Living With Trauma 4

Only a trauma survivor can adequately educate others about trauma. For us, we have that horrible knowledge of life that frightens the bejesus out of the rest of you that quail, quiver and cower before your dread little First World Problems. We have been on the receiving end of abuse and violence, have been excluded, marginalized, rejected and chronically mistreated for being "different", have seen more than our share of sickness and death, rape and madness, and simply know way more about the dark side of human nature than would make us feel welcome in a lot of social settings. Mental health professionals, excluding peer support workers and other workers with lived experience, simply do not have a clue how to help us. And really, I often wonder if we even benefit from a lot of the therapeutic interventions that simply entrench and strengthen the very stigma that keeps many of us ill and dependent upon the mental health system. I count myself very fortunate that I managed to escape a lot of this nonsense and have been able to live relatively free of stigma and, Gentle Reader, you might imagine what this does for my sense of human dignity. Survivors of trauma have to lead the way. We are the ones with the lived experience, the stories and the knowledge. We are the ones with the resources and the information that can help others working their way through the afflictions of trauma. Perhaps some of us might benefit from the therapeutic interventions (medications, and rehab programs) that can help us stabilize and begin to move forward, but once we are moving forward we are going to have to accept that we are not only on our own, but in positions of mentorship and leadership, not just for our peers but for all those middle to upper middle class mental health professionals who are really frightened shitless of us and would rather find refuge in their lovely First World Problems than have to experience the horrors that have become to us almost as everyday and banal as a shopping trip to the mall. Over and over again, I have felt bored to extinction by the banal and mundane conversations of many of my coworkers, simply because most of them do not have a clue what it`s really like to be us. There are some exceptions, of course, but not many, some of them who have had to haul their own loads of crap and those who have been traumatized by proxy, which is to say that our pain has eaten its way into the very core of their souls. A transformative experience, this, that has actually helped make some of the best workers in the field. When I first entered this field of work, I was full of hope with an expectation that peer support work would open doors to other, better paid and more prestigious and involved employment. I could not have been more mistaken. The system is so constructed as to keep those in the lower rungs just where they are presumed to belong: in the lower rungs. After thirteen years of faithful and exemplary service, this is my reward for my labours and service: twelve glorious bucks an hour, no holiday or stat pay, sick pay at the discretion, or should I say, mercy of our supervisors, no medical or dental benefits, no paid travel time, no bonuses. In exchange we are expected to take on often challenging clients whose care and support require much more training and education than we are given for our position. Still, we do well with our clients, and usually far better than the much better paid union staff, and all we get for it is qualified and often faint praise. There are no programs for training contract staff with lived experience to be rehab workers or case managers, even though we often have greater talent, needing just a little bit of training and mentorship, perhaps. There is so much more we could do and offer out of our lived experience, but they are determined to keep us in our place and to save the system tons of money on our backs. They will do everything they can to keep the stigma in place for us, because stigma gives them power over our lives. Unless we refuse to buy into it.