Heartache vs. Trauma

Some thoughts jotted down to myself a few months ago . . . copied and pasted here with some small additions:

There is a marked difference between what I'll call "heartache" (e.g., long-lasting or recurring sorrow over loss or emotional deprivation) and "trauma."

Heartache can involve sorrow, grief, and all the colors of emotion that raw pain and angst can produce.  Heartache can be intense, persistent, excruciating, depleting . . . but heartache remains "linear," "predictable."  Heartache does not intrinsically bring about a loss of control of one's environment or a direct impact on self-management. 

Trauma, however, involves a "three-dimensional" shock to the entire person.  Whether it is sudden or prolonged, it remains a jarring factor, an intrusion into normality, a severe interruption that shatters one's internal clock and has the capacity to alter everything -- including one's memory, sense of self, metabolism, and neurology.  Trauma, unlike heartache, shakes and rattles everything in its path.  It is the polar opposite of "predictable."  It robs the individual of the dignity of any regular rhythm and sense of control of his environment. 

With heartache, one still retains the capacity to manage one's environment and one's self in a reasonable, predictable manner.  One's basic sense of self remains essentially unchanged.

With trauma, everything of that nature is up for grabs.  One cannot guarantee, for oneself, control of anything.  That certainty, that reliance on predictability, is simply gone.  One's basic sense of self can be profoundly altered. 

Trauma can be accompanied by heartache.  Heartache can be accompanied by trauma.  But the two have different qualities and repercussions.

Apples and oranges can be placed into the same fruit basket, and often are.  But they remain two different fruits.

It is extremely important, therefore, when discussing painful issues with another, to clarify this very crucial difference between the essential quality and repercussions of "grief, loss, and deprivation" -- and the essential quality and repercussions of "trauma."

Why?  Because, for example, one person who has suffered pain and loss but no trauma might be involved in a discussion with another person who has, in fact, been traumatized.  This first person must be made aware that trauma is yet a different animal which must be understood on its own terms.

Because trauma assaults the very self at its core, it has the power to "fog up" the traumatized person's internal approach to daily challenges -- challenges otherwise thought to be "simple" or a "mere matter of employing the will" by the non-traumatized population.  It is the "daily employment of the will," precisely, which has been severely intruded upon -- first by trauma and, later, by its burdensome aftereffects. 

Trauma, therefore, can leave many unjust humiliations and perceived incompetencies in its wake.  The traumatized person may have lost various aspects of memory and, along with those lost aspects of memory, certain life skills or cognitive/emotional processing skills.  Or perhaps these skills were in the process of developing and were then rudely "interrupted" by the trauma.  With even small bits of memory retrieval or reorienting, some or all of these things can come back, rebound, begin again. 

To discuss which thing (e.g., heartache vs. trauma) causes qualitatively "more suffering" and "less suffering" would, of course, be exceedingly ugly and uncharitable.  Suffering cannot be weighed or measured.  Each person's suffering -- whatever it happens to be -- is as much as that person can handle, and that is enough for a listener to know.  Pain is pain.  All pain is worthy of respect, attention, and compassion.

However, if one is attending to heartache in another, one does well to clarify that point to oneself before speaking, so that one speaks appropriately to the true source of difficulty.

Likewise, if one is attending to the repercussions of trauma in another, one had best know that.  The special needs brought about by trauma are simply different and, to many people, quite unexpected.  The angle of approach had better be different if one is to speak intelligently to a victim of trauma.

If an individual person has experienced both heartache and trauma, he obviously cannot be divided into two separate entities.  Still, the distinction applies as much as ever when the two different sources of pain and difficulty exist within the same person.  Each source of distress must be heard and appreciated for what it is.  This may require extra questions and clarifications on the part of the listener. 

It's just so important for one to ask as many questions as necessary of another before blindly assuming, "Ah, I know exactly what you're talking about."

It's supremely important to be perfectly sure that one really does.