We all experience challenges in life, but some individuals or families will experience devastating traumas. Traumas can have serious short and long-term impacts on us, so it's important to know about trauma, what occurs when we experience it, and how to manage it as effectively as possible.
Short time reactions might be emotional shock followed by denial or temporary injury or loss. Long-term impacts might include flashbacks or PTSD, panic attacks, free-floating anxiety, increased insecurity, bipolar disorder, interpersonal relationship conflicts, and financial pressures. Serious health issues may occur, including dependence on alcohol or drugs to mask the trauma's impact, or heart, stroke, cancer, diabetes, or stroke.
We might experience trauma as a result of an attack or abuse by a stranger or from a deeply loved partner. Trauma can come from natural disasters, a hurricane, tornado, floor, fire or earthquake. Trauma can come from leaders who control, abuse, and demean people in inhuman ways. Trauma can come through the loss of a loved one, or seeing others traumatized (such as on 9/11 or 1/6 or 12/7...which is why our minds immediately recall the scenes of those particular days). After 9/11, in my counseling practice, there was a dramatic increase in anxiety among children, even very young children and teens, who no longer felt safe. Part of the problem was the constant media replaying of the events on news channels, which further interrupted the usual daily activities of the children, forcing them to "re-live" the events.
It may be from an injury that is dramatic, but heals, or from an injury that causes a career to end or causes lifelong pain. Trauma can be both physical and/or emotional. Some traumas are obvious, while other traumas are not visible initially, but which carry deep pain, loss, and needed healing.
Traumas occur when someone (or something) over which we have little or no control, ends up harming, damaging, impacting or creating loss for us in a way we have little power to prevent.
It's why we feel so helpless and try to second guess what we could have done differently, "if only" types of thinking, "never talk about it", try to rationalize the experience, or "fairy tale" think our way out of the trauma. Those types of thinking aren't productive. Instead, those types of thinking undermine or cause the healing process to slow down or stop...or even turn the trauma into a serious mental health issue that impact us, our loved ones, and our communities.
All traumas jolt our ability to recover, understand life, emotions, and physical well-being. Traumas occur to all of us, to various degrees, and throughout our lifetime. None of us want to be traumatized, however, there are ways we can survive and grow stronger in the process. There are also ways we can move forward to heal and also help others who suffer similar situations or traumas.
We must take time to heal! Trauma is loss, it is grief, it is anger, it is wearisome, and it is strengthening. Because it is such a mixed bag of wildly different emotions, it may seem like we are all over the place attempting to deal with it. We need to understand those are all normal reactions and any steps forward help us unravel the complexity trauma presents initially as our brains try to understand "why?" or "what happened?". As Hippocrates said, "Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity."
My broken childhood experiences molded me into the person I am today. I tend to look at the glass as half-full, even though my childhood glass was more than half-empty. It was due to the strength of my mother, other family and caring people who helped my family through a chaotic existence of poverty and abuse. It was through a college experience and invested professors who presented different views of life and learning that I discovered new ways of coping, understanding family and trauma, and creating a very different path for myself and my future family. It was through a life with my wife who loved me, thought I was awesome, and was my best friend. My life has been full of unexpected people who came into it and helped me deal with my early life traumas.
Several years ago, my wife and I attended a celebration of the Fuller Life Institute, a non-profit, created and directed by our daughter-in-law, to train therapists in Houston, TX. The guest speaker at that program was a young woman named Jaquia Abreu.
Jaquia was truly amazing. She shared her experience as a survivor of trauma, depression, and anxiety and she managed to do it with both tenderness and boldness, as well as hope and vision.
When we spoke to her following the program, she gave us permission to share her poem (below). She said if her poetry could help someone struggling, she would find great joy in that happening. Jaquia was kind, energetic, an excellent and eloquent speaker, upbeat, and extremely inspiring.
Jaquia Abreu, is the CEO of the mental health awareness company, Gully Thoughts LLC
We were pleased to learn that she speaks to many groups, from children to adults, to help them move forward to address their own life challenges, recoveries, and fears. She helps them understand trauma, the debilitating power of anxiety or depression if left unchecked, and in choosing to rebuild hope within themselves.
As well as being a highly sought speaker, Jaquia's message also comes across with great insights in the books she's written, which are available on her website at GullyThoughts.com. (This quote, from her website is reflective of what we saw as she presented that evening: "This world needs more Gully energy, the definition of 'gully' being your authentic, raw, genuine, and purposeful self and combining that with love and giving back.")
Here's Jaquia's poem to Anxiety:
Dear Anxiety,
My affirmations are more powerful than your words to me at night.
To me in the morning.
To me 99,999 times throughout the day.
The bright light is brighter than the dark thoughts you feed to me
See I speak to me
I will no longer let you speak for me
Now hold up and let me speak to me
I am safe.
I am protected always.
I will never go without or experience lack.
I am brave
I love me
And I will never ever take that back
I am always wanted.
I am always loved.
I am always in the front never in the back
I am seen
I take steps forward
The ways you teach me to not pursue something, will stop.
I fake dead from your sword
I am alive and woke now
I don’t feel broke now
Take your scary hands off my neck
I can no longer be choked down
I will pursue it.
I will try it.
I will succeed.
I don’t flop for you anymore
My knees no longer lock for you anymore
I no longer bow down to the mastery of your lies.
Positivity and faith are the only things that I will breathe in my life.
I am too courageous to believe that fear has any hold on my life.
My worries are no longer worries.
Just thoughts that will pass, because they have no home in me anymore.
My spirit locked them out.
I won't let you win anymore.
Pop-a-lock can no longer let the worries in anymore.
The present moment is the only moment I can stay in.
I stay in the moment that says, "I am okay".
My past hurt me, but I am okay
The unknown scares me, but I am okay
I am in control even when I feel out of control, because I am okay
The present moment is the only moment I can pray in
Anxiety, you are not my lover anymore.
If you’re not speaking life
Well
I don’t know what to say then
We cannot speak anymore.
The parted red sea was not meant for me to walk backwards.
I cannot moonwalk with my past
Or hide from my freedom
I cannot speak fear anymore.
I cannot overthink and push myself away from my peers anymore.
Your voice is muted, you cannot whisper in my ears anymore.
I have the key to freedom
I have the key to peace
I have the key to security.
The present moment is that key
Right now.
Right now I am okay.
Because I was created
Because I exist
Because I am loved by the Divine
God loves me
I am okay
Write a letter to your past and burn it
Write a letter to your future and burn it
Write a letter to your present moment and fold it and put in your pocket and read it everyday
Just as a reminder that
Baby boy
Baby girl
We are okay
(We encourage you to check out her website and learn more about her and the books and services she provides.)
There are ways to address trauma, the first being to recognize it openly and not to bury it.
It may be right in front of you, such as a natural disaster, or hidden in your psyche, such as in sexual or emotional abuse or deep loss of a loved one, position in life, a job, or a relationship.
It is understanding and recognizing that your life has been irrevocably changed. You may never regain the position or esteem you once held; you may never see or touch or talk with that person you loved so deeply; you may feel despair for what you had before but have lost.
Another attitude to accept is that you will change. The trauma you experienced will cause you to become a different person. Will bitterness, anger, depression, anxiety, or hatred become your partner? Or will you fight those destructive forces and move forward to have increased compassion for yourself and others, greater empathy, a fighting (non-violent) spirit to make needed changes so the traumatic events that happened to you will not happen to others?
You choose. You can use trauma as a way to reshape yourself mentally and physically. It can be a pivotal turning point in your life.
Time becomes a vital partner of your healing in which you begin to regain some control.
You may be able to make those choices immediately, or it may take some time. However long it takes is how long it takes.
Be patient with yourself, and with others who may also be going through trauma, or who simply do not understand what you are facing.
As author, Brené Brown states so wisely, "What we don’t need in the midst of struggle is shame for being human.”
Seek help! If you need support, obtain it!
Seeking help does not mean you are weak. Just the opposite. It means you are strong enough to see the trauma for what it is and to recognize you will become stronger with help from others. It's how history has trained warriors to prepare for battle, both physically and mentally. We take time to train, recover, heal, and become stronger. You are about to go into battle in an emotional, and maybe in a physical, way. Prepare for it effectively and come out stronger because you did.
Seek help from professionals, from others who are going through or have experienced what you are facing and take advantage of every resource available to you through community, government, churches or organizations. That help will speed up your ability to move forward and recover. Don't let pride interfere with your acceptance of help. Instead, accept the help and then when you no longer need the help and are stronger, turn around and help others who are suffering traumas in their lives. You will understand them due to your experiences.
Do your research and read about trauma and its impact on us. Studies such as "The conversation", community agencies, higher education research departments, and non-partisan non-profits often provide valuable insights.
Don't punish yourself, pressure yourself, or focus on unrealistic or unachievable outcomes.
Even if our minds, strong wills, and determined spirits are strong, we cannot magically "wish" changes into existence. We can, however, make plans and take steps to move forward to change ourselves or situations as much as possible.
Don't focus on "what if" scenarios as we can't change the past, we can only change the present and hope and make plans to change the future.
Life is often out of our control, but our decisions and choices can help us reclaim a strong handle on how we act and react to it.
Some situations will assuredly guarantee trauma will be experienced.
These situations include war, sexual abuse or assault, relocation of populations (such as in ethnic cleaning when populations harm each other or those they perceive to be of threat), living in high-risk locations which carry more likelihood of danger, poverty, healthcare with serious limitations or lack thereof, or social environments or support networks that offer little support for those in need.
It may also involve media replaying traumatic events as "news" that then continue to traumatize those watching or listening. It's a catch-22 situation: we want to be informed about what's happening in order to be prepared for another similar event, but we must weight what is healthy to our psyche and body and what is not. Obsession is not healthy.
Many who suffer from trauma also experience PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), depression, and heightened anxiety. They may also experience physical impairments that require physical therapy, surgeries, and long or short periods of recovery.
Following trauma, we may experience fatigue, both physically and mentally. (Sleeplessness will likely lead to depression if not addressed). We may also experience anger, helplessness, hopelessness, or powerless. We may temporarily "withdraw" or isolate ourselves, just as if we were nurturing a wound, which in fact, we are.
Sometimes we have the luxury of allowing ourselves the time to heal, but at other times, such as in a national disaster when shelter and food are priorities, we may need to push ourselves to complete necessary, physical tasks and to deal with the aftereffects of psychological or emotional trauma after addressing the physical aspects first.
All of us see this happen during times of natural disasters. We also see it happen around the world when political change or disruption occur when so much is perceived to be, or is, at stake...or safety is at risk. If a person accurately or inaccurately believes that the powerful or adversaries have unfair advantage, that they have little or no voice over choices being made that concern or affect them directly, or if their values are of no value, they may experience trauma, agitation, and even deep depression.
How we act and reaction affects others!
During the aftermaths of any traumatic experiences, having empathy and understanding of each other is crucial. It is not the time for gloating or insensitivity. Empathy is not reflected by telling people to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" or to "quit feeling sorry for yourself." Trauma is not just getting your way or something simple you can control by those statements. Trauma is much deeper and significant and must be addressed differently than simple or even complex challenges in life.
Post-trauma is the time to listen and understand the person who has been traumatized, not convince them they are wrong, weak, or should feel differently. It is an opportunity to let people know others care about them and understand their plight.
Communicating that empathy and concern may come in non-verbal actions. It may be by supporting them via volunteer support groups, in financial ways, such as helping them rebuild a home or a community. It may come in expressions of care by sending encouraging letters or emails, providing meals, clothing, medical care, employment, or temporary shelter during a difficult time.
Several areas of mental health care that have proven effective for many dealing with trauma and its recovery include use of EMDR Therapy, counseling, hypnosis by a mental health professional, medications prescribed under the care of a medical professional, churches, community groups, local, state, government or world organizations, or support groups. You may want to help someone struggling with a trauma through supporting them financially to seek counseling help through the gift of a 'Care Card'
When we look back, we can see more clearly and understand more how we have progressed through a trauma. We can see what we may need to change to maintain existing or reach further progress. Even if the process appears to be slow, progress is moving forward, even if tiny steps at a time, and important to use to build healthier, happier lives.