Let's call community violence what it is: Trauma

“One in three black male children born in the United States is expected to go to jail or prison at some point in his lifetime…. I work in very poor communities and one of the hardest things for me to see is children who are clearly traumatized, so clearly disrupted by a level of trauma and violence that it makes it impossible for them to conform to the behavioral expectations of institutions that refuse to see that disability,” he said. While most of these children live in violent communities, go to violent schools, routinely see and experience acts of violence, “when they act violently, we call them violent offenders as if somehow they are the aberration,” he said. To change the narrative, the word “trauma” needs to be applied more frequently, he said. “If we don’t use that word, we don’t use all of these resources and skills and interventions we know and have that can help people suffering from trauma recover,” he said.”
— Public interest lawyer and Equal Justice Initiative Executive Director Bryan Stevenson, JD

Changing the conversation about trauma means naming it--calling it what it is: living in violence is trauma, community violence, school violence, domestic violence. A basic definition of trauma is that it is an experience or event that overwhelms your capacities to depend upon or protect yourself. The hallmarks of trauma are feelings of terror, horror and helplessness. Community violence is understood to include direct personal exposure (happened to you), it also includes exposure through witnessing (saw it happen to someone else) and vicarious (know it happened to someone else). Community violence has been linked to PTSD in children and adolescents. This isn’t just a research statistic—this is a serious blow to the developmental process of  thousands of our young people. Trauma and PTSD affects our memory, our self-regulation, our relationships. It affects our ability to learn, to make decisions, to calm down, to seek out support. Trauma shatters trust and social fabrics—the two things most needed for healing and growth. While most people associate community violence with cities, there are many rural communities who also struggle with community violence and domestic violence.

 We need to change the conversation—change the narrative as Stevenson says—to trauma. Living everyday in a violent community, witnessing, experiencing, fearing, violence is repeated trauma. Trauma can be healed. Trauma can be understood. There are ways back from trauma—and the responses to trauma are universally human.

 Changing the conversation isn’t semantic. It is a radical act because if you acknowledge the trauma you will need to acknowledge the context. It is the complexity of this issue that makes it so hard to slow down and call it what it is: trauma. Trauma makes us feel the responsibility that we have. Trauma reminds us that this is a problem of people—people who are getting hurt. It will require us all to see the impact of historical trauma and how it still plays out, and it will require us to see how current structures are supporting the continuation of violence and trauma. It will require us to start where we are wherever violence is present—and that can feel like a daunting task. It is a daunting task because we can’t heal the trauma simply by healing one child at a time: we have to heal our communities—and we need to see that all communities who struggle with violence and trauma are OUR communities.  Changing the conversation is brave. Healing from trauma is brave.  This week --instead of saying 'violence'-- say 'trauma.' Let's change the conversation one word at a time and honor their struggle.

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2014

4000 Really Difficult Steps to Change

4000 Really Difficult Steps to Change was always my fantasy title for a book on healing from long term trauma. This would at least more accurately describe the experience of healing. Our world, especially the internet blog and the self help world , while trying to be helpful, has made it seem like the path to growth and healing is easy; everything is just 3 Easy Steps, or 7 Simple Slogans away from total cure or complete happiness. If it doesn’t work, well, that’s because you did it wrong, you didn’t try hard enough, or you don’t have enough willpower. 

First ‘3 easy steps’ model implies that the process can be done alone in the do-it-yourself model so popular nowadays. But, healing from long term trauma is not a solitary activity. No one heals alone. Trauma shatters. And much of what it shatters are the connections in our world—between people and within communities. Trauma shatters trust and trust must be healed through relationship. In fact, for most things that we need to learn to truly grow, we need supportive relationships as learning environments. I’m not entirely sure where our love affair for ‘self-help’ came from, but there is an irony in the views we have of self help for medical problems and mental health problems. If you broke your leg, refused medical care and a cast, and opted, instead, to hop around and walk on the broken leg anyway—you would get called ‘crazy.’ Your ability to make sound judgments would be questioned. You would, ironically, get hauled in for psychological help. 

    Yet when you are psychologically run over by a car—breaking multiple psychic bones, and ‘walk on the broken bones anyway’ – you will get a pat on the back and told that you have “a strong character.” Yet in most cases, this is exactly what happened. In situations of long term trauma, you were hurt badly, and not taken care of. You had to let everything heal as it was and work around it, trying to hide your limp. Now its time to go back and do the work of healing. This is difficult work. 

    This brings us to the second and most difficult part of the ‘3 easy steps’ view of healing— it’s not 3 steps and it’s not easy. Healing from long term trauma, like developmental growth, happens in cycles over time. No one likes to hear that things take a long time, it feels virtually ‘un-American’ to say that—but really, if it really was 3 easy steps—wouldn’t most people have done it already? But here’s the thing: it’s not that there’s no way forward, it’s just that it is a long way forward. But it is often made more difficult for people who are trying to heal when they are told the entire time that it should be going faster, or should be less difficult. But it is a very worthwhile journey, these 4000 steps…

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2014

Take two poems and call me in the morning

As a psychologist I don't get to write prescriptions, but if I could, I would most often write them for poems. The language of healing is the language of emotions. And the language of emotions is a hard one for most people to learn. As someone who teaches emotional intelligence in the corporate world, I can tell you that being able to sense your emotion, name it, and then be able to talk about it —and manage it—is a skill that everyone is working on. And when you have lived through long term trauma, this skill is even harder. 

But once you can identify the feeling and want to talk about it, words can fail. I have found that the words often just feel too small for the feeling you are having—or somehow the words don’t connect to the feeling—it feels hollow. But one place that feelings learn to connect to words, and images and stories is poems. Poetry is the intersection of all things emotional. Poems allow your brain to begin to hold the images, feelings, and words in one place, at the same time, without the pressure of a full narrative. 

Poetry?! I hear you saying…I know poems may not seem macho enough for some of you, but that’s because you haven’t met the right poets. You need to meet David Whyte. He’s a poet who, if you saw him, you could say: Man, that guy could kick my ass. Actually, he doesn't need to lay a hand on you-- the blows come anyway. His words help lost parts of yourself find each other. His words can give you the capacity to capture your courage to heal again. In this blog I will often bring in poems and pieces of poems—they are the often the best first start to the language of healing and the practice of living. Poems are invitations to the journey that so many have dared to make—the journey of loss and the journey of reconnecting with life. When you read a poem you join an immense group of fellow pilgrims. You are not alone in your work, in your healing. So in order to heal you can start with this poem—an invitation to start, to find your voice and your courage. David Whyte’s poem Start Close In ~ Here's the first stanza, and the poem read by the author below.

Start close in,

don’t take the second step

or the third,

start with the first

thing

close in,

the step

you don’t want to take.

David's books are available here: Most are available on kindle as well. 

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2014

All trauma is not the same

We talk about and treat trauma as one thing. As if it were like other diseases that we believe to have one origin or one set of symptoms. But psychological trauma is not one thing. When a traumatic event happens once, as in a car accident or a gunshot wound, the normal system of psychological defenses is temporarily overwhelmed. Like water breaking through a levee during a great flood, your body is flooded with adrenaline in such large amounts that the system actually builds new receptors to take in that extra adrenaline.⁠1

When the adrenaline levels recede, the extra receptors create an ultra-sensitive environment where the smallest amount of adrenaline is immediately picked up by the brain and nervous system—producing what is known as the ‘startle response.’ In short term trauma, the system is overwhelmed, and the effect is an over-sensitized system. It is as if the body becomes allergic to anything that might remind itself of the trauma—any loud noise, any fast motion. The psychological and physical after effects of a one time trauma, if they persist for at least a month, are diagnostically called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

PTSD is defined by a set of symptoms: startle response, flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance, difficulty eating, difficulty sleeping, difficulty concentrating, or persistent avoidance of anything that reminds the person of the traumatic event.⁠2 PTSD sometimes describes the aftereffects of short term trauma, but something it never seems to capture is the full picture of long term trauma. A soldier in Edward Tick’s War and the Soul states, “PTSD is a “name drained of both poetry and blame.” The soldier he quotes prefers soldier’s heart because it is a ‘disorder of warriors, not men and women who were weak and cowardly but….who followed orders and who at a young age put their feelings aside and performed unimaginable tasks…PTSD is a disorder of a good warrior.⁠3 A strong reaction to trauma is the normal response, and frequency and duration of trauma is the single greatest predictor of PTSD symptoms. 

A single terrifying event can be traumatic. How then can we understand the experience of multiple terrifying events? A car accident that lasts only 45 seconds can trigger all the symptoms of PTSD and require significant psychological treatment. So, what happens when trauma gets repeated relentlessly? What happens when it is not one frightening event, but a frightening event every night for years? When there is a one-time trauma, the system gets caught ‘off guard’ and overwhelmed. But imagine how exhausting it would be to get ‘caught off-guard’ and overwhelmed every night for most of a childhood, or ten years of war? For better or worse, the human body and brain are designed for efficiency and survival. And survival means finding the most efficient and protective way to cope.

    Understanding healing from trauma means respecting and honoring the ways we learned to cope—the ways we learned to protect ourselves. These were crucial and brilliant strategies that got us through the worst and gave us the chance to be in the position we are now—in a position to heal from it. Take some time today to reflect on the protections that you used to survive. Reflect on them and thank them for their loyal service to you.

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2014

1 Amy Banks, Stone Center Writing.

2 DSM

3 Eward Tick War and the Soul. p. 100.