Page 196 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 5

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

Maria Drechsler (Switzerland)
Comment

to“Living with Trauma Memories“

I would like to thank Diana Langberg for this
touching, informative and empathetic article.
Langberg’s description of what it means to live
with memories of trauma is impressive. In clear
words, she made it possible to feel the despair,
loneliness, helplessness and hopelessness that
can be triggered by traumatisation. Maria Drechsler has a Diploma
from the Swiss Psycho logists‘ Fede-
Langberg divides the trauma therapy presented ration, is a psychotherapist and has
here into two phases. In the first phase, the em- an M. Sc. in psychotraumatology.
phasis is on dealing with the memories of the She works in the Klinik SGM Lan-
trauma. How can healing take place? Trauma genthal, where she is head of the
means losing faith in an “ideal world”. Victims psychiatric/psycho therapeutic day
of trauma attempt to blott out memories of the clinic.
horrifying event. They no longer wish to think Article by Maria Drechsler you can
about it or be reminded of it in any way. But this see here: Journal 4, page 108
is impossible. The memories cannot be blotted
out. In her article, Langberg decribes three cen-
tral things that are indis-pensable for working
through traumatisation. These are: talking, tears
and time. Traumatisation often leads to those the starting point. In my opinion, speaking pre-
affected falling silent. Trauma causes dumbness. supposes the estab-lishing of a relationship in
All the more important, then, to speak about it. which the healing can take place. The restora-
Only in this way can what has hap-pened – and tion of se-curity, as described, for example, by
surviving it – be valued appropriately. Langberg Judith Herman in her book “Die Narben der
illustrates this compre-hensively in her article. Ge-walt - Traumatische Erfahrungen verstehen
In the process, I was deeply impressed by her und überwinden” [“Trauma and recovery: The
tone of esteem for the victims and her loving aftermath of violence from domestic abuse to
treatment of them. From my experience and political terror”], is necessary be-fore it is pos-
work with traumatised persons, however, I ob- sible to work through a trauma in the sense of
serve that speaking about the trauma is not the remembering and talking.
first step. Traumatised patients have often lost
trust in the world and also in other persons. Yet talking, in the sense of giving a narrative of
This then becomes clear during the therapy. The what happened, is not enough. Emotional par-
working alliance between patient and therapist ticipation is needed. Langberg makes this clear
cannot be assumed as given. The patient is often by emphasising the ne-cessity of tears. The fee-
distrustful at the beginning of the treatment and lings associated with the trauma have to be re-
full of doubts. Trauma victims doubt whether lived piece by piece. Emotional expression, e.g.
the therapist is capable of meeting their suffe- through pictures or a poem, is absolutely essen-
ring or will ultimately shy away from it. It can tial for a recovery.
also happen that malicious, exploitative moti-
ves are imputed to the therapist. This observa- My experience is that the third factor, namely
tion is to show that, while speaking about the time, is also particularly central. Words need
trauma is absolutely necessary, it is not however time, feelings need time. An accelerated pro-

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