Kim Ma­haraj-Mar­i­ano

Dr Safeeya Mo­hammed

Vic­tim XX* 18 years lat­er af­ter her mur­der, they still hold on to her favourite scarf, though her scent from it has fad­ed, her par­ents say “hold­ing it takes them back”, and re­turns them to her cheer­ful smile. Eigh­teen years lat­er, there is still no jus­tice or even heal­ing for this fam­i­ly.

Sur­vivor XX* re­mem­bers the feel­ing of her abuser’s fin­gers around her neck. Some­times all it takes is a whiff of fa­mil­iar cologne to re­call the rib he broke and it starts to ache. She es­caped an abu­sive re­la­tion­ship 12 years ago but re­lives what hap­pened through Post-Trau­mat­ic Stress Dis­or­der (PTSD); a men­tal health con­di­tion that can oc­cur af­ter var­i­ous kinds of trau­ma. She was on­ly re­cent­ly di­ag­nosed last year dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, the year she was forced to be in iso­la­tion with her thoughts.

Trau­ma can re­sult in se­ri­ous stress and detri­men­tal health con­se­quences for sur­vivors.

Re­cent­ly in Trinidad, we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing spec­trums of trau­ma, we have had some heart­break­ing ac­counts of women who have been raped and bru­tal­ized. We have al­so lost young ado­les­cent males to sui­cide. Trau­ma of this kind is some­thing that af­fects you phys­i­cal­ly first, then emo­tion­al­ly, men­tal­ly, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly. It is a grief of the most pro­found kind, where you lose your sense of trust in the world and peo­ple.

Will life ever be the same again?

It shat­ters your trust in every­thing. De­pend­ing on the trau­ma, you no longer even feel safe in your own skin. Dr Bessel Van der Kolk, a lead­ing ex­pert in the study of trau­ma states that “trau­ma­tized peo­ple chron­i­cal­ly feel un­safe in­side their bod­ies.” Grief is an aching and a long­ing for some­thing you once had, which is now gone. The deep­er the con­nec­tion to what was lost, the deep­er the grief when it is gone.

It comes in waves. In the ini­tial loss, the waves are tu­mul­tuous and chaot­ic. Surfers call these waves ‘vic­to­ry at sea’ sig­ni­fy­ing a huge stormy sea. Life be­comes un­sta­ble and un­cer­tain. You are not sure of any­thing.

Post Trau­mat­ic Stress Dis­or­der (PTSD)

This dis­or­der can de­vel­op in re­sponse to vi­o­lent trau­ma. It in­cludes flash­backs or re­liv­ing, night­mares, in­tru­sive thoughts and im­ages, hy­per­vig­i­lance, dis­as­so­ci­a­tion, self-de­struc­tive ten­den­cies, sub­stance abuse, emo­tion­al numb­ing, dif­fi­cul­ty con­cen­trat­ing, in­som­nia, ir­ri­tabil­i­ty, trau­mat­ic am­ne­sia, de­pres­sion, anx­i­ety, pan­ic at­tacks and much more.

The Dis­as­so­ci­a­tion re­sponse

When your brain sens­es you are in dan­ger, there are four re­spons­es that it can en­gage in an ef­fort to sur­vive. You can ei­ther fight, flee, freeze or fawn.

These re­spons­es can linger af­ter the trau­ma, be­cause a sort of rup­ture takes place psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly. Es­pe­cial­ly in a pro­longed trau­mat­ic and vi­o­lent ex­pe­ri­ence, such as child­hood abuse, gang-rape, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, tor­ture and sim­i­lar vi­o­lent events, your mind can ‘dis­con­nect’ you from the phys­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence as a way of sur­viv­ing. This re­sponse in par­tic­u­lar, called dis­as­so­ci­a­tion, though pro­tec­tive in the mo­ment, takes a long time to heal, but it can be healed.

You can start feel­ing re­al­ly dis­con­nect­ed to every­thing around you and every­thing you have known. But the mem­o­ry of the trau­ma is still stored with­in you, so you can ex­pe­ri­ence flash­backs of the event that seem like they are very vivid and re­al. It will feel like you are re­liv­ing the mo­ment again and again, be­cause the trau­mat­ic event has no ‘date-stamp’ on it, be­cause of the stress hor­mones that were re­leased dur­ing the event.

Your mem­o­ry is al­so very af­fect­ed, as your mind tries to grap­ple with what took place, and mem­o­ries some­times will come back as frag­ments, in­tense and filled with all the emo­tions you ex­pe­ri­enced dur­ing the vi­o­la­tion.

Heal­ing starts by re-es­tab­lish­ing a sense of safe­ty

In the im­me­di­ate af­ter­math of the event, get­ting ad­e­quate phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal help is cru­cial to less­en­ing the long term ef­fects of the trau­ma. One of the things that need to be re-es­tab­lished is the sense of safe­ty, be­cause that will di­rect­ly af­fect the stress hor­mones at­tached to the trau­mat­ic mem­o­ry.

You need to re­con­nect your thoughts with your body, be­cause that con­nec­tion some­times gets bro­ken, so speak­ing with trust­ed and sup­port­ive loved ones and men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als will help you start that process. There are some very good pro­grams that can help with short and long term heal­ing. Find­ing a ther­a­pist who can use these meth­ods will help.

Long Term Heal­ing

One of the im­por­tant as­pects of long-term heal­ing in­volves learn­ing to trust. Usu­al­ly be­cause the vi­o­lent trau­ma in­volved an­oth­er per­son, what is very af­fect­ed is your re­la­tion­ships with oth­er peo­ple, or in­ter­per­son­al re­la­tion­ships. Some ways of do­ing that in­volve teach­ing the body to move in rhythm with oth­ers again.

Just like trau­ma de­stroyed that abil­i­ty to con­nect in a phys­i­cal sense, do­ing a phys­i­cal ac­tion to re­train the body in con­nect­ing will help.

Adapt­ing the Kubler-Ross stages of grief for trau­ma, you might feel de­nial and shock, anger, bar­gain­ing, ac­cep­tance and heal­ing. Thing is, there are no re­al stages in grief or heal­ing from trau­ma. Heal­ing is not a lin­ear thing. Some­times you feel all the emo­tions at once and not in a con­tin­u­um. Some­times you feel noth­ing, empti­ness. Some­times just when you think every­thing is calm a rogue wave of grief or a flash­back comes out of nowhere and hits you. It could have been a song, the taste of a cer­tain meal, the smell of a spe­cif­ic per­fume.

Learn­ing to In­te­grate the Loss

The key el­e­ment is not avoid­ing it. It is like walk­ing in­to the ocean of pain you feel, and feel­ing all the emo­tions as they come. Learn­ing to ac­cept the emo­tions and not run or hide from it, helps to heal it. Like a child that wants your at­ten­tion and keeps get­ting loud­er and more des­per­ate to be heard, so is your grief and trau­ma when you try to ig­nore it. When you sit with your emo­tions and give your­self space to grieve, it will even­tu­al­ly sub­side or lessen. In times when it is in­tense or you are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a ‘wave’, con­nect with some­one who will lis­ten, who you trust, and let them know what mem­o­ries or pain is com­ing up.

Heal­ing in iso­la­tion dur­ing a pan­dem­ic

An­oth­er com­pli­ca­tion in this present time is heal­ing in iso­la­tion due to the world­wide pan­dem­ic. Some­times you will not be able to have clo­sure or go through the cus­tom­ary rit­u­als of grief or heal­ing, es­pe­cial­ly if you are griev­ing a death. What can you do in­stead? Find ways of con­nect­ing with your loved ones to share the ex­pe­ri­ence. You can al­so join on­line sup­port groups or par­tic­i­pate in vir­tu­al ther­a­py. Find ways to ho­n­our the loss, for ex­am­ple, if it is the death of some­one, cre­ate a memo­r­i­al in your home to re­mem­ber them by. Make keep­sake al­bums filled with pic­tures, things they said, mem­o­ries from loved ones. Jour­nalling how you feel, what you re­mem­ber, the hopes and dreams you had... the new hopes and dreams you cre­ate af­ter the loss or trau­ma.

Heal­ing is not a lin­ear jour­ney

Some­times heal­ing feels like you have been fight­ing a bat­tle for a long time. You will get dis­cour­aged, de­pressed, maybe have thoughts about end­ing it all. Sur­round your­self with sup­port­ive peo­ple if you can or find a sup­port­ive com­mu­ni­ty on­line.

As Dr Bessel Van der Kolk ex­plains in an in­ter­view, “Peo­ple get bet­ter by be­friend­ing them­selves. Peo­ple can leave the trau­ma be­hind if they learn to feel safe in their bod­ies—they can feel the plea­sure to know what they know and feel what they feel. The brain does change be­cause of trau­ma and now we have tools to help peo­ple be qui­et and present ver­sus hi­jacked by the past.”

For Men­tal Health Re­sources in Trinidad and To­ba­go:

https://www.find­carett.com/