Learning to cope following a traumatic experience
By: Judy Shepps Battle
The terrorist acts of Sept. 11 2001, touched our hearts and unified our country in a special way. For a brief period in time we came together and acknowledged the immediate traumatic stress we felt as individuals and as a people.
But in these past six months, the memory of the depth of our fear has faded. This is a normal reaction to traumatic events, but it is not healthy. Unless we can consciously own both our terror and our resiliency, our psychological calendars will stay forever stuck on 9-11.
It is easy to assume that 9-11 was a special kind of trauma because of its enormity. In reality, the human psyche does not differentiate between the nature of traumatic events.
It does not matter whether the offending event is an oncoming car that veers into our lane of traffic, or a criminal assault. It does not matter whether the trauma is being fired from a job, or watching two planes crash into the Twin Towers.
The nature of a trauma is defined more by its suddenness and our inability to control it than by the specific event. It is overwhelming to our psyches that we cannot predict or prepare for danger. Once traumatized, we lose faith in our future ability to defend ourselves.
This fear is what causes us to bury the memory or to disassociate from the feelings of shock and vulnerability felt during the episode. We may intellectually minimize the event or develop selective amnesia about it, which may lead to chronic depression, identity disorders or antisocial behavior.
Most critically, buried trauma does not disappear. Each new frightening event piggybacks on the previous ones and produces a burst of fear and sadness until it is either expressed or buried. And if it is buried, post-traumatic stress syndrome develops, which the sufferer is unable to communicate.
The events of 9-11 offer a unique opportunity for learning how to deal with both personal and national trauma.
We remember our elected leaders quickly passing from shock to direct action on military and domestic fronts. We still see the hundreds of volunteers who came to the site of the Twin Towers to offer food, goods and muscle power. And we recall that hats were passed and organizations formed to provide financial assistance to bereaved families.
I hope we also remember the spiritual energy that swept this country. The various names of God were used without hesitation in our songs and chants. We stood with palms lifted to the heavens, or sat in silent meditation. Houses of worship overflowed.
Patriotic songs usually heard only in sports arenas and school assemblies became integral parts of social events. And former Beatle Paul McCartney reminded us of the values of our founding fathers with his rendition of "Freedom."
Six months later, Ground Zero has become a top tourist attraction; viewing platforms have been erected for visitors. The site is at once an eerie burial place and a shrine. Bodies are unearthed daily and searchers stop to honor each new human discovery.
But we hear less and less about the personal backgrounds of the shrouded bodies and how their survivors are coping.
Families and friends are rarely interviewed, as they were in those first days after the attacks. We know little of how the surviving spouses, children and friends have adjusted to their sudden loss. We simply expect and encourage people to "go on with life."
Perhaps this is because personal mourning does not sell newspapers or attract TV viewers. Or maybe it is just too close to home regardless of circumstance, we are never "ready" for the death of a loved one.
"Grieving" is not something we are taught, and many of us simply bury our painful feelings along with the deceased. Similarly, we do not teach how to process grief when traumatic loss occurs on a national level.
For my generation, the closest thing to sudden national loss that we experienced was the 1960s criminal deaths of John and Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.
Although these traumas were immediately grieved publicly, they were forgotten except for anniversary ceremonies. There was no vehicle to share our evolving feelings of loss or be privy to the families’ process.
The events of Sept. 11 involved a more intense loss — one of faith that our country’s shores were inviolable.
Our national leaders were not able to protect us from attack; in fact, they were as shocked and surprised as the ordinary civilian. "Time" magazine recently carried an insightful article, "Can 9/11 Happen Again?" Does America have the capacity, it asked, to stop the next terrorist attack? The convincing answer was "no."
The awareness that we cannot predict or prepare for another terrorist attack reminds us of previous traumatic situations. It is normal to experience flashbacks of other "out-of-control" situations and to use familiar defense mechanisms of intellectualization and denial.
But it is only by sharing these feelings that we learn we are not alone in fear or in faith.
We can learn much from hearing how others experienced and coped with 9-11 on a long-term basis. Even if we are in shock and cannot contribute, it is helpful to have a record of others’ experiences available when we are ready to identify and process our feelings.
For those able to express their experience, strength and hope, the exercise is extraordinarily cathartic. Whether through spoken words, cyber message boards, song, dance, community rituals or other creative means, we can draw comfort and protection from one another.
As the emphasis shifts from our feeling impending danger to identifying the emotional and spiritual strengths that have helped us survive trauma, we can cope with many more bumps in our personal and national road.
As a community of survivors we can learn to face an uncertain world with inner certainty.
Judy Shepps Battle is a South Brunswick resident, addictions specialist, consultant and freelance writer. She can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]