Trauma is not about reliving

from our own choice

Dr. van de Kolk who helped to get PTSD classified as a condition, stated that:

“Trauma treatment is not about telling stories about the past.

Trauma treatment is about helping people to be here now, to tolerate what they feel in the present.”

I deeply believe—to my core—that people need to understand this because those have experience capital T-trauma (or hard enough experiences to warrant being called trauma) or who have PTSD, we have a hard time existing solely in the present. Especially without treatment, especially when the trauma is fresh and unprocessed. One thing can take us right back to that moment.

For me, it was gunshot wounds to the head, especially self-inflicted ones. Shown in movies and tv shows that would transport me. (I prefer that word over “trigger” because it more adequately describes my experiences.)

I also read this and believe it in tandem:

“I believe that our deepest experiences and truths are subjective - meaning they are not only unverifiable but they are core to the essence of who we are.

They are the most intimate things that we can share; they are worthy of our deepest love.”

~David Bedrick

I set with this because that term—subjective—in academics is often regarded as less reliable, lesser, weaker, inferior to objective in writing, in theory, whatever.

I tend to think objectivity in many areas is not possible—this objective, distant, empirical scientific way of approaching life….at least within the humanities and liberal arts that I do.

But if we say this then we get to try to minimize bodies and individuals’ experiences and what right-wing often calls “identity politics.”

The subjective always matters, it just becomes who we listen to.

As it relates to trauma, it is important to understand this because we would do better to support people traumatized to hold space for whatever trauma they endured without trying to evaluate it as being deemed worthy to constitute trauma since it was “traumatic enough” by someone on the outside.

Only the person who experienced it00whatever ‘it’ is— knows how this traumatic event rests and dwells within the body. And how it changes and challenges the way that that person functions day to day.

I feel very strongly about this because as someone who lived with a heightened sense of the fight or flight hormone, coristol in my system, (for those who don’t know what I mean, it’s like adrenaline and caffeine surges all the time for no reason…making it hard to relax and sleep), feeling hyperalert and jumpy, I know what it’s like to have to live in a state where your body and mind betray you. I knew this from depression and anxiety, first, but then, the PTSD, it only made it worse.

We don’t get to say what is trauma enough for another. We don’t get to minimize someone’s experiences and stories as just subjective.

It’s all we are. It’s what makes us human.