psychological trauma can be defined as a
negative event so overwhelming that we
cannot properly understand process or
move on from it but and this is the
devilish aspect of it nor can we
properly remember it or reflect upon its
nature and its effects on us
it is lodged within us but remains
hidden from us making its presence known
only via symptoms and pains altering our
sense of reality without alerting us to
its devilish subterranean operations
unsurprisingly a lot of psychological
trauma happens in childhood children are
especially vulnerable to being
traumatized because they are
congenitally unable to understand
themselves or the world very well and
have to rely to an uncommon degree on
parents who are frequently less than
mature patient or balanced a child may
for example be traumatized by a parent
who through no particular fault of their
own becomes heavily depressed
shortly after childbirth or a child may
be traumatized through exposure to a
parent's Titanic rage or violence oh
because the widest category of
psychological trauma is also the most
innocuous a child may be traumatized by
what psychologists term neglect which
might mean that at a critical age
between 0 & 5 and especially in the
first 18 months it was not properly
cherished soothed comforted and to use a
large but valuable word loved the
leading symptom of having been
traumatized is fear traumatized people
are above anything else scared they're
scared of getting close to others of
being abandoned of being humiliated and
disgraced a falling ill probably of
sexes of traveling of their bodies of
parties of key bits of their minds and
in the broad sense of the world the
legacy of having been traumatized is
dread an unnameable forgotten
unconscious memory of terror
and fear projected outwards into the
future as the psychoanalyst Donald
Winnicott wisely observed the
catastrophe that the traumatized fear
will happen has already happened that is
why in order to find out the gist of
what might have occurred to us long ago
we should ask ourselves not so much
about the past
we won't directly be able to remember it
anyway but about what we're afraid will
happen to us going forward our
apprehension holds the best clues as to
our history crucially and surprisingly
it can take a very long while before
traumatized people even realize they are
such a thing a leading consequence of
trauma is to have no active memory of
what was traumatic and therefore no
sense of how distorted one's picture of
reality actually now is traumatized
people don't go around thinking that
they are unnaturally scared but they
just think that everything is very
terrifying they don't notice their
appallingly low sense of self-worth they
just assume that everyone is likely to
mock and dislike them they don't realize
how uncomfortable intimacy is they
merely report not being happy in this or
that relationship in other words trauma
color's our view of reality but at the
same time prevents us from noticing the
extent to which we are peering at life
through a highly distorted lens only
with a lot of time luck self reflection
and perhaps the odd breakdown do
traumatized people come to a position
where they start to notice that the way
they think of the world isn't
necessarily the way it actually is it's
a vast step towards mental well-being to
be able to be usefully suspicious of
one's first impulses and to begin to
observe how much fear and self-hatred
one is bringing to situations that don't
truly warrant them processing trauma
usually works best when we can hook up
our own malfunctioning and distorted
brain to another more clear sighted one
and contest our readings of reality
against those of say a wise friend or a
psychotherapist we stand to recognize
that
perhaps to our great surprise we are not
inherently disgusting maybe not everyone
hates us maybe everything isn't headed
for disaster perhaps we're not in line
for a horrific punishment and crucially
if we do suffer reversals maybe we could
find our way out of them because we are
and this can come as a bit of a
revelation we are now adults not a nine
month old infant who underwent something
that altered their mind for decades
overcoming trauma is the work of years
but the beginning of the end starts with
a very small step coming to realize that
we might actually be traumatized and so
that the world may not be the dark
fearful overwhelming and dreadful place
we have come to assume it must be
our resilience cards are designed to
help us become tougher in the face of
adversity to learn more follow the link
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