The paradigm of human experience is an intangible phenomenon that embarks everyone on a unique journey of self-exploration. The uniqueness and the magnitude of these experiences are especially visible to the ones trying to dissect and explain the causal link between every slightest detail in the human mind. In the book by Van der Kolk (2014), the primary focus is placed on the exploration of a human holistic response to trauma. When reading the author’s reflections, it becomes evident how every single trauma requires an all-encompassing comprehensive approach to acceptance and rehabilitation.
However, when reading the arguments explaining the specific neural and psychological mechanisms of human response to trauma, the reader cannot help but question what makes society, in general, react in such a reserved and seemingly ignorant way. One of the most insightful phrases presented in the book was that “our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another” (Van der Kolk, 2014, p. 83). In the context, this sentiment referred to the fact that by revolutionizing the approach to treating trauma with medications, the very concept of working through trauma is dehumanizing, leaving people with the choice of either embracing their misery or committing to the life-long side effects and complications. Hence, given how easily people neglect their ability to heal others, can people say for sure that the good they do will ever be enough to compensate for the destruction caused for others to bear?
One of the most depressing aspects of trauma is the dissonance of how people who struggle because of society are eventually marginalized due to the experience atypical according to the social norms. Surprisingly, it is the ones who went through trauma that are willing to embrace their capacity to heal. Van der Kolk (2014) reflects that during his experiment on the cognitive derivation of traumatic experience flashbacks, people with trauma were eager to willingly undergo the terror of traumatizing memories with “hope that what we learned from their suffering could help other people” (Van der Kolk, 2014, p. 88). Thus, it seems like being destructed is one of the few ways to evoke empathy towards others. Indeed, when reflecting on this, people with no traumatic experience cannot even imagine what form this healing should take. However, instead of doing whatever they can to embrace healing, they frequently opt for plain ignorance. People without any mental or physical connection to trauma believe that they are better off silent. Indeed, silence seems to be the cure to trauma in society. As long as people are reluctant to talk, there is nothing to heal.
The real problem with such a public sentiment concerns the fact that people destroyed by trauma are likely to remain silent for a very long time. The neurological tests presented by Van der Kolk (2014) indicate the phenomenon of the so-called speechless horror. Essentially, when people are affected by a traumatic experience, their Broca’s area, or “one of the speech centers of the brain,” blocks their ability to verbalize the event and turn it into a narrative (Van der Kolk, 2014, p. 93). The inability to describe the scope of the horror follows the victim throughout life every time they go back to the event. Of course, over time, people regain the ability to describe their trauma to others, but their minds would still cherry-pick the phrases that would not trigger the horrors of their past. The final version of the narrative will never reveal the magnitude of the destruction, making it extremely hard to process and heal.
Society, on the other hand, makes a deliberate choice to stay silent about what they hear. The ignorance of embracing the trauma leaves people wondering how the experiences described by people could possibly be so damaging. Perhaps, this gap created by the victims’ physical inability to use the exact wording to describe their suffering and the society’s unwillingness to discover the hidden pain is one of the problem’s roots. Today, when people are talking about such trauma as sexual harassment, the media questions the credibility of information simply because the survivors needed a decade to find the courage to speak to the world. The media, however, does not question how hard it is for a person to acknowledge the trauma in the first place. Once a person is traumatized, they are automatically labeled as “mentally ill and marginalized from society.
Indeed, the thoughts outlined by Van der Kolk (2014) contribute significantly to the individual’s understanding of trauma as a complex and inexplicable mental terror. However hard a person tries to battle the repercussions of trauma, “the alarm signals don’t stop” (Van der Kolk, 2014, p. 99). However, if it is impossible to redesign the alarm system on the physical and emotional levels, it is the perception of the alarm that should be challenged. If everybody acknowledges the common responsibility to compensate the destruction with healing, trauma survivors will be seen as “broken” no more. Instead, they will be seen as the ones who did not let themselves break.
Reference
Van der Kolk, B. (2014). Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Penguin.