Page 188 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 5

Trauma Recovery Training at a Seminary? Introducing Global Trauma Recovery Institute

Diane Langberg (USA)
Living with Trauma Memories

(First presented in Kigali, Rwanda 2011 to ca- have the experience of not being able to find
regivers) something in our brains or forget something
but that is not the same as having it disappear.
Today we will be talking about coping with or Since that is the case it would seem that we must
living with trauma memories. Anyone who has then learn how to live with such memories so
trauma memories knows that one of the things that they are not destructive to our present life.
they feel is the strong desire for them to go What I want to focus on today are things that
away. If they cannot get them to disappear, they help those with trauma memories to live with
at least want to be able to forget them; they want them, to honor them and yet to still live their
to hide them from themselves. Those who try to present lives in productive and creative ways.
hide or forget them also know the experience We are going to do this in two ways. The first
of having them continue to break through into thing we will do is discuss three ways human
your conscious mind. Listen to a quote from a beings can respond to trauma memories to
trauma survivor: “I live beside it. It is right the- move toward recovery. The second part will be
re, fixed, unchangeable, wrapped in the tough about three ways for traumatized people to take
skin of memory that separates itself from the a stand against the trauma and for life.
present me. I wish the skin to become toug-
her, for I fear it will grow thinner and crack, First Phase of Trauma Recovery
permitting the trauma to spill out and capture Following a traumatic experience every human
me.” Here is one more: “My head is filled with being must make the heart breaking adjustment
garbage, all these images you know, and sounds, to a new world full of losses. You recall from
and my nostrils filled with smells…you can’t ex- our earlier discussion that trauma involves an
cise it…it’s like another skin beneath this skin event that threatens life or physical safety, that
and you cannot shed it…I am not like you. You takes away choice and results in overwhelming
have one vision of life and I have two…I have a fear. This includes things like war, violence,
double life.” rape, sexual abuse and physical abuse. When
This woman, a survivor of the Nazi holocaust these things happen to human beings they feel
has described a very common experience. alone, helpless, humiliated and hopeless. Fol-
Though she tries to forget or hide the memory lowing trauma people turn inward, away from
from herself it continues to live beside her and life, because the memories and the feelings are
she is always fearful that it will reach out and all that they can handle. This is not wrong; it
grab her. You cannot erase trauma memories. is necessary for a while. However, eventually if
Listen to a quote from a psychologist: “What life is to go on the person must return to the
cannot be talked about can also not be put to outside world. What kinds of things are needed
rest, and if it is not, the wounds continue to to help people face what is inside, to remember
fester from generation to generation.” (Bettle- well and yet still be able to return to us and to
heim, 1984, p. 166). life in a way that is good?
To walk into memories of trauma is to encoun- Recovery involves a reversal of the experience of
ter anguished and humiliated memory. It means trauma. Trauma brings silence because it feels
dealing with content and searching for forms, like there are no words to really describe what
for such memories defy all normal categories. happened. Trauma brings emotional darkness
It is about speaking the unspeakable, explaining and aloneness because it feels like no one cares
the unexplainable and bearing the unbearable. and no one could possibly understand. Trauma
Trauma memories do not disappear from our makes time stand still because we get so lost in
minds. Our brains are made in such a way what happened we cannot see forward and we
that we do not forget anything. We sometimes have lost hope. There are three main things that

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