Wounds can heal

The seventh newsletter is (mainly) about trauma (again)

In last week’s newsletter I talked about trauma being on a spectrum. Going from the heavy stuff that we generally think about when we hear the word ‘trauma’, to small things everybody encounters. These small traumas can add up and, without us realizing it, seriously hamper us later in life. 

So does everybody need a therapist?

Well, yes and no… sort of.

Trauma redefinition

“As long as we see it as a wound, it’s a wound that can be healed. If we see it as a bunch of things that happened, that will never unhappen.” — Gabor Maté

We use the word trauma for both physical and psychological wounds. The word wound is key here. It’s important to make a distinction between the (external) event itself and the impact. There’s a difference between the cut of a knife and the wound it creates. 

This is the same with psychological trauma. Trauma is not what happens to us, it’s what happens inside of us as a result of what happens to us. 

How did we interpret what happened? What meaning did we attach to the actual observable event? What conclusions did we draw?

Are we sustaining the wound?

In the last newsletter I gave the example of my ‘traumatic experience’ of hearing an unexpected loud sound when I was younger. This resulted in me feeling unsafe whenever I heard semi-loud sounds because I’d unconsciously decided that loud sounds weren’t safe. I was able to resolve this by going back and reinterpreting the event, separating it from my conclusions.

Making this distinction between event (the cut) and impact (the wound) empowers us to reinterpret traumatic events in our past. 

With a little help.

Peer support (or expert companions)

Peer support is using your own experiences to support others. We’re all partly peer supporters when it comes to trauma. Although we might not recognize it.

I recently watched a webinar by Dr. Richard G. Tedeschi on ‘post-traumatic growth’. A term he coined together with Lawrence Calhoun in the 90’s.

He explains how at the Boulder Crest foundation there are programs for veterans and first responders where peers do the training. Not professionals.

Tedeschi uses the term ‘expert companions’ for this instead of peer supporter. 

The core need that is being met by the companions is listening. In an example on teaching his students, he emphasizes:

“Just listen, and relate to this human being.“ 

In the same way that we need a doctor or a surgeon for the bigger wounds, and everyone can put a bandaid on a slightly scraped knee, we need therapists to deal with extreme cases of trauma and everybody else to listen and relate.

You don't need to be a coach or therapist to do this (although some listening skills might help). We shouldn’t suppress our capacity to support our peers on the basis of not being qualified. Put another way; we shouldn’t stop ourselves from offering a bandaid just because we don’t know how to perform knee surgery.