As an appointed trauma judge
Here's what I want to decree
Here’s a story, one that frequently happens to me:
A friend or colleague or someone hears my life story and acts as though I am the trauma police or trauma judge, that because I have endured two suicides in my immediate family, that their experiences must somehow be compared to mine.
They minimize their own experience, the pain and grief and then they say something along the lines of—
“But it’s not really trauma. I mean, it’s nothing compared to what happened to you.”
And then, I get very uncomfortable, sad, and frustrated with this idea, because—
First of all, though my name, Danielle, is Hebrew and it means “God is my judge,” I don’t really want to be the judge of people’s trauma.
It’s also a moot point anyway, because traumas are peoples’ individual and unique experiences. It happened to you but trauma is not the even in and of itself, instead, it is what happens within your body, as a result. A trauma means that you are unable to position it firmly in the past. As a result, you may have flashbacks or triggers that cause you to get nervous or afraid, to clam up, to have visceral and body reactions.
I appreciate that people say this in light of they can’t understand my experiences, and it is true, many cannot. In fact, I’ve met no one who can.
But—I also cannot understand your individual unique experiences. I have not been in your body and lived through them.
The duality, the paradox of listening and having empathy and holding space for other peoples’ trauma experiences is this—
We need to hold both things at the same time:
I can relate to your pain and trauma, as a human being. I listen. I care. I sympathize or empathize with you.
AND
I can also hold space and recognize differences because I’ve never endured what you have gone through.
Many of us don’t do this well. It seems many of us can’t. In that, we tend to do one OR the other. But not both.
Both are important. To validate our own experiences and trauma and to make space and care for others.
I guess if my experience is traumatic enough that others dismiss their own pain, grief and trauma, and I’m given this authority that I do not wish to have, this is what I would want to say in response.
This is how I would want to use these powers:
It doesn’t matter what my trauma is or happened to me. Your trauma is yours. It’s in your body. It’s through your experience. And only you know how it shaped and scarred you, and formed you and your nervous system. Only you can say whether this event keeps you stuck in moments in the past—one of the very definitions of trauma.
And only you can claim it for yourself or negate your own life experience and how it imprinted you on our body.
Traumas affect us so much. Our minds, psychology, nervous systems, our bodies.
It doesn’t matter what happened to me,
But as the appointed trauma judge, here’s what I would like to say—
What happened to YOU?
How did it change you?
How did it trigger you or make you have flashbacks?
How did it imprint on you? Change your nervous system?
And, more importantly—after acknowledging that—
Then you can get to nitty-gritty and the hard questions and work—
How can you heal from it? What do you need to do to help yourself?
Court dismissed.
