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. 

Nightmare

When seasons did not change

and Spring was dead,

she could not hear the birds sing.

Every day was night,

and the clocks stopped.

Iced up in silence it was,

the ringing in her ears

deafening.

Taut,

tensed,

frozen,
waiting,
she turned 'round
to see herself,

but Memory had slipped

behind

the mirror.

Memory: The Essential Spark (Part 2)

Circling the Periphery

I revisit a key passage in my first installment of "Memory:  The Essential Spark": 

"One cannot dependably embark upon a new beginning, however, until he can harness his present reality -- however beautiful or ugly it may be -- to the visceral rhythms and textures of his past.  This fusion of present and past is the essential spark that will propel him forward with significance.  The present moment, alone, packs no such momentum." 

In this passage, did I mean to say that a traumatized person with amnesia must fill in his largest "blank spots" with memory before he can move on with his life?

Emphatically "No."  That would leave the amnesiac's life "on hold" indefinitely.

While the amnesiac's worthy goal would be to fill in his blank spots with substantial recall, this cannot necessarily occur "soon."  Nor is it always and everywhere possible.

The amnesiac can, however, work creatively with the "life material" he still has.  Songs, scents, and tastes, for example, are often noteworthy for "bringing us back" to given times in our lives.  These can be useful sensory aids to reaching our most uplifting memories that remain much closer to the surface.

By utilizing the memory he still possesses, the amnesiac can at least begin to circle the periphery of the forgotten parts of his life.  He can rekindle some of his old interests, his old hobbies.  He can begin to cultivate, anew, his old talents.  He can pick up the threads from his previous life by revisiting those positive avenues of pursuit that still remain viable.  He can begin to feel, through sensory and emotional "cues," his visceral memory of himself. 

All of this serves to link the amnesiac back to the familiar old "rhythms" and "textures" of his past.  There is an undeniable movement and power to this reconnection with the sense of self.  Synthesis with "the old self" has the domino effect of strengthening the entire person and setting him back on the path to real growth. This, in turn, exponentially increases his ability to recall the smaller, more routine elements of his past existence.  Recall becomes, now, a continual and expanding process, however mundane the details of recall may seem.  

In this way, the amnesiac is effectively placed "back in Time."  He is once again a player on the field of Life.

Simultaneously, the ground is also prepared for his potential recollection of bigger and more challenging "missing chapters."   

Memory: The Essential Spark (Part 1)

Continuity.  Without it, we're sunk.  With it, we thrive.

Continuity is based upon memory, history.

Traumatic ruptures in our lives lead to fractures of our personal narratives.  When our fractured life stories are missing whole chapters (either obscured or completely forgotten), we are captives of the present moment.  This chronological captivity, devoid of beloved keepsakes and other time markers, is like landing on foreign turf without a suitcase or a map.  We lack the customary tools of orientation and survival.

Thus resigned solely to the present moment without easy access (in words, memory, or both) to our past inspirations and motivations, we have little that is familiar to grab onto, and nothing to use as a steppingstone to the next chapter of our lives.

Even partial amnesia can lead us to "invent" new beginnings that are not rooted in our concrete personal histories, but which spring, instead, from misty visions of what we "think" we "should" do next.

One cannot dependably embark upon a new beginning, however, until he can harness his present reality -- however beautiful or ugly it may be -- to the visceral rhythms and textures of his past.  This fusion of present and past is the essential spark that will propel him forward with significance.  The present moment, alone, packs no such momentum.

We need the knowing, organic force of our own history behind us.  The more smooth and fluid the narrative, the fewer missing chapters there are, the stronger this root of future motivation will be.  Our personal history nurtures and animates who we are.

In the richness of our personal histories, in our memories, we are reminded most strongly of our "reason for being," of fresh wonder, curiosity, awe, of that which innately inspires and drives us.

We are creatures of Time, living in Time.  Because we cannot see one Eternal moment, we are dependent upon all the clues that memory can give us in order to anchor ourselves firmly in Today, with secure bridges between past and present that we can easily traverse.

Without the gift of memory and the history that memory builds, these critical bridges collapse and we fall into the void of timelessness.  We are not equipped for such a void.

We need the "tick tock" of a clock.  We need the rhythm of routine.  We need as many details as possible to remind us continually of who we are, why we want what we want, why we work, why we love, why we pray.

Let nothing and no one deprive us of our personal and collective histories.  History is the backbone of our lives.  In memory is our fuel and inspiration for the future.

Unvoiced

Traumatic amnesia has a discernible pulse, like the vibrations Beethoven relied upon during his encroaching deafness.

One can't hear the actual crack in Time that occurred at the moment of instantaneous re-indexing and "forgetting," but one can feel its stunning reverberations like the throbbing after a concussion.

One knows the amnesia is there, under the surface, silent but filled to the brim with old moments and old meanings, merging at times with the present, causing the thoughts to jam and the responses to slow . . . . because the internal intersections are so overloaded with thoughts which can be neither "seen" nor "heard."

Yet, these thoughts exert their effects.  They are not "dead."  They are not "gone." 

They live, and there is a sound that belongs only to them.