Transcriber: Robert Tucker Reviewer: Capa Girl
I am a clinical psychologist and my specialty is in the field of trauma,
and post-traumatic stress disorder.
I spend my days listening to people's stories
about the horrors they have experienced and attempt to support them
in their efforts to recover from these events.
I'm often asked by people how I can do this work,
the prevailing assumption tending to be
that the work of listening to trauma would in itself be traumatic.
I no doubt that started from this position about 15 years ago,
when I started work in this realm.
My first job in the industry involved working with teenage girls
who were involved in the sex trade in some way.
And I entered this position expecting to be horrified by the work
and the stories I would hear.
The reality is that I often was
and stunned by the atrocities I would hear that had been committed.
But that wasn't the preeminent impression that formed
during my tenure at the organization and it hasn't been what stayed with me
through the years since I've developed my skill in this field.
What struck me most then, that has endured,
is the drive to not only survive, but thrive,
I have witnessed in the clients with whom I worked.
My expectation was that the clientele with whom I worked
would have been damaged beyond repair
and broken by the experiences they had endured in their young lives.
That this wasn't the case gave me pause
and my reflections on why this expectation was not met
has influenced my work and reflections in this area ever since
and continues in the work I do today.
My job these days has me working in government health care
with soldiers, veterans and RCMP officers,
who have been exposed to traumatic events secondary to their service.
The clients who visit our clinic range in age
from young soldiers who have recently deployed and returned from Afghanistan
to elderly folks who served in Korea and World War II,
not to mention the RCMP officers
who have served and protected this country from sea to sea.
I also spend time in a private setting seeing civilians
who have experienced a range of troubling and traumatic events,
and I hope to share with you today
some of the things I've learned in this work,
having come to understand certain significant things about human nature
and the human experience in helping those to whom the unthinkable has happened.
So I'll start today by discussing the nature of trauma and its effects.
One of the things I wrestled with in creating this talk
was how much to emphasize one aspect of my work over another.
And in the debate I had with myself I decided to focus on
that which is relevant to the collective
rather than potentially to a more narrow subgroup.
And my decision to do so was motivated by an important piece of knowledge
I have gathered in this work, and that is, that trauma is a great equalizer.
It cuts across socioeconomic strata, it doesn't care about gender,
or ethnicity, religion or class; no one is immune to the possibility
of experiencing something horrific or shattering.
And while that is potentially a sobering thought,
I think awareness of this fact can be liberating
if one can allow oneself to accept it and its significance --
and I'll speak more to that point in just a moment.
Before doing so, I'd like to briefly outline
some of the things I've learned about trauma
and its effects, and will begin to do so by describing a scene to you,
to set the stage for the ideas I'd like to convey.
So imagine if you will a father, he's middle-aged, of middle-income,
and like many fathers living in the world today
he has to work away from his family for stretches of time
as he makes more money working in remote communities
than he could in the town in which they live.
The particular camp in which he stays while working away
has an on-site fitness facility.
And so on this particular Saturday afternoon
he is just stepping outside to return to his room after finishing a work out
and he begins to notice that the people he passes are giving him
what he perceives are strange looks.
Initially he brushes this off, admonishing himself for being paranoid,
and then he hears his name called over the camp paging system
with a request that he present to the administration office.
His heart begins to race, he begins to sweat,
a feeling of dread begins to overtake him.
He cannot explain why this reaction is occurring,
he only knows that he believes something awful is about to happen.
And it turns out he was right.
On presenting to the administration office he is informed by the supervisor on duty
that there has been an accident.
His wife and children were on a road trip north to visit family
and their vehicle was struck.
His wife and youngest two children survived,
and his eldest did not.
Trauma has the effect of organizing the lives of trauma survivors
into life pre-trauma and life post-trauma.
Life post-trauma involves knowing things
that perhaps before were not known at all
or only minimally known or acknowledged.
Life post-trauma means having come into contact
with the knowledge of certain things, like brutality,
that once having contacted or experience can no longer be ignored or denied.
The experience I just described was equivalent to a tectonic shift
for the individual to whom it occurred.
If the car crash hadn't occurred, that Saturday afternoon
would have faded into irrelevancy
with all of the other Saturday afternoons that had come before.
In the face of having had this accident
and having to contend with the devastation that occurred,
life for this person was reorganized into life before that Saturday afternoon
and everything that has occurred since.
And what commonly begins to happen to people,
if left to recover from this type of event on their own,
is that they understandably try to create distance
between themselves and the experience of the events.
To experience something like I described,
is to come into contact with unparalleled psychological and emotional pain,
and much like pulling away from a burner on the stove,
the impulse is to get away from that source of the pain.
Unfortunately, however, separating ourselves from our internal experience
is not as cut-and-dried as pulling away from a burner on the stove.
And what starts to happen to people, as they attempt to divorce themselves
from emotional pain, is profound alienation,
from themselves, their thoughts and feelings, and from others.
And predictably when self and other alienation occurs, symptoms develop.
Mood states shift, pervasive avoidance develops
and quality of life plummets, emotional numbing occurs.
Human beings are intrinsically social creatures,
and being deprived of emotional contact and connection with self and other,
is life-threatening and it's important to note the viciousness of this cycle.
The urge to pull away and avoid is typically driven by the enormity of pain
experienced by the individual who has been traumatized.
And the pulling away is usually employed to prevent further pain from occurring,
but the process of becoming estranged from oneself and from others
actually creates more of the pain and disillusionment
that was being avoided in the first place.
And on the cycle continues.
And to speak to this point in a slightly different way,
trauma like that which can occur on a field of battle
or the experience of a sexual assault or a violent crime,
fundamentally involves disconnection.
What people are forced to wrestle with in the aftermath of a traumatic event,
is how to reconstruct a life and a world view,
when what used to be there has been shattered.
Following trauma, the ability to take for granted
what was once was so easily assumed, is usually lost.
One of the most critical assumptions that is often lost is around control,
and when people develop PTSD following exposure to trauma,
there will inevitably be dysfunctional attempts to reassert a sense of control,
which in reality perpetuates the problem.
In my work, by the time people present for treatment,
there is typically profound disconnection and withdrawal that has occurred.
It is typically the norm, that in an attempt
to manage the painful thoughts and feelings,
that are left in the wake of a traumatic event,
people will have narrowed the range of their existence.
This frequently means that people rarely leave the house,
they will have often lost contact with friends,
and sometimes even all of their family members;
the thinking being, if I control my world in this way,
I will be physically and emotionally safe. What happens though
is that the outside world takes on a property
of being extremely dangerous and out of control.
And this fosters additional disconnection and retreat,
further strengthening that pattern of pain and alienation I mentioned a moment ago.
The message I'd like you to take away from what I've just presented,
is that the urge to pull away from pain is instinctual;
and is what is referred to as a normal reaction to abnormal events.
And in understanding what is normative or predictable following trauma,
the stage is set to explore what becomes necessary in the process of recovery.
As far as I've observed, the antidote to the struggle I've described
rests with re-engagement.
My work with people involves helping them to begin to take steps to re-engage,
with themselves and the internal world of thoughts and feelings
and with those around them,
and it is in this process of re-engagement that healing starts to occur.
And just a note or two on how I've seen this recovery occur.
What I've experienced in my work is that there is incredible curative power
in our relationships and in our ability to attach and connect with each other.
The impact of relationships on healing has been researched extensively
and my anecdotal experience has been supported
in research studies time and again.
What this means is, that in examining how it is that people get better,
it is not the application of anyone specific technique
that seems to make the difference,
rather healing happens in the context of a connection with another human being,
when qualities of safety, empathy and genuine understanding are present.
In fact therapy will not be successful,
regardless of the expertise of the clinician
in delivering any one intervention,
if the therapeutic relationship is not present.
So what the evidence suggests then, is that people can endure
and recover from the most horrific of experiences,
provided they have even one person whom they can attach to
and connect with on an emotional level.
And while crucially important to the world of therapy,
this remains a life lesson to me
and a guiding principle about how I believe we should walk through life.
The capacity for people to endure and remain resilient
to the most horrific experiences,
like torture or violent assault or the grief of losing a child,
is mitigated by the human connections they have at the time of such events
and in their aftermath.
So how does this all relate to the theme of today's event
and how does this apply to communities at large and the individuals living in them?
I have a few takeaway lessons I've gleaned from my work I keep on hand
I'd like to now share with you in the hopes that they resonate.
One of these is, that depending on the circumstances,
anyone is capable of anything.
I think this is a crucial piece of knowledge to hold
if there is true intention to engage emphatically with our fellows.
It is easy to cast off those who experience or perpetrate horrific things
as being unlike us or different in some way.
And my worry is that if we operate from that standpoint,
we will always be operating from a place of disconnection and isolation.
Empathy entails putting oneself in the shoes of another,
and I think it's important that we all challenge ourselves
to cultivate this ability, as given the right circumstances
or the right conditions we are all capable of anything.
A second takeaway lesson is the importance of struggle and pain
to the development of character.
I often describe the process of recovery I observe in my clients
as transformational, and equivalent in many ways
to the evolution of caterpillar into butterfly.
It is the struggle to re-emerge that is crucial in the process of transformation;
without the struggle the new entity will not appear.
And this highlights to me the importance
of struggle and difficulty in the development of character,
and how oftentimes something more meaningful
and potentially beautiful can be obtained
if achieving it involves challenge and struggle.
I believe there's a great cost
to the character of human beings if things are achieved too easily.
And to carry this point out somewhat further,
I think it's important for individuals and communities
to continually examine the beliefs that are collectively held.
In the last century western cultures appear to be have more and more adopted
what has been referred to as "the happiness myth".
The idea inherent in this myth
is that if we are not happy all the time, something is wrong.
And if this is the belief you can imagine the terrible dilemma
faced by anyone who goes through a difficult time
or who endures a traumatic event.
The message inherent in this is that
if you are not happy there is something wrong with you,
and if we accept this belief or myth out of hand
without examining its implications,
we're at significant risk of fostering the self and other alienation
I referred to a moment ago.
The belief that happiness or satisfaction must always be present,
and if it is not, that says something negative about ourselves,
will encourage us to deny or avoid any internal experience that runs counter
and this places individuals and communities
at much greater risk for suffering if and when a traumatic event comes along.
My wish is that on individual and community levels,
we would all strive more and more for whole integration,
such that our ability to experience fear or sadness or uncertainty
can be welcomed as much as our ability to experience happiness,
pride or satisfaction.
If, on a day-to-day basis,
we as individuals and as members participating in our communities
are better able to operate from a position
where all experience is valued, I think we will be healthier,
and better able to address the challenges in our lives
from a place of being willing and able
to have an experience whatever those challenges should entail.
I'll leave you with one of the most difficult lessons
I've taken away from my work thus far,
and that is, we do not have control over everything,
bad things do happen to good people,
and there's lots that happens in our societies that isn't fair.
And it's a challenge sometimes to have to hold that knowledge
and choose to participate in this world all the same.
But as I presented,
the cost of avoiding or denying this fact is too high, in my opinion,
for the potential such denial can have
on our connections to ourselves and to each other.
Thank you very much for letting me speak to you today.
(Applause)