Living With Trauma 3

I have lived with trauma all my life. The trauma of child abuse, the trauma of chronic poverty, the trauma of underemployment, the trauma of exclusion and discrimination, the trauma of crushed and broken dreams and the trauma of multiple deaths. Then came the trauma of religious cult abuse during my three decades in the Anglican Church, and the trauma of homelessness. All these things have accumulated in my life. Trauma almost broke me. It still hasn't broken me. It never will break me. I have made peace with trauma. When I was homeless, I knew that this would affect me in the long term, and it has. After I found housing and was able to rest a bit I realized that I was frightened and really needed to feel safe. I wasn't having nightmares but it was very difficult for me to stay asleep at night and I really had trouble trusting people. I had full blown PTSD. My treatment was simple and straightforward. Biweekly sessions of fifty minutes with a good psychiatrist, no meds and no hospitalization. It was all talk therapy and CBT. During this time I found affordable housing and long term employment. When my therapy sessions ended after four years I had to fly on my own. It wasn't easy for the first couple of years. I was easily triggered and suffered short term relapses. I got through them okay. I read extensively, as I've always done, and focussed on simplifying my life and on being as healthy as my low pay would permit me to. I worked at cultivating new friendships with good and reliable people. This hasn't been easy, given my trust issues and the fact that not everyone in the world is going to have a lot of patience with an aging single man with trust difficulties. A lot of people have dumped me along the way for this and other reasons, but there is a core of good, faithful people who have stood by me and they are still with me. I think, because I have also been working at learning how to be a good friend, how to trust, and to know when to leave people alone. And when not to. Now, I am taking trauma to a new stage. I am calling the stigma for the farce that it really is. It is a thick, viscous shadow that settles over us like a cold lava flow. It is like a Halloween ghost or monster that has nothing inhabiting the costume. The shadow, the stigma is nothing but a chimera. This is because trauma is not the special preserve of the already diagnosed with PTSD. Trauma is the stuff that surrounds us, inhabits us, frightens us at night and drives us to every conceivable and inconceivable avenue of escape. The fact that we all know that one day we are going to have to die fills us with dread and traumatizes us and this is why so much of our energy is wasted on thwarting and escaping the reality of our mortality. That our civilization, like every civilization, has been built on the bones and fed by the blood of the slain and exploited innocents-the weak and vulnerable destroyed by the powerful-means that this is a civilization of trauma. Even those of us who carry the guilt bear also our share of the pain and this makes the suffering universal. Trauma, or its stigma, is an artificial barrier that protects the so-called well from facing their own sickness, the sickness of fear and pain that we all live with, that we all bear and that we all are trying to run away from. Let's focus on removing the stigma and treating those of us, who have been especially incapacitated with compassion, care and love. Then they will hear our stories and those of us who have already been wounded will lead our caretakers to their healing.