PTSD & Meaning- Why Turning Trauma Into Useful Lessons Helps

Sometimes, when reading a book or seeing a movie or something, I find myself on a little mini-intellectual journey of discovery. Right now, I’m reading the book, Trauma, by Gordon Turnbull, and it’s giving me lots of food for thought. I appreciate it’s as much a biography of his years studying PTSD as it is a fundamental explanation of what Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is, how it develops, and how to cure it. Turnbull doesn’t write carefully for victims or laypeople and dance around the subject like many self-help books do. He explains how they came to discover the brain itself goes through processes that lead to PTSD and what you have to do to re-program the brain. Or maybe I should say “de-program the brain.”

The good news is, this writing and sharing habit of mine is perhaps one of the best ways to process emotions to alleviate PTSD as it permits the conscious mind to come to grips with often harsh realities and find meaning and purpose behind those realities. Once the mind feels there was a reason for things, and that life can continue on– perhaps a bit more grim but at least more wise– it can move on, integrating the traumatic event. PTSD tends to happen when the event was so overwhelming and senseless that it over-turns an individual’s entire reality. That can happen to anyone, of course, but those exposed to prior traumas are more prone to being over-whelmed again.

If a person gets an opportunity within the first month of the trauma to go over everything in detail, parse it all out, talk about it, and realize what happened and why– even if they were very upset at the event, they do not tend to develop PTSD. Even if they DO exhibit symptoms of PTSD, in that first month they can shed it simply finding ways to think about and “file away for use later” their memories. If, however, they are chastised, ridiculed, dismissed or otherwise find they lose social support rather than having it offered, PTSD is almost guaranteed, because the feeling of abandonment and betrayal by others towards them when they are at their most vulnerable is such a hurt to endure that their mind reels and they lose the ability to categorize the events that began the problems in the first place.

You can just imagine how difficult this can be for abductees in our current culture! There are few people one feels safe discussing the most harrowing and mind-bending of events with! One reason I advocate so strongly that every abductee needs to find at least one other abductee to talk to, even if its just to have them on hand when shit starts up for a new flap of activity. We all need to have at least one other human being to compare notes with, and share anger and fear with, just to feel like we have an anchor in a maelstrom of wild ocean. We’re already helpless and facing unbelievably reality-shaking encounters, to go it alone completely is a recipe for unrelenting horror during flaps and shaky neurotic issues and dissociation during quiet periods.

This need to find meaning underneath the terror and hardship may be hardwired into us, since it can be such a useful coping mechanism. It may be why people say that “God is testing us” or that “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” If you feel that, in the end, you survived and learned something useful, then perhaps you can come out feeling like a victorious survivor instead of a helpless victim.

I personally hate those kinds of sayings, because I’ve seen them used, over and over again, to demean those who haven’t integrated their own trauma in a useful way. These things are either said by people who have successfully overcome hardships, or– more annoyingly, by people who have never faced a real life or mind-threatening challenge who are just parroting things they’ve heard and taken to be gospel truth. These types of sayings, when used dismissively to judge those who aren’t coming out on top of it, actually haunt people who are struggling.

There is some truth to the sayings in limited circumstances. A one-off traumatic event, when dealt with in a healthy manner, does indeed build resilience and strength. The individual feels like they met the challenge well and feel more confident they may do just as well in the future. A crisis in the community where people come together often builds trust, shows the capacity for creative solutions for survival, and brings out the best in people. Unfortunately, this is where the conventional wisdom ends…

Studies have demonstrated that repeated traumas that happen, especially to children or teenagers, are guaranteed to break down the will, the personality, and the ability to adapt or trust the world. Even in adults, repeated exposure to abuse, war (as an unarmed civilian), or unexplained and terrifying encounters does assuredly NOT build strong people “of character.” Rather, the repeated exposure, by demonstrating just how little power the person has, diminishes character, erodes confidence, and shreds the quality of life. Reality and relationships become something to endure, not something to enjoy. Everything the child, youth, or adult tries just seems to reinforce the notion that they have no power to change anything.

In psychology, I’ve studied the phenomenon known as “learned helplessness.” Essentially, this is when repeated bad luck or abuse teach an individual that they have no choices in life. Which, for periods of time, is absolutely true. The problem is that when and if an opportunity to ‘escape’ or better their circumstances should arise, they find themselves so lacking self-confidence and trust in the world that they are then unable to take advantage of it. “It will all turn to shit anyways, and then I’ll be punished on top of it,” they think. Many loved ones and professionals have found themselves at wit’s end when confronted by such a ‘defeatist’ attitude!

But it is not the choice of the victim. At the point where they surrender permanently to an ongoing life of defeat and suffering, their brain has taken over and decided to devote it’s full social and emotional capacity to gritty survival. Each day is a calculation of what one must do to make it another day in hell. Plans to escape or reform the hell are abandoned. History has taught the brain that such efforts are fruitless, and anyway, our brains are also wired to conserve energy.

The good news is, however, that all is not lost forever, even in cases such as this. Compassion, patience, understanding from others and receiving new ideas and resources can help pull victims out of their dark circumstances and teach them anew that it IS possible to change things up and have a little power over their own lives. The world may not be so hostile and indifferent as they imagine after all…

Regardless, in the end, they have to find a way to make sense of what has happened to them. Some find it through religion, others through philosophy, still others just come to believe in an element of nobility in the human condition that can overcome. We cannot “move on” or “get past it” without assigning meaning or some sort of useful lesson to explain “Why did this happen to me?” Without that, it seems our brains cannot just shrug and walk away. Indeed, our brains are built to ruminate and examine and obsess over every bit of minutia to a trauma in order to have some confidence that a repeat event will not go down as badly should there be a next time. Logic doesn’t matter– what matters to the brain is a STORY that makes sense of it all.

We humans are built to understand narratives. Stories are everything to us. Why else would be we so enraptured by fiction? In it, we find not only escape from our own lives, but a useful comparison to learn ways to improve our own lives, or at least our understanding of our own lives.

Therefore, writing down our experiences of terror and horror, or sharing them verbally, helps us to feel not so up in the air and confused by often utterly bewildering events. God doesn’t hate us, He/She is merely testing us and we pulled through. The Fates are not out to destroy us, rather they are forcing us to look at new areas and expand our lives. Of course, the objective truth can get utterly lost while meaning is assigned right, left, and center!

Which is another irritating issue! On the one hand, we need to find a meaning to things in the NOW for us to successfully integrate traumatic events, but on the other hand, ultimately we need to find out what is REALLY going on because it may be the most important thing to ever happen in human history, and all these false narratives, as comforting as they may be, are getting in the way!

I suppose I need to remember to be patient with other abductees assigning meaning pre-maturely to their experiences. They need to in order to stay emotionally fit, or to move themselves towards emotional fitness. Researchers who are not abductees themselves should understand this need and not get too attached to any one interpretation of the data. Its very human to desire a quick and easy answer, but it can do more harm than good to succumb to the temptation, as understandable as it is.

In the meanwhile, my way of creating meaning is to share my memories and dig down to uncover some tidbits that can be turned into useful lessons that I can also share and perhaps help others in my shoes, or help those not in my shoes to have some broader understanding and compassion for all us similarly shod! I can’t quite get my more logical self to shut up about not trusting comforting narratives, so I can’t accept the easier answers. I don’t know the answers, and, while I love to speculate (who doesn’t?) I require a lot more evidence to feel truly safe trusting in any particular ultimate meaning.

Compromise! When I have two sides to this duking it out in my own head, I sometimes have to just find a compromise to make it all work out eventually. =^)

I guess this means I’m on the right track. Maybe sometimes that’s enough, to just be taking steps in a healthier direction than before.