Trauma

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.
~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsch

Some experiences in our lives serve to pull us ever further from our childhood innocence. Somehow we know to resist the pull and we know the value that is contained in our childish innocence. Innocence allows us to believe that the World is a safe place and everything is going to be ok. The storms of change buffet us hither and fro but our ability to stay on course and retain our childish sense of safety defines our ability to experience happiness and peace in adulthood. I was dragged, kicking and petulantly fighting, several yards away from my childhood beliefs this afternoon. 

I have avoided our broken and twisted divorce industry in the recent course my counseling practice. After working in the past with several families experiencing American style divorce, I grew weary of watching grownups, spouses and lawyers, having forgotten the tenderness of their own childhoods, batter each other relentlessly with emotional arrows. Some of the errant emotional arrows inevitably struck children in those divorcing families and those children’s pain was more than I cared to witness.

But in my work with a man who had been severely and repeatedly traumatized as a child, I came to be called upon to provide a deposition in his divorce case. I had recommended that he be allowed to visit unsupervised with his one and three year old girls, children he had bathed and fed and played with on a daily basis for all of their lives. His wife’s lawyer, known to use “scorched earth” tactics in divorce proceedings, questioned me for two hours. She asked every imaginable question in an attempt to demonstrate that I was incompetent or to manipulate me into contradicting myself, disagree with other experts in the case, or just wear me down so I would lose my composure and act out in some way that would reveal my biases and human frailties. Resisting her efforts for two hours was a traumatic experience for me. The child in me longed to be allowed to just go outside and play. 

The client in question had experienced much worse trauma as a child. He was exposed to repeated and extreme violence, allowed to bond with men who were then abruptly removed from his life, and worst of all, he was exposed to a woman who failed to provide him with the love and unconditional acceptance that all children require. As I reflected on the trauma I experienced today, armed with a fully developed adult brain and with the benefit of years of life experience, I shuddered to imagine how a child might adapt and survive much worse.

As I explained to the Slash and Burn attorney, children internalize trauma and blame themselves thereby gaining a measure of control over their experiences. If they can come to believe that their flaws and imperfections caused the trauma, then they can believe they can control their risk and feel safer. It works. The belief system successfully insulates their tender egos until time and experience allows for the development of a psychological defense system adequate for the job.

I try to imagine what trauma ten times worse than I experienced must be like for a child. It is little wonder that they adopt thoroughly irrational beliefs like “I am worthless” “Women always leave” “All men are monsters” “There are no grey areas, only Good and Evil.” It is easy to understand how these children suspend reason and cling to irrational attitudes and beliefs like a life raft in a stormy, turbulent sea. Our task as therapists is to challenge and encourage people to examine these beliefs, adopted in the stormy past, and replace them with more realistic beliefs. 

But when lawyers like Slash and Burn are in the world, doing their hurtful work, it is hard to ignore the intentional trauma that does in fact occur. I came home after the deposition and played a video game, watched a cartoon, and pushed the experience away. Until the middle of the night, when the dangerous storm I had endured pulled me from my sleep and danced before my mind. Writing about it helps, pushes it into the distance. For me the weather is calmer now, just a gentle rain. But somewhere a child huddles, waiting for the storm to pass, the lightning to stop, the monsters to recede back under the bed.

Dave Seward
October 2008