I was listening to a podcast today that really has given me pause. It has helped me to reframe, reshape, and broaden how I think about trauma: what it is, how we deal with it, and how we work our way back from it.
Ester Perel, psychoanalyst, on trauma (when asked how those who have experienced trauma make it back to living and experiencing life):
“One of the most factors is the connection with others, others who went through the same things, or others who care about it. Trauma is a severing of the connection, of the social thread. Trauma leaves you isolated. Trauma leaves you think that it has only happened to you, that you are alone. Or, trauma leaves you feeling ashamed and when you’re ashamed, you want to hide. Because what’s wrong with me?
So, any of the forms of which people come together and they come together, to sing, to wail, to read, to pray, to light candles, to hold vigil, to tell stories, to listen to each other, to relate, all of that—I think—is fundamentally the most important thing.
It’s very different from what we do in therapy, actually. It’s people with whom you don’t have to tell all the stories because they can’t have known, because they went through the same and then you can actually just cook together, or eat together, or be quiet together.
But, fundamentally, what brings us back from trauma is the re-connecting with others in a meaningful way, that includes, what Victor Frankl calls, tragic optimism. I went through all of this but it wasn’t for nothing. I did something with it. It gave me the energy, like what it is it about people who forge ahead in adversity? I didn’t suffer for nothing. I am going to do something with this. I’m going to make it so it doesn’t happen to somebody else. Or, it becomes a cause that pushes me rather than the thing that crushes me.”
She also said:
“Trauma is not the event. Trauma is how we react to certain things that have happened to us. But the other part that is often not included that I highly emphasize from the work and from the observations is the re-connecting with…I use the word…pleasure.
To experience pleasure you need to experience self-worth, deserving. I deserve to feel good. I deserve to eat something that I enjoy or to wear something that I enjoy or to be touched in a way that feels really nice and not creepy and hurtful. I deserve.
In fact pleasure, joy, they come on the heels of feeling desirable, loveable, attractive, wanted, deserving, self-worth. That whole group. When you just go back to the trauma all the time, you don’t give yourself experiences of worthiness.”
I know that quote is long, but it articulates so well why I started writing about my suicide survivorship experiences. It hits at the underlying issues, working my way back to connection with others, to bring myself back to life from the trauma (of grief, of family’s death, of suicides). I looked for that connection. I didn’t find it, so I felt the need to share, to hold space and support others who may find themselves in a similar place, hoping to work their way back as well.
It is my tragic optimism, indeed. It is my “I am going to do something with this.”
God, yes, Trauma does leave you feeling isolated, and with questions of “why me.” And when your trauma does not have many others who have experienced and survived the same thing—multiple suicides in a family or from those close to you, that feeling, that need to desperately reach out, to connect, to others, is so strong. Yes, it is there.
I take heart especially in the very important—but perhaps often overlooked point—
(Read as: too often overlooked by me.)
Trauma is not the event, it is your reaction to the event.
This explains so well why for some people an event can be traumatic, and for others, they may breeze through it, un-traumatized.
But this point is also empowering, because if trauma is your reaction to the event, than you are not a victim to that. You have a choice in how you choose to continue to react to the event.
At least I am going to take that away from this. That helps me. The empowerment, the agency, that that affords.
Here’s to connecting and finding our way back to life from trauma—of whatever kind—folks.