Survivors of any age could come up with their own lists of things society still doesn’t get right. Survivors of a certain age can testify how far we’ve come. Here’s my list of how we are doing better now in dealing with abuse, trauma, and healing.
Reading or hearing about trauma can be triggering. What triggers those of us who have been traumatized is not uniform. So, for those with similar experiences, I encourage you to proceed carefully. For those without, I encourage you to practice empathy. My prayer in writing this is that healing will come to those who have suffered and that all of us will grow in our understanding, empathy, and mutual care.
I was abused in an era when we didn’t understand such things and we knew little about trauma, even less how to bring healing. I’m grateful to have lived long enough to have found healing and to have seen solid advancements in the ways we have learned to deal with abuse. We certainly can do better, but we are doing better than we were.
While I am not writing academically here, these thoughts are based on various studies, counsellings, and trainings I’ve gained from my own journey. This is a personal reflection on how far we have come in dealing with abuse, trauma, and healing. Due to its length, I’ve divided it into two parts. Part 2 is here.
Ten ways we are doing better with abuse, trauma, and healing:
- We are taking abuse and its traumatization much more seriously.
When I was a kid, seedy old men in trench coats were said to fool around with little boys. No one talked about it, but everyone – except the victims – seemed to know what “it” was. And what we knew was that you should avoid such old men. Abusers were seen as the scum of the earth. Unfortunately, some abusers came dressed in Sunday-best camouflage; exposing them was a sin.
Boys were thought to survive such fooling around somehow. Girls were considered much more vulnerable – even as they weren’t believed. It was their purity people expressed concern about, more than their mental health.
I don’t think I ever heard adults talk about people who abused kids until it was too late. Sex was rarely talked about, and kids were not allowed to access adult conversations where it was discussed. We were protected from the awful truth and thus without the knowledge to avoid the awful truth. At least such was the case in my circles.
My parents did take child abuse very seriously, especially in their ministerial roles. But society-wide, abuse of kids was as much laughed off as it was seen as ugly. I became more alert around such joking after I had experienced my own abuse, and it left me feeling very dirty and wanting to sink into the floor.
Insensitive and unempathetic people still exist and remain prominent in our society, but generally speaking, we do have much more enlightened support systems in place. Trauma Informed Care is becoming the standard.
- We know triggers require sensitivity and empathy.
As a kid, I would never dare put down another human being for whatever reason, especially not those with physical disabilities or emotional trauma. In our home, such talk was beyond the pale. Outside our home was a different story. “Get a ladder and get over it,” people would say, providing the default advice for dealing with pain and suffering. I still hear that lie.
When I hear people joke about what they see as overconcern with triggers, I am triggered to this day. The idea of the need for sensitivity is still laughed at by many, even in polite company.
But these days words of caution and care are much more common – and required – in radio and TV reports, in houses of worship, and in schools.
I didn’t really understand what triggers were all about when it came to my own trauma until much later in life. In fact, at first I misunderstood what triggering meant. I didn’t realize that triggers can come in all forms and places, even when we least suspect. Especially when we least suspect.
What triggers me has varied over time and I have discovered is exacerbated by depression. I guess you could say that triggering and depression can be mutually entangled, each enhancing the other. So when I finally started to get a handle on my own trauma – in my 50s – I learned to find much needed space, safe space. And as I did, I discovered community out there that would “have my back,” would provide the much-needed sensitivity and empathy whenever I needed it. As long as I could find that community, I was okay.
The world can be so cruel. Laughing at someone’s triggers is a form of cruelty. Cruelty is never to be excused. It needs to be exposed wherever it is found. Meanwhile, victims of that cruelty need to be loved.
- We have learned to start treatment right away.
When I was a kid, I’m thinking kindergarten age, I was playing a game of dodgeball with neighbor kids. The ball hit my feet and knocked me forward, my face hitting a cement driveway, chipping my front teeth. Our family dentist, an odd sort of guy who smoked cigars while he was working on your teeth, checked me out and said that I needed to wait until I was an adult for any further treatment on those teeth.
So, I did wait – until I was in college. By then I was starting down a long and costly path of root canal work, tooth extraction, and bridge work. Friends in the dental field tell me Mr. Cigar gave me bad advice. Much could have been done early on, maybe even right away, that would have saved money, pain, and given me a better smile in my high school yearbook.
So too with childhood abuse – well, abuse at any age. We now know that trauma informed care should start immediately. Immediately after the earthquake or hurricane has hit, immediately after a teenager discovers a parent is dying or has died, immediately after a woman has been raped, and immediately after a child has been abused.
I had no idea how to deal with my own abuse. My do-it-yourself attempts at coping may have helped me survive. But in the long run they only brought more harm and pain. It was a vicious cycle.
Because of who had abused me, I didn’t even feel I could go to my parents or to the other adults in my life. It would be 20 years later before I told a soul. It would be another 20-plus years more before I got the professional help I needed.
I don’t think such professional help existed back when I was a kid. Even if it did, it has come a long, long way. Today there are professionals and trainings for lay people that can provide much needed and effective help right from the start. That applies to victims of natural disasters and wars as well as to victims of physical, emotional, and sexual trauma.
- We are learning to listen to the victim.
The fear of not being listened to or believed can become a prison for victims. The reason victims are trapped in such a prison is because they know their fears have merit.
Who would believe me? My abusers (there were more than one) were all highly respected men in society, no seedy trench coat types. Especially my primary abuser (the first one, the one who did more than just try) was the most respected man I knew.
My word against his? Forget it.
In everything else I trusted him deeply, as did my parents. I believed him when he said it had to be our secret. I believed him when he said it was my fault. How could I let others know I was that kind of a boy, the kind that supposedly wanted “it.”
The MeToo movement did so much good for abuse survivors. It was a moment of liberation. Even for me, well on my journey of healing by then, it came as a “balm in Gilead,” as we used to sing. To realize that society was finally taking victims’ stories seriously was a thrilling moment.
Sure, there were false stories, just as there had been in earlier times with the “healing of the memories” era or the “recessed memories” fad. But while innocent people did suffer from those excesses, the move toward openness and believing the victim has made huge strides in healing for countless victims. Including me.
When I was believed by 3 people – around the age of 30 – it gave me a new lease on life for years to come. When I was believed by many more, including professionals, in my early 50s, I finally broke free.
I grew up hearing that God hears my cry, that God believes me. And I still believe that. At some very special times in my life that truth has broken through like a drenching rain onto a parched land. But God chooses not to do that work alone. We are here to listen to each other – and to bring God’s healing through our ears and through our eyes that say, I hear you, I see you, and I believe you.
- We are understanding that trauma and healing are complicated.
We human beings are fearfully and wonderfully made. We are very complicated beings. The gap between us and our nearest competitors, organic or artificial, is vast, even as we share so many common traits with them. In the past century, our understanding about healing of human pain and suffering has leapfrogged light years. Just as importantly, we are getting a handle on what we don’t know about ourselves.
I was first abused around the age of 9 (it was over a period of time). A lot of emotional excess tissue (scar tissue, they call it) started building up around that pain that was trying to heal. Self-medicating thoughts and actions that only made things worse were like scabs that kept ripping off, exposing the raw, bloody tissue of damaged psyche underneath.
I don’t have a handle on what my life would have been like had I never experienced that abuse. I only know the abuse had a deep and lasting effect on me – and in a lot of complicated and seemingly unrelated ways.
Although professional help came late, I was blessed with a wonderful therapist who worked with me for many months. The side effect of depression had been with me through much of my life (who knew?). Bodies are predisposed to heal themselves; they put intense energy and much resource into the effort, depleting physiological and psychological resources over time. Bodies begin to wear down from such effort, as my body was doing. Under pressure to resolve the trauma, our systems can collapse – as did mine.
For me, healing has come, not through any one thing – as a cure-all – but through a variety of sometimes choreographed approaches by a variety of people in my support system. Am I fully healed? Well, it’s complicated. If healing means to be restored to what was before the abuse, I don’t think so. I wasn’t going to stay 8 years old all my life anyway. If healing means I’ve had the trauma and abuse woven like a tapestry into a new and healthy self, well, then the answer is yes.
Let’s take a break. I encourage you to reflect on these points, for yourself, perhaps, for those you know, for sure. Comments below or on social media are public; comments directly to me via this link are confidential.
Go to this link for Part 2 with items 6-10. To subscribe to receive future posts, go here.
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