90. About trauma

What is trauma? What does it mean when we say a person has been traumatized?

Well, people feel psychologically overwhelmed, convinced they are not able to physically escape a situation, feel their life is threatened and they feel helpless. They think the situation is beyond their control.

Different types of trauma

1     Intentional trauma à when a person is abused, tortured, kidnapped, in the midst of war, neglected, abandoned, assaulted, hurt by a terrorist attack or riots

2    Unintentional trauma à events such as accidents – industrial, car, train, plane, nuclear disaster, building collapse, or even surgical damage to the body or loss of a body part

3    Natural trauma à such as tornadoes, earthquakes, flood, avalanche, drought, animal attack, sudden life-threatening illness, or child suddenly dies

The most common type of trauma that causes multiple personality is abuse.

That abuse can be in the form of physical abuse (beatings, punching, hitting, etc), sexual abuse (touching, fondling, exposing, even talking about sex in an inappropriate way and/or with an inappropriate person such as a child), emotional/psychological abuse (name-calling, put-downs, withholding affection, manipulation, blaming victim, forcing victim to abuse others so they feel responsible and won’t tell), or spiritual abuse (ritual abuse is especially good at this as it may “mock” religion, reverse what is good and what is evil, the denial of freedom of thought can be spiritual as well as psychological, Satanism)

Research suggests that trauma can actually change the structure of the brain. It can change how a person sees the world and themselves.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

An often delayed response to a traumatic situation. The symptoms usually develop within the first 3 months after the trauma but it may not develop for months or even years. It may also subside then reoccur later in life.

The three main symptoms are:

-    hyperarousal – being on guard and overly alert all the time which can lead to irritability or sudden anger, difficulty sleeping, lack of concentration, being easily startled

-    intrusions – reliving the event either through recurring nightmares or other intrusive images (called flashbacks)

-    avoidance – avoiding such things as certain places, people, or activities because they remind the person of the traumatic event

Other symptoms are:

-    feeling emotionally numb or overly emotional and reactive – jumpy, easily startled, unable to relax or sleep

-    easily overwhelmed by normal, daily events

-    crying uncontrollably

-    diminished interest in doing normal things

-    isolating

-    relying on drugs and/or alcohol

-    moody, irritable, angry, suspicious, frightened

-    sleep difficulties

-    feelings of guilt for surviving the event (“survivor guilt”)

-    a sense of a doomed future

Factors that influence how the person remembers the traumatic event

Factors influencing continuous memory = the trauma is a single event, caused naturally or accidentally, the victim is an adult and receives subsequent validation and support

Factors influencing dissociation (multiplexity in the extreme) or simple amnesia = repetitive traumatic events, done deliberately by a person, the victim is a child, receives no validation and support (i.e., lives with denial and secrecy)

A note about remembering (memory)

The victim may remember the traumatic event or events in one of four ways

-    recall memory – consciously remembers the event and feels a sense of having experienced the event

-    imagistic memory – memory in the form of imagery, persistent and uniquely compelling and happening many times

      -    some of the images may be exaggerated even though each image might represent an accurate slice of the trauma

      -    some images may seem stylized, cartoon-like because the fear is so great that it makes what’s happening seem magnified or unreal (although victims might be given drugs at the time of the abuse and thus distort the images)

      -    the images may seen unrelated to present day events but probably triggered by something in the current environment

-    feeling memory – is remembering an emotional response to the traumatic event

-    body memory – feeling things such as nausea, genital awareness or arousal, physical pain or other symptoms (rashes, etc)