Trauma Narratives and Treatment - Essay Example

?Trauma Narratives and Treatment A traumatic event is one which confronts people with extreme stress and needs the survivors of that event to cope with the unexpected situation. The aftermath period of a traumatic event is indeed a crucial time to start the recovery process. This psychological process is unique to each patient, in respect to their different circumstances, behaviors, capability to bear the trauma and much more. The recovery process for trauma survivors can be carried out with narrative trauma, which is an efficient coping strategy to treat the psychological disorders observed in traumatic patients. Since trauma is considered as a ‘rip’ in the normal phase of development, the resilience also requires some kind of resumption in the development. Let us discuss in brief about the trauma narrative and how it explores the feelings, responses and the capabilities of the survivors to bear with the witnesses. In addition, we shall discuss the recovery process for different kinds of trauma from the perspective of a therapist and their therapeutic alliance with the patient. People, who experience catastrophic events or horrible situations in their life, suffer from predictable psychological disorders. These disorders, when predicted earlier could be treated efficiently with the coping strategies and techniques of the recovery process. “The fundamental stages of recovery are establishing safety, reconstructing the trauma story, and restoring the connection between survivors and their community.” (Herman, 1997, p.3). After resilience, the memory of trauma gives the patient a sort of self esteem and helps in establishing control to overcome the trauma. The major focus of this study is to bring into light the deepened feelings of the traumatic victim and to explore their trauma’s boundaries and memories that hit their senses. It is the ultimate responsibility of any therapist to help the clients to respond to their frightening traumatic experiences in a positive way. It is essential to analyze the feelings, responses and capacities of the person to bear the witness of the trauma. As a result of any trauma, either physical or psychological, it is evident that the traumatized person drowns into mixed feelings of confusion, grief, shame, guilt, anger, resentment and many more. These intense and varied feelings and traumatic memories greatly influence affected individual’s persona lives as well as their social relationships, often in an undesirable way. It is discovered that when these intense feelings as well as the memories of trauma are put into words, it alleviates fear as well as mental agitation caused due to the traumatic event. As human beings, our inner sense always creates a visible and invisible bonding with the humans, we know or we may not know. When acknowledged and validated, it gives a sense of satisfaction and fullness to one’s life. Consequently, when this is disturbed, it leads to a wide range of emotional ups and downs that is responded through their feelings and actions. In a study, it was observed that the mother-child relationship, in the early developmental stage, contributes greatly to one’s emotional troubles and the way they cope up in life. When a mother is not empathizing to the needs of the child, it creates a sense of unworthiness towards the child. This leads to depression and low self-esteem, and sometimes could act as a catalyst for extreme actions, in the future years of the child. Often, the unexpressive thoughts of a child hinder her life emotionally leading to stressful emotions. As stated by Jelinek (2009, p. 275), “A person who does not speak could easily be thinking. Mother demands that Erika reveal her thoughts, rather than let them eat into her.” The response a person creates toward their trauma depends highly on different aspects such as age, maturity and emotional stability. For example, a child may respond to his/her trauma at school by refusing to go to school while a child in adolescent stage may argue with the parents against going to school, then get frustrated in various school activities and would show decline in performance. As Rogers (2007) stated girls in early adolescence stage, who faced trauma, began to actively silence themselves, by hiding their real thoughts and feelings. So, a response is a complex and integrated system of feelings, both conscious and unconscious. Often it reflects the individual’s capacity to endure a stimulus that is associated with the trauma. Grief is one of the responses that arise right after any catastrophic event, and it is viewed as the emotional suffering that is endured after a loss or trauma that affects the individual. Either it is caused by a small loss or a great catastrophe, the unbearable grief is indeed a start to the healing process. The intensity and duration of the grief experienced is often reflected by one’s perception towards the event. It is observed that children often come out of the grief easily than the adults who get stuck up at one stage, and find it difficult to accept reality and move forward. Most often, the traumatic experiences are transformative in nature towards the therapist or anyone who is a witness of the trauma. The therapist’s empathic connection towards the clients has consequent effects because as they bear witnesses to the trauma survivors, which is known as vicarious trauma. It is natural that one gets grief, anger and resentment towards the experiences of the victim. But it is impossible to be not affected with the events. Due to the empathic bonding and understanding with the clients, the feelings of compassion and responsibility make the therapist vulnerable to the trauma as well. It is essential that trauma workers have to be aware of these changes as well as the stress, which could accumulate in them, due to witnessing of trauma and also because of the need to sustain oneself with awareness while treating the victims of trauma. “To study psychological trauma is to come face to face both with human vulnerability in the natural world and with the capacity for evil in human nature” (Herman, 1997, p.7). After witnessing a trauma, the first thing experienced is the fear and horror regarding the event. Due to the shock, one could be unaware of the impact it would create in the days to come. According to my personal reflection towards witnessing trauma, it is quite natural that those feelings and memories of trauma would remain intense in the mind, either consciously through emotions or unconsciously as nightmares. Often, feelings of anxiousness, fatigue and depression may exist which has to be responded with effective coping strategies. Unless I am capable of bearing the grief by supporting myself, I would not be able to cope to bear the witness. Initially, I must not get overwhelmed on hearing the traumatic stories which are emotionally demanding. The very best way to bear with the witness is not to resist it, but accept it and react accordingly by understanding one’s own limitations. Normally people who could be exposed to trauma or catastrophic events in their lives need to be given prior awareness in overcoming their fears and horrors, while the survivors of trauma require therapeutic help and support. They are often met with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which makes them hard to cope even with the daily life. The post trauma memories and thoughts are intolerable for them and they need various techniques through therapy to overcome it. One of the efficient processes that helps in treating the patients, who have witnessed traumatic events is the trauma narrative. Talking about the traumatic experience becomes an effective coping strategy as it brings out all their in-built memories and events in a chronological order, leading relief in the minds. This is indeed a significant step in any recovery process to deal with the PTSD. This conventional process allows the patient to disclose a complete narrative of all the traumatic events and their experiences towards it. The patients reveal their experiences of the trauma, both the conscious as well as the unconscious ones. The first phase of narrative trauma treatment can be started in the immediate period after the trauma, when the patient is considerably recovered from the physical injuries. Initially, the patient is introduced into a trauma-focused group allowing to develop cohesion, thereby suppress the fear caused due to the traumatic event. “The cohesion that develops in a trauma focused group enables participants to embark upon the tasks of remembrance and moaning. The group provides a powerful stimulus for their recovery of traumatic memories.” (Herman, 1997, p. 224). For an effective narrative therapy, the setting has to be appropriate with the therapy sessions supported by qualified and efficient professionals. Proper guidance and prompt suggestions has to be delivered to the clients for facilitating the process of recovery. It is also beneficial to assign structured exercises to the survivors in between the therapy sessions. The process of narrative therapy includes various phases like story-telling, participating in interviews, written descriptions and few more. Even creative approach is handled by the therapist to develop the process and help the survivors recover from the traumatic memories. Most of the creative techniques include artistic works like drawing, painting, writing and even scrapbooking. An efficient narrative will bring out a logical sequence of the events, with the patient visualizing it as images and memories. It helps the person to bear with the feelings of the trauma, and at the same time provide with an authority over the memories. Not reminding the person about their traumatic event, and completely moving out the person from the scene of the traumatic event, could be a plausible strategy, but that is not just enough to recover them from it. Sometimes, not reminding and not talking about it can become a trauma itself. It is observed that in case of parental abuses, separating the child from their abusive environment alone does not lead to healing. Instead, their ambient signifiers have to be identified; the memory linked with the feelings of trauma has to be restored and better relationships have to be established. Efforts have to be taken to transform their memory of trauma into healed and constructive feelings, thereby providing them with self-esteem and also allowing them to establish control over their trauma itself. One of the best ways to take care of a traumatized person is through understanding. This is achieved through therapeutic bonding between the patient and the therapist. It is the responsibility of the therapist to create a strong empathic bonding that helps in efficient communication between the patients. Also, when there is a good bonding, the patient as part of narrative therapy will feel comfortable to express the thoughts without any inhibition. Often the survivor gets overwhelmed with the memories of the trauma, and when there is complete expression of events, it diminishes the stress. In addition, in course of time, they get desensitized to their own stories due to the constant and complete analysis of their trauma. Importantly, as they re-experience their feelings through their own narrative, it helps them to overcome it well effectively. The therapists in the form of listeners, who give a patient hearing and also the support to the survivors, have a significant role in the treatment through trauma narrative. The willingness to cope with the narrative and the therapists’ effort to bear the witness gives a hope for recovery to the traumatized individual. As mentioned above, when dealing with the traumatized victims, it is essential that the therapist create a comfortable space for the patients to open up. Only when the therapist is ready to bear the grief and provide adequate support to his/her clients, he/she will bear witness effectively by building a kind of emotional alliance between them and the patients. In addition, empathy has to be showered to the clients to help them develop an emotional bonding. It is essential that the therapist has to make the client feel safe and comfortable during the narrative sessions, as well as fully understand the agonizing pain that the client might have gone through. If the therapist does not bear those emotions, he/she cannot offer any empathic insight to the clients. This empathy will gradually help them overcome and tolerate their feelings and get through the recovery process successfully. A person is traumatized not only by the situations or persons but by the way they perceive it. According to Cyrulnik (2005), strength and resilience are the two major factors that may sustain and even insulate the survivors through the traumatic experience, and also are the two factors which may help the victims during the recovery process. He asserts that resilience has to be possessed by the traumatic victims in order to shape their lives in the positive and happy direction. Trauma Narratives play a helpful role in helping the victims of trauma in coping with the post traumatic stress and other related psychological problems. A proper understanding of the patient by the therapists coupled with their empathy could create an efficient recovery process. Through good communications skills and also by exhibiting good perception to identify the signifiers, a therapist can provide the best treatment environment for the traumatized patient to overcome his/hers fears. Even if the patient shows improvement, there has to be thorough follow-up by the therapist, in order to avoid any relapse. As relapse of the condition could deteriorate the patients further, permanent cure has to be found, even if it takes more time. Overall, effective strategies by the therapists and good cooperation on the part of the patient can make the narrative therapy as part of the recovery process an efficient and successful one. References Cyrulnik, B. (2005). The Whispering of Ghosts: Trauma and resilience. New York, NY: Other Press. Herman, L. J. (1997). Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York, NY: Basic Books. Jelinek, E. (2009). The Piano Teacher. Grove Press. Rogers, A. (2007). The Unsayable: The Hidden Language of Trauma. New York, NY: Ballantine Books. Read More