Trauma Writes Its Own Script

  “That’s not the shape of my heart.”     -Sting

Dis-ease exists.  Its ubiquitous nature twists and turns in smoky veils in and out of the crevices of the mountains.  Yet the modern, stultifying and skeptical stoicism increasingly forces denial on sufferers. To continue on this path of irresponsibility in caring and respecting people who are in pain and need is not just a society choosing to embrace ignorant indifference, it is a sinful, gross negligence and has led to great suffering.  A patient wearily responded to his therapist: “A fuckin’ pill is not going to heal me.”  That being said ‘wise diagnoses’ must include safe, efficacious medicines proscribed by mature, healthy and qualified ‘healers’. 

                                  There’s a point isn’t there?

“Comfort My people.” –God

The dis-ease in almost every case is a result of societal unrests along a continuum from family to government to institutions.  The dis-ease in almost every case is strongly affected by the creeds and ideologies of the variety of groups.  As the drug culture hammers away at the foundations of our civilization destroying not just individuals but whole families, the myopic views toward the nature of being and suffering become one more nail in the coffin of tormented sufferers.

And since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let each exercise them accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith; if service, in his serving; or he who teaches, in his teaching; or he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness. (Romans 12:6-8)

...that is, that I may be encouraged together with you while among you, each of us by the other's faith, both yours and mine. (Romans 1:12)

And we urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with all men. (1 Thessalonians 5:14)

 

Metaphor provides an avenue of indirect communication between patient and therapist, later to be exchanged for a more direct communication, and also provides the patient and therapist with a measure of relief not available with encounter of a more direct nature. Cox and Thielgaard (1987)state:

We found that an image could safely hold experience which was too painful, too brittle, or too broken to be firm enough to tolerate analysis. Such patients enabled us to see that the image, activated by metaphor, could be the location of exploration of the fabric of support. (p.xiii)

Cox and Thielgaard (1987, p.xiii) use as a key to their book, the words of Bachelard: "But the image has touched the depths before it stirs the surface."...

Cox and Theilgaard (1987) describe how the metaphor 'I wonder who would win the medal for skating on thin ice?', introduced into a group session, furthered a therapeutic process in both an exploratory and a supportive direction. Sometimes a fusion of inner and outer world phenomena is encouraged. For example, one patient in the group referred to the failure of his social supports while another referred to the 'thin ice' being inside him, implying threatening loss of internal control. They say: "each member proclaimed experience which would have remained concealed, had it not been for the skating on thin ice mutative metaphor." (Cox and Theilgaard, 1987, p.80).

The metaphor energises alternative ways of viewing experience, bringing to the surface material that the patient has hitherto tried to suppress and placing that material in the "pending action file" (Cox and Theilgaard, 1987, p.99).

The metaphor permits the therapist to sail as close to the wind as possible in the face of the ever present risk of going too far too fast, which could block therapeutic movement and progress. Cox and Theilgaard (1987) refer to Kahn's (1979) statement that metaphors have the ability to intensify the patient's already deep initiative by taking the therapeutic process a step further.     ~Dr Aharon Segal, Metaphors in Psychotherapy

...“there is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bullshit. I mean, you just can’t define it.” Then an odd, reflective look crosses his face, as if he’s taking in the strangeness of this scene: Allen Frances, lead editor of the fourth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (universally known as the DSM-IV), the guy who wrote the book on mental illness, confessing that “these concepts are virtually impossible to define precisely with bright lines at the boundaries.” For the first time in two days, the conversation comes to an awkward halt...”

However, I find the statements by Allen Frances comforting because no one in the health profession worth his salt can long deny the reality of the unique sanctity of each human being and the awful individualistic realities of the causes underlying ‘mental illness’—a misnomer.  Labels are skeletal outlines—at best.  The ‘focus’ should always be the total human being suffering, in desperate need not the ‘outline’ or the ‘bottom line’.  Those who slap ‘propaganda’ and ‘agenda’ into the healing arena go way beyond performing a ludicrous dog-and-pony show.  The act is criminal for it breaks the healing code of ‘do no harm.’  The inept, vacuous greed-mongers should not be allowed in the profession nor should the practice of taking money from drug companies et al ever again be tolerated.  CV’s and annual salaries are not the basis of worth and efficacy as a healer.
Addendum:  


He consulted the DSM-IV and concluded that the patient had obsessive-compulsive disorder.
“Did it change the way you treated her?” I asked, noting that he’d worked with her for quite a while without naming what she had.
“No.”
“So what would you say was the value of the diagnosis?”
“I got paid.”
  ~From article on interview with Allen Frances...

I still find tears flowing when I realize that a ‘dis-ease’ shrouds my own being and my everyday life.  I have studied and fought the battle from chemistry, pharmaceutical essays, physiological treatises to religious tracts, the Bible, papal and saint writings, healing gifts to poets and their lives to psychotherapy tomes to epistemologists, philologists and philosophers. My complex journey through the mountains of the mind and soul and heart only confirm the presence of more mountains, more ravines and more oceans.  There is little I have not only read but studied, hard.  I and thou are realities for me as are subject-object. 

A child in trauma—whatever the source—doesn’t have the toolbox of resources to withstand such horrific forces tearing into his entire being.  It is tremendously difficult enough for the adult for the duration of his life to deal with such deep and profound things. 

But for a child...