Mark is located in Lee County, Florida and is doing some amazing work. So please enjoy his take on RRT and stop by his blog: MarkChidley.com
(Note: Please be advised some of the descriptions in this article
are graphic and may be of a disturbing nature to the reader. Also,
situations have been combined or altered, and names omitted, so
as to not identify any particular person. )
This piece reviews what many therapists already know. That is the
fact that traumatic experiences may not always involve the
imminent threat of death or dismemberment, nor even horror and
helplessness, in the sense of the classic definitions of PTSD.
Furthermore, such experiences may not be all that uncommon.
Many persons suffer special kinds of trauma arising from
childhood sexual abuse which disrupts development and leads to
what has been called complex posttraumatic stress disorder (Chu,
J.A. 1998. Rebuilding shattered lives: the responsible treatment
of complex posttraumatic and dissociative disorders. New York.
Wiley.) Others go through what has been termed DES, disorders
of extreme stress, which are characterized by being trapped in a
situation of chronic dysfunction where one’s own needs for safety
and security go unmet sometimes for years. Still others go
through what Susan Johnson and others are calling attachment
injuries (Johnson, S.M. et al. 2001. Attachment injuries in couples
relationships: a new perspective on impasse in couples therapy.
Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 23, 135-152.) where the
person suffers a sense of profound abandonment from an
attachment figure in a situation of urgent need.
The point being, trauma spreads out far beyond experiences of
overt physical threat, violence, or even emotional horror or
helplessness. What happened to the person may be more on the
level of identity and meaning than what happened physically.
Indeed, in many cases the person was never actually touched, and
yet for them their world shifted and neither their view of the
world or themselves would ever be the same again. This is
important because meanings affecting identity are often subtle
and nuanced, not always what they would seem on face value. The
temptation is always there to try to understand someone else in
terms of how one would feel in a similar situation instead of how
it was for them, thereby misreading the meaning and missing a
chance for connection. And in the minimizing narrative of an
adult survivor, the ongoing impact may be downplayed or
disguised. What he or she may not tell you is that they are still
having some of the sequela of trauma-- intrusive re-experiencing,
avoidance and numbing, hyperarousal--when coping with day to
day life. Below are a few representative examples of such trauma
arranged into categories I’ve noticed over time. There could
doubtless be other categories added to this list.
Experiences of Humiliation
Many of us have heard clients tell of a moment of vulnerability or
childhood incompetence and being humiliated in that moment .
Wetting one’s pants in school, being the butt of jokes on the
school bus, having a teacher single one out in a demeaning way, or
being suddenly in the wrong viz. a viz. adult systems, as in church.
One adult client remembered being suspended from an important
athletic competition because of a suspected rules infraction,
something due to an unfortunate oversight by his coach. He
remembered the devastating experience of having several
hundred people in a gymnasium whispering and pointing at him,
while all the action stopped and tournament officials tried to
figure out what to do. “It’s like they were calling me a cheater in
the sport I loved and in which I’d never done anything wrong.”
Experiences of Abandonment and Rejection
One lady remembered coming into her kitchen as a 9 year old. “I
came home from school one day with a problem with my
homework and told my step mom I needed her help. She was
already overwhelmed with the other kids and my alcoholic dad.
She just wheeled on me and said, ‘You need, you need, all’s you
ever do is need. Well, I cant take care of you right now. Why dont
you just leave me alone. Why don't you just disappear!’” It was a
phrase that had affected her for many years. Another client
remembers her alcoholic mom storming out of the bedroom with
her bags packed, declaring the client could fix the dinner because
she, the mom, was not going to do it anymore. Stunned, the girl
watched her mom go down the apartment stairs and jump into a
cab. She remembered seeing herself, as if from a distance,
climbing up to the top shelf for a box of stovetop macaroni, and at
the age of 7 reading the instructions and cooking dinner for
herself and her siblings. “That was the last time I ever saw my
mom,” she said some 33 years later.
Experiences of Covert Sexual Abuse
Perhaps more than any other writer, Pia Mellody (Facing
codependence, 1989.) has described the more subtle forms of
childhood sexual abuse and classified them. In covert as opposed
to overt abuse, the child does not have to be touched or physically
violated, but is exposed to or made the unwilling recipient of
someone else’s sexual activities. The term covert signals it is even
less likely to be identified or detected as abuse. An example of
covert explicit abuse is a client whose brother would come into the
bathroom repeatedly while she was in the tub as a little girl. He
would sneak into the bathroom, expose himself, and masturbate
while she sat frozen in the tub. In covert implicit abuse, children
are made parties to sexual activity indirectly, at an inappropriate
age and in an inappropriate way. A woman remembered painfully
how an adult neighbor would confide to her the particulars of his
sexual life, what he liked done and how he liked it done. A man
remembered his uncle taking him along on runs to whorehouses
in rural Oklahoma. The eight year old boy would sit in the kitchen
of a prostitute’s cabin, eating his peanut butter sandwich, while
his uncle and the woman’s moaning could be heard from behind
the closed bedroom door just a few feet away.
Experiences of Implied Violence
One doesn’t have to be hit or beat to be affected by violence. One
woman was selected to be the observer as her alcoholic father
would stage punching matches between her brothers. She was
forced to look on as one brother would beat down the other to
escape the greater threat of the father’s violence crashing down on
any unwilling contestants. She exclaimed, “It was like the Roman
Coliseum, and it took place on my living room rug every Friday
night!” Another woman remembered being left alone with her
disturbed cousins while they played a game of thrusting a butcher
knife blade under her bedroom door. They knew she often sat
behind her door crying, and that they could miss her by watching
her shadow under the door. Nevertheless, their willingness to
stalk and terrorize her by staging a show of implied violence had
left a deep mark.
Experiences of Demolished Values or Vulnerability
Many people have the innocence of their values or their childhood
sensitivities taken from them in a way that is traumatic. Having
lived near rural Midwestern farmlands, I remember more than
one client tell of witnessing an animal's untimely death or an
adult family member’s cruelty. Seeing a family pet run over in the
driveway, or seeing wildlife slaughtered out of a pickup truck
window, for no good reason other than the shooter wanted to kill
something, can have a profound effect on a child. And the effect
can be anchored at various levels--the abruptness and
unexpectedness of the act, the dying gasps of an animal as its eyes
glaze over, the stark brutality and indifference demonstrated by
an attachment figure, and the inference that small and defenseless
life forms are dispensable. Children are vulnerable and that
vulnerability can be demolished at any age. One woman told me of
the day her mother selected her, at 15, to be the caregiver for a
sick relative. Her life changed in a heartbeat, and there was
thereafter no room for a social life or education. She got to sit on
the sidelines and watch her sister have a normal adolescence and
go on to college. Now in her late 20‘s and finally rebuilding her
life, but struggling with depression, she recounted the sense of
betrayal and the shame of being the Cinderella figure, the one
whose capacities were deemed so unpromising that her future
could be easily sacrificed by her parent. It was a self-definition
that had been haunting her.
Trauma, for the survivor, is never spelled with a small “t”. But if
we are listening only for certain types of experiences or
experiences of a certain magnitude, like war, rape, or a plane
crash, we can miss what is real for the client. As a Rapid Trauma
Resolution therapist, I was also taught that part of what makes
trauma "hang" in a timeless limbo is the mind's tendency to make
matters worse by taking an already negative event and attaching
meanings of even greater negation or diminishment of personal
worth. All of this can still be driving symptoms, warping beliefs
about self and world, and troubling relationships. I am grateful for
clients who have taught me what it’s like to be suddenly without
connection when you need it most or suddenly exposed to the
pathology in another when you weren’t prepared for it. I feel it is
crucial to build a solid connection with clients early so that my
attention is easily drawn to what still has to be cleared for that
person to regain fullness of life and functioning. And so doing, I feel more satisfied in serving those whose trauma may have otherwise continued to affect them.
It's great to hear that I'm not the only one practicing Rapid Resolution Therapy that feels very satisfied with the job that I do!
Thanks Mark!!
Be well, Be happy-Tara S. Dickherber, M.Ed, CPC
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