Post-traumatic potential

By Nancy Gahles

“If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth or power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility.”—Soren Kierkegaard

The recent event of a soccer team and their coach trapped in a cave in Thailand has us all riveted with the suspense of their rescue. We closely followed, day by day, the stellar team of Thai Navy Seals, experts, and volunteers on this mission. We, too, experienced the trials, the fears, and the suffering of the rescuers, the children, and the coach. By the act of witnessing, we lived the experience along with them.

One discussion among network TV anchors centered around the feelings of being a mother to one of the trapped children.

“I simply cannot imagine how I would feel if that were my son in there.”

“I don’t know how I would cope.”

“If I lost a child like that, I would never be the same.”

“Imagine the horror of those weakened children as they traverse miles of dangerous tunnels to make it out alive.”

In psychology circles, this is called vicarious traumatization. That is, by imagining, visualizing, or experiencing the trauma of someone else, you are traumatized as well. The term was coined specifically with reference to the experience of psychotherapists working with trauma survivor clients. Now, with the widespread and continuous coverage of traumatic events and the available content of the emotional aspects of the people involved, an empathetic relationship with the traumatized and their reports of traumatic experience develops. The viewer potentially experiences the same or similar form of countertransference that a therapist might from exposure to the traumatic material presented.

As you might expect, vicarious trauma can manifest in emotional disturbances in the feeling realm, such as sadness, irritability, mood swings, and grief. Understandably, those people with a history of personal traumas will be more vulnerable to more intense symptoms. These can include social withdrawal, aggression, and even violence.

Physically, one might even feel sick about it, manifesting in stomach pain or irritable bowel symptoms. Our trusted library of emotions and painful memories, stored in the limbic system, will kick in to replay the old painful incident and the body will respond with the protective nervous system responses of fight, flight, freeze, or faint.

Characteristics of these responses are seen in the keyed-up irritability and aggression of the fight response. The sympathetic stimulation of the adrenals causes the stress hormones to flood the organism with the mechanisms to enable flight from the threat. The heart races, respiration increases, muscle tension, cramping, and panic attacks can result. Fright accompanies this state with trembling, startling, hyperarousal and hypervigilance.

The freeze state subsequently ensues and, as we are “domesticated” after all, while watching the evening news we are not wont to run away from the house to escape the threat of the perceived traumatic event. Sitting on the edge of our chair then, we may experience the numbness, parasthesias, and/or anesthesia of various body parts. Frozen joints manifesting as arthritic flare-ups, bursitis, compression and entrapment syndromes all speak the body’s language of traumatization. The mental aspects of this state are seen in complaints of brain fog, decreased concentration, lack of focus, memory weakness, and word hunting.

Each person will experience vicarious traumatization as befits their personal experiences and susceptibility. I have seen many suffer with the faint response with actual spells of fainting ranging to a less severe faint response of dizziness, vertigo, weakness of body parts, difficulty with walking and balance, and shortness of breath.

We are living in a time of unparalleled ability to witness global horrific events. We are given minute details of school shootings, massacres, and violence on all levels. We witness, on a daily basis, man’s inhumanity to man. And it takes a toll. Slowly but surely, it seeps into our consciousness and we must experience it. Or, we suppress the emotions that threaten to unravel us. Suppression is an impossibility for surely it will appear somewhere else. Just like the arcade game, Whack-A-Mole. A mole pops up, you whack it down, and surely the next mole pops up. Ad Infinitum.

The poet Alexander Pope is famously quoted in a phrase from his An Essay on Man as saying, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast…”

 Hope, as a vehicle of possibilities, was immortalized by Emily Dickinson as well:

“Hope is the thing with feathers-

That perches in the soul-

And sings the tune without the words-

And never stops at all-“

The potential that exists after the trauma is the same potential that is inherent in every breath we take and with every beat of our heart. Each moment holds the potential, the possibility…of a new moment. Therein lies the key to success. Conscious awareness of the feelings that are evoked by the events witnessed or experienced, coupled with a deep listening to your body’s expression of that feeling and the thoughts that you tell yourself about that will bring about a revelation of the possibilities that you can begin to employ to restore equilibrium in your Self. Your whole self can be reintegrated. You can re-new your Self, imbue your Self with positive potential.

 It’s a heady concept but it isn’t a new one. Discussion of this conscious awareness, this higher consciousness that portends all the possibilities is called by the Jewish sage Maimonides “awakening from our sleep.” In The Wisdom of Maimonides, he says, “At times, revelation shines so brilliantly that we perceive it as clear as day. [But] then our nature and habit draw a veil over our perception, and we return to a darkness almost as dense as before. We are like those who, though beholding frequent flashes of lightning, still find themselves amid the thickest darkness of the night.”

Habituation, conditioned responses are created by our Selves by rumination. When we continue to dwell upon a past or painful experience we continue to breathe life into it in every moment. We fan the flames of suffering. The Buddha calls this the second arrow. The first arrow is that which struck us. The second arrow is the one we pick up and stick ourselves with again, perpetuating the suffering.

We do have the power to change this around. I call the strategy name it and reframe it. Call the suffering out and give it another context. One that feels better. One coping strategy I like to begin with is to create space for something else to happen. Focused, illuminated space. This is a directive in the Aramaic Lord’s Prayer as well. Nethqadash shmok, the second line in the Aramaic Lord’s Prayer calls us to create space, hallow a space for the sacred to dwell within us. The phrase calls us to soften the ground of our being, free us of the constrictions that keep us from allowing sacredness to enter our lives.

Through my experience treating numerous people suffering from post-Traumatic stress, I have found that the potential, the array of possibilities for healing arises from within when we cultivate gentleness with our Selves, create a space for Loving Kindness to arise, dwell in the silence, in calm abiding.

Christina Feldman in her book Silence, says:

“Profound stillness is not just the territory of the ancient mystics and sages. There are times when each of us needs to seclude ourselves and turn our attention within. We may not be drawn to the cloisters of a monastic cell or to a mountain cave, but we can learn the art of creating sacred spaces, times of listening, and moments of pause. This is where we rediscover ourselves, renew ourselves, and find the balance and wisdom to re-enter our life with a heart filled with compassion and balance.”

If, (being a possibility), one can be traumatized vicariously through holding images in your mind and body, then it would follow that one can likewise use the imagination to create new possibilities, endless potentials.