Living With Trauma 2

Gentle Reader, my apologies for not having something ready for you yesterday. I had written a good part of the post, then most of it magically disappeared into the Great Cyber Void and I had to rewrite most of it, then the blog cannibalized itself and it vanished again! Here is the gist of what I wanted to write yesterday: I had an unfortunate confrontation with a nasty and aggressive tenant in my building who is also severely mentally ill. Here, I will spare you most of the details, but I did tell him that I didn't want to go in the elevator with him because he had previously threatened me, unprovoked, and I was now frightened of him. He said something nasty and I let him go up on his own. The incident triggered me and I was feeling very frightened and unsteady for a while. In other words, this was a trigger of trauma for me. I didn't really begin to feel better until I found myself offering up a quiet prayer for this individual's wellbeing, and I suddenly found myself feeling calm and serene again. Then I began to reflect on what an ongoing nightmare this man's life must be for him. It then became abundantly clear that it isn't just a matter of finding ways to soothe and calm ourselves when we are triggered, nor to use PTSD as a convenient excuse, since this experience of triggering is pretty darn universal to our human experience. The thing is that we often tend to compartmentalize trauma and other mental illness as something that happens only to certain people. Trauma is universal. This is our human experience. Trauma. Many people have convenient props and disguises and smokescreens to keep them feeling protected, inured and immune to it all, and especially in our culture of addiction, it just takes that lovely little cocktail at the end of the day, or that whirlwind trip to the mall or time out in the casino or thirty minutes of Internet porn, or fill in the blank, and Bob's Yer Uncle. Not quite like shooting up in a back alley or smoking crack in a doorway, but our culture of addiction still comes to your rescue, soothes the owie, protects you from having to face your pain and your own inner void, leaving you every bit as sick and unwell as the junkie crashing on the pavement at your feet, only you are secure in your job, family and social status and he is a homeless statistic with gaping mental health needs. If anything is really going to heal the trauma, then it's going to be love. I didn't start to feel better yesterday about that unpleasant tenant until I prayed for him. We do not begin to encounter real healing until we reach out to one another in a spirit of love while accepting our own imperfection in that same loving spirit. Love, and love alone, is going to heal trauma.