Fear and
anger are not the only emotions in life. |
• |
Getting a therapeutic massage to
release pent-up bodily tension |
• |
Writing about your experiences (in
a journal, diary, or personal letters) |
• |
Being careful not to make the event
into an obsession by reading about it in newspapers or magazines, or following
reports and discussions of it on the radio and TV |
• |
Realizing that different people need
differing amounts of time to recover from trauma |
• |
Learning a relaxation technique such
as Progressive Muscle Relaxation or
Autogenics |
• |
Joining a support
group |
• |
Accepting the emotional work of
forgiving the person or persons who hurt
you in the past [3] |
|
Maladaptive
Coping
Strategies
|
Be careful to watch for the following
Maladaptive Coping
Strategies:
• |
An increased use—or
abuse— of alcohol, coffee, drugs, gambling,
tobacco, etc. |
• |
A compulsion to work more than
usual |
• |
A temptation to make hasty major
life-decisions (e.g., quitting a job, moving to another location, abandoning
your family) |
• |
A tendency to completely avoid any
feelings or thoughts about the event |
These are
called maladaptive coping
strategies because they serve either
to push out of awareness any memory of the
traumatic event, or
to give you a false sense of
accomplishment. Unfortunately, such strategies
serve no purpose in helping you integrate the trauma into your sense of
self. For example, if you use alcohol or marijuana to reduce your anxiety,
you might feel better as long as you are using the substance, but, because you
are just chemically inducing a state of dissociation, the underlying trauma will
not be healed and will stay in the shadows to haunt you.
|
Remember—an
event is traumatic because it disrupts your previously secure sense of
self. Consider that wild animals live with a sharp awareness of perpetual
danger, yet most people live with a naive—and deceptive—sense of
safety and security to the point of denying their basic
vulnerability and fragmented
sense of self. So when something disastrous happens, the psychological damage
from the shattering of one’s illusions about life and
identity may be more problematic than any physical
damage. |
|
Healthy
adaptation to the trauma therefore involves
reorganizing
your attitudes about your
being and
your
purpose
in the world. In fact, this explains why some people who experience a trauma
come away from it as “changed” persons with a new sense of purpose
in
life.[4,5,6]
Of course, not
everyone is so profoundly changed; most people simply get back to life as
usual, feeling perhaps just a bit more practical or realistic about their
lives than they felt before the trauma. |
Treatments
for
PTSD
|
The clinical treatment for PTSD can take a variety of
approaches.[7]
Regardless of the treatment approach, the treatment
should (a) provide a sense of safety, both as a protection from
maladaptive coping strategies and as an acceptance of your thoughts and feelings
as non-threatening; (b) resolve the troubling aspects of the memories
of the traumatic experience; and (c) integrate positive growth into
your lifestyle.
• |
Exposure
Therapy is a form of cognitive-behavioral
treatment that is really quite a simple concept, and yet it can be very
effective in a short time (10 or 12 sessions) for treating discrete traumatic
events. Through the process of repeatedly talking (and writing)
psychotherapeutically about your traumatic experiences, several things can
happen:
|
1. You experience
your thoughts and
feelings in the safety of psychotherapy,
and this helps to reduce the belief that your thoughts and feelings are
dangerous.
2. You become habituated to your thoughts and feelings. That is, much
like a wild animal being tamed, you learn to accept your memories without
perceiving them as a threat.
3. You prevent yourself from falling into the habit of avoiding your
thoughts and feelings as an unhealthy defense against fear.
4. You learn to distinguish troubling thoughts and feelings from ordinary
thoughts and feelings so that everything does not seem threatening.
5. You learn to transform your feelings of helplessness into
competence.
6. You learn to think of yourself less
negatively.
|
|
|
• |
Imagery
Rehearsal Therapy can help to resolve recurring traumatic nightmares.
|
• |
Psychodynamic
Psychotherapy helps you explore and understand the unconscious aspects
of the trauma and its personal meaning for you. This form of treatment may
be necessary for multiple traumatic events experienced over time (e.g., childhood
abuse in a dysfunctional family).
|
• |
Hypnosis
and Guided Imagery, either alone or in combination with Psychodynamic
Psychotherapy, can help you to transform your perceptions of the trauma through
imagined visual and sensory experiences.
|
• |
Psychological
Debriefing. In years past, it was supposed that a group processing for all
persons involved in a critical event within 48 to 72 hours of the event
would prevent the development of full-blown PTSD. Experience, however, has shown
that talking about the event in a group only increases exposure and can actually
make things worse. What people really need, besides basic human contact and comfort,
is clear and honest information about what
happened.
|
• |
Eye Movement
Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). The premise of EMDR is that
many traumatic events are not properly “processed” by the memory
network of the brain, and that the eye movements of EMDR help a person
“reprocess” the traumatic memory through “rapid learning”
so that it no longer has negative psychological effects.
|
Is EMDR really
all that different from, or more efficient than, other treatments? Does eye
movement really aid brain processing of memory? Maybe. Maybe
not. Research is
inconclusive.[8]
EMDR is a psychotherapeutic tool, and its effectiveness depends on the expertise
of the person using it. Just as owning a saw does not make someone a carpenter, someone
who has been trained in using EMDR is not necessarily a skilled clinician of the
unconscious.
Just remember this: after you’ve “reprocessed” your memory
network you may still have a fragmented personality,
you may still fear love, and you may still have
a dark part of you that seeks death and
self-destruction. All of these things can be tangled into your life’s
overall unconscious misery right along with, on top
of, or behind any specific traumatic memory, and only a highly skilled clinician
can get to the root of all these issues.
|
|
|
• |
Pharmacotherapy [9] refers to the
use of medications to help alleviate serious symptoms, such as anxiety and
insomnia, so that psychotherapy can be effective. It would be a grave
psychological mistake to use psychiatric medications without psychotherapy.
Following successful psychotherapy, medications should be
unnecessary.
|
• |
Group
Therapy may be used for social support and to help individuals understand
and resolve the social aspects of their symptoms.
|
• |
Marital
and Family Therapy can be of help especially when children or adolescents
experience a trauma.
|
• |
Inpatient
Treatment (that is, hospitalization) for severe cases, may be required
especially if the trauma provokes suicidal thoughts.
|
• |
Psycho-social
Rehabilitation Techniques may be necessary if the trauma has caused a
drastic disintegration of a person’s lifestyle.
|
• |
Creative Arts
Therapies are sometimes used in conjunction with other
treatment. |
Of the
above approaches, Debriefing and EMDR are the most controversial. Each of
these approaches has been popularized in a similar fashion: one person who
discovers the treatment advocates for the use of his or her
“discovery” through a reliance on supportive case reports. Both
approaches currently lack the unambiguous support of randomized, clinical
trials [10]
with control
groups.[11] |
Self-help
for
Trauma
|
If you find that professional treatment for trauma is not
available to you or is too expensive, you might try the following self-help
writing assignments. These suggestions are not meant to replace professional
treatment, but, in some circumstances, anything can be better than
nothing.
The assignments
are meant to be kept private, for your own use, but in writing them you might
be surprised to see things you would not have admitted to yourself in your
own thoughts.
Be careful
not to try to rush the process—allow two or three days for each
assignment.
• |
Write at least one paragraph defining
the concept of “victim.” Read it and re-read it over the course
of the next couple days. |
• |
Write at least one page on what it
means to you that you have experienced a trauma. Please consider the effects
that the trauma has had on your beliefs about yourself, your beliefs about
others, and your beliefs about the world. Also consider the following topics
while writing your answer: Safety, Trust, Power, Competence, Esteem, and
Intimacy. Read it and re-read it over the course of the next couple
days. |
• |
Write a detailed account of your
last experience of trauma. Include as many sensory details as possible, as
well as your thoughts and feelings about the experience. Be sure to track
the development of your anxiety from your description of its first beginnings
to its peak and on through its dissipation. If you are unable to complete
the account in one sitting, draw a line where you stop. When you are ready
to continue, read what you have already written before writing more. If there
are parts that you do not remember, draw a line and continue on at the part
that you remember next. At least once a day, over the course of the next
couple days, read whatever you have written, whether it be complete or in
progress. |
• |
For this assignment, write three
paragraphs.
First, write a paragraph about how you want your life to change
once you have overcome your trauma. Read it and re-read it over the course
of the next couple days.
Second, write a paragraph describing what you will lose
(that’s right—lose) by being able to live comfortably without troubling
memories or anxiety. Read it and re-read it over the course of the next couple
days.
Third, write a paragraph summarizing the five most important
reasons for your being able to overcome the trauma. Read it and re-read it
over the course of the next couple days. |
• |
Finally, write a statement of what
it means to you that you have taken on this self-help work for a trauma.
You should, of course, review what you have written in all the writing
assignments; you should also consider any anxieties you might still have
as well as any insights you may have achieved. (Remember: sometimes knowing
where you have been can give you a clue as to where you are headed.) |
|
A
Final
Note
About
Terrorism
and
Trauma
|
Imagine sitting in an airplane, happily sipping a glass
of wine, talking to your seatmate and feeling quite wonderful about your
recent business success. Suddenly there’s a loud noise, the plane pitches
nose down, food and baggage fly all over the cabin, everyone is screaming,
and you lose consciousness. You wake up covered in blood, surrounded with
smoke and fire, and next to you is the mangled body of your
seatmate.
Now, although
in your daily life you might delight in entertainment that depicts graphic
violence and death, when an experience like this suddenly throws itself into
your lap—along with your neighbor’s severed arm—it’s
no longer fun and games. It’s traumatic, and you’re likely to develop
symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder.
Yet now imagine
something even more horrifying. With no sudden warning, people around you
start falling ill. Soon, many of the sick begin to die. The government is
baffled and helpless. Panic drifts through the air. What do you do? What
can you do?
Well, in the
case of biological terrorism, as with the corona
virus (COVID-19) you’re confronted not just with actual death but also
with the continuing threat of mysterious death on a large, public scale. Such
a threat will trigger the deepest, ugliest, and most fearful
aspects of your psyche, and it will draw out the most ugly aspects of public
hysteria and panic.
And, in the same
way, shootings and bombings in schools, subways, trains, buses, markets, and
hotels pierce deeply into the same fears.
No government
is prepared for the mental health consequences of this sort of threat. And
no government ever will be.
And that’s
because the only treatment for such a trauma is
spiritual. Religious mystics have said for ages
that you only begin to live when you learn to die to
yourself in every moment. So when your life is motivated by pure faith,
hope, and love, when you are prepared to die in any moment, and when
death is no longer a fearful, ugly mystery, trauma has no place to sink its
claws in you.
“Wait a
minute,” you say, “the motto of this country is In God We
Trust. America is a spiritual
country.”
Well, we
can wonder about that. How can the pursuit of “happiness”—with
its narcissistic hunger for aggressive political hostility and sniping, angry
and hateful protest, violent video games, competitive sports, erotic
entertainment, obesity, drugs, gambling, social rudeness, exploitation of
the underprivileged, and abuse of the environment—be spiritual? Remember
that terrorists are angry with this country because of the happiness that
we pursue at the expense of charitable concern for our less fortunate
neighbors.[12]
So the trauma
of all terrorism is aimed at our deepest
vulnerability: the narcissistic
emptiness in our own hearts. |
The
Book
|
 Disasters and
Trauma 3E
by Raymond Lloyd richmond, Ph.D.
An event is traumatic because it disrupts your
previously secure sense of self. So when something disastrous occurs, the psychological
damage from the shattering of your illusions about life and identity may be more problematic
than any physical damage. But psychological and spiritual growth can arise from trauma.
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Notes
1.
Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal
and Social Psychology, 67, 371–378.
2. Jacques Lacan,
“The mirror stage” and “The subversion of the subject and
the dialectic of desire in the Freudian unconscious.” In Écrits:
A selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977).
3.
Hamama-Raz, Y., Solomon, Z., Cohen, A., & Laufer, A. (2008). PTSD symptoms,
forgiveness, and revenge among Israeli Palestinian and Jewish Adolescents.
Journal of Traumatic Stress, 21, 521–529. See p. 527:
“Thus, when inability to forgive
and the need to take vengeance are entrenched within the social texture,
their malignant influence over these youths’ mental health may be
intensified. Forgiveness, on the other hand, was found to mediate the
relationship between PTSD and hostility and to be associated with decreased
depression and anxiety.”
4. Linley, P. A., Joseph,
S. (2004). Positive change following trauma and adversity: A review. Journal
of Traumatic Stress, 17, 11–21.
5. Waysman, M.,
Schwarzwald, J., & Solomon, Z. (2001). Hardiness: An examination of its
relationship with positive and negative long term changes following trauma.
Journal of Traumatic Stress, 14, 531–547.
6. Tedeschi, R.
G., Calhoun, L. G. (1996). The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory: Measuring
the positive legacy of trauma. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 9,
455–471.
7. Foa, E. B., Keane,
T. M., & Friedman, M. J. (Eds.). (2000). Effective Treatments for
PTSD: Practice Guidelines from the International Society for Traumatic Stress
Studies. New York:
Guilford Publications.
8. McNally, R. J.
(1999). Research on Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
as a treatment for PTSD.
PTSD
Research Quarterly, 10, 1.
9. Friedman, M.
J. (2000). A guide to the literature on pharmacotherapy for PTSD.
PTSD
Research Quarterly, 11, 1.
10. Avery, A., King,
S., Bretherton, R., & Ørner, R. (1999). Deconstructing psychological
debriefing and the emergence of calls for evidence-based practice.
Traumatic
Stress Points, 13, 2.
11. Schnurr, P. P.
(1999). Control groups in psychotherapy research.
PTSD
Research Quarterly, 10, 1.
12. Those who
commit acts of terrorism also defile spirituality. This just goes to show
that there are no gray areas in regard to a genuine spiritual life: either
your life is grounded in true love, or it isn’t. Period. Those who advocate
terror and violence cut themselves off from any hope of healing the anger
that fuels their bitterness.
Additional
Resources
Emergency
Services:
Emergency Services from the center for Mental Health
Services.
Trauma & Child/Sexual Abuse
Survivors:
Adult Survivors
of Child Abuse (ACSA) is an innovative psychologically based support
group recovery program that offers workshops, peer-guided and professional-guided
support groups, and a guidebook.
The National Organization
on Male Sexual Victimization (NOMSV) “is dedicated to the
prevention, treatment, and elimination of male sexual victimization.”
Trauma/PTSD –
General:
The International Society
for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS) provides a forum for the sharing
of research, clinical strategies, public policy concerns, and theoretical
formulations on trauma in the United States and around the world through
its education and training programs and its various publications.
Suicide
and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) provides information about
suicidal thinking and PTSD.
Trauma Information
Pages provides a comprehensive listing of trauma support info,
disaster info, and related mental health issues on the Internet.
Related pages within A Guide to Psychology
and its Practice:
Anger
Autogenics
Training
Death—and the Seduction
of Despair
Forgiveness
Hypnosis and
“Negative” Hypnosis
Identity
Personality
Progressive Muscle
Relaxation
Questions and Answers
about Psychotherapy
Spiritual
Healing
Stress
Systematic
Desensitization
Terrorism and
Psychology
Trauma Support
Groups
The Unconscious
CONTACT ME
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