Edited extracts from journal entries and a poem ……
A sea metaphor
Processing trauma can feel a bit like travelling by ship in stormy weather and it can at times become a rough nauseous ride. We need to master as much resilience and perseverance as we can, and we also need to be able to stay with the experience: the intense emotions, the bodily discomfort and sensations, the thoughts and images, the memories – until finally the choppy sea calms down. It reminds me a bit of the film ‘All is lost’ starring Robert Redford, which I watched a couple of years ago. When dealing with trauma you learn to surf through it; to surf through the stormy weather and the choppy seas and to navigate yourself back to dry land. You also need to let go. Learning to let go is paramount. It is a process and it is easier said than done, but it is vital. So, learning to let go over and over…. After all, unlike the sailor in the film, we are not in the water, we are not cold and wet, we are not in the past any more. We are on safe dry ground in the here and now. We breathe and we notice our breath, how it moves and how it changes and it brings us back into the present. It reminds us that the past is over, and within this new space we start to notice more……
White noise
At other times our past experiences are a bit like white noise, this mixture of sound waves playing constantly in the background, like for instance, when a radio or TV set is switched on but is not receiving a clear signal….. Or perhaps like the monotonous sound of a fan spinning on a hot day or even the neighbours’ lawn mowers in the mornings. Trauma and past baggage is like this type of monotonous background noise that colours our current living, often below our conscious awareness. It corrupts all new, fresh experience without our even noticing. And because it is sublimal it is the more powerful. It stifles our intentionality and blurs our vision. It influences our decisions. It activates and accentuates our stress responses. It causes pain in our bodies. It distracts our attention. Then adequately immobilized we politely wait – like the doormat outside our front door – to be treaded upon once again and the vicious cycle goes on……
The Breathing by Denise Levertov
An absolute patience
Trees stand up to their knees in fog
The fog slowly flows uphill
White cobwebs, the grass leaning
where deer have looked for apples
The woods from brook to where
the top of the hill looks over the fog,
send up not one bird
So absolute, it is no other than happiness itself,
a breathing too quiet to hear
Documenting violations in all areas while engaging creatively with DSM-IV
