Back From the Brink: A Family Guide to Overcoming Traumatic Stress, by Don R. Catherall, Ph.D.
Table of Contents | Introduction | Afterword
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AFTERWORD

You now have a picture of the trauma response, including the variety of ways in which the trauma survivor and his loved ones can suffer and the ways in which they all can recover. I've drawn a map for recovery; whether you've personally been traumatized or are the loved one of someone who's been traumatized, the map can help you recognize what you're looking for and, I hope, get there sooner.

I've emphasized the importance of processing the trauma and tried to show how, if you are a trauma survivor, you can use your relationships with people who care about you to help you process it. Although processing is an internal event, it's stimulated by external events, particularly by examining your feelings and attitudes with someone you trust. Processing may take quite some time, for you're coming to terms with a new view of yourself and your world. But there may be moments, particularly those that occur with the catalyst of a ritual, in which your new worldview can evolve abruptly. I've pointed you toward some of the rituals that are already available to you and suggested ways you can develop your own rituals.

As you process the trauma, its meaning can change for you. And as its meaning changes, it can lose some of its prominence in your mind and become a part of your past, instead of your present. While this may release you from your domination by the trauma, it may not change many of the negative things that have happened in your life as a result of your living with traumatization. Along with processing your traumatization, you must take actions to improve other aspects of your life as well. You must attend to your physical health, your life‑style, and your self‑esteem. Any of these can bog down your progress in processing your traumatization.

My Interest in Trauma

I grew up in Dallas and was a senior in high school in November 1963, when John F. Kennedy flew to Love Field Airport that fateful Friday. I arranged to be off from school to join the many young people who greeted his plane at the airport. President Kennedy refused to go right to his car‑he insisted on walking over to the fence and shaking hands with some of the people in the crowd. I shook hands with the President of the United States, and half an hour later he was killed by an assassin in my home town.

Like so many people in this country, I felt that loss as if he had been a member of my family. I went through a trauma response‑years of coming to think of the world in a different way. It was no longer the safe world I had lived in up until then. After Kennedy's assassination, there followed a series of assassinations of famous people, and before the 1960s were over, many people had lost their sense of security and were angry that they didn't feel safe. The values of American society lost their meaning for a lot of people during that period.

One of the things I did to deal with it all was joining the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. Boot camp has a way of giving life meaning very quickly. I lived through several traumatic events in Vietnam; the worst was the loss of my closest friends. I lived another trauma response of many years' duration after I returned from Vietnam.

At the worst of my traumatization following Vietnam, I was emotionally numb to almost everything. Sleep problems, particularly recurring nightmares, haunted me. I was very lonely and cut off from people. I felt different because of the war, and I was still trying to figure out what I believed. I listened to both sides of the war controversy and didn't know who was right. I knew I wanted it to end, that I didn't want any more people to die. I looked for answers. I searched through philosophy, tried to express myself by writing poetry, and struggled to figure what I was going to do with myself.

In the 1970s, I stumbled into the field of mental health, seeking help as much as offering it. I worked for six and a half years at a residential facility for children and adolescents. That place, the Oaks Center of the Brown Schools in Austin, was my recovery environment. It was like a healthy family‑stable, expressive, supportive, tolerant, and wise. My friends and my work there helped me put the meaning back into my life. My family in Dallas was also supportive and tolerant of the many years I took to get my life together.

I know many veterans like myself who healed during the 1970s. Unfortunately, many more have yet to settle in with a healthy family. But more than the veterans were traumatized by the Vietnam War (and perhaps because it was on the heels of Kennedy's assassination)‑I think the whole country was traumatized by it.

Of course, a lot of people did much to try to deal with the trauma of the war, but taken as a whole, I think the entire country was affected and lived through a trauma response that wasn't really healed until the veterans were welcomed home in the 1980s. That may have been too late for some of them, but I think the country itself needed to do it as badly as the veterans needed it. Welcome home parades are part of our natural healing from wars.

You've probably read this book because of a particular trauma that you or a loved one has suffered. Now you have the chance to put what you've read to work. Of course, every trauma is different, but the pattern of a trauma response is basically the same. It may vary in intensity, duration, and symptoms. But underlying it all, someone's worldview has been shaken, and they need time and support while they rebuild it. It's up to you to apply the principles of recovery to your particular situation.

When I was a boy, I saw a tree blasted by lightning. It split down the middle, then lay in two great halves on the ground. It went down in the spring, but some of the leaves on the tree stayed green into the fall. The tree was refusing to die, although I assumed that its death was inevitable. Late in the fall, the park service came and cut the dead parts away from the tree, but they left a section of the trunk that was still alive. My friends and I played on the trunk of the tree, giving no thought as to why they would leave it on the ground still attached to the roots.

The next spring, I discovered a sapling growing straight up out of the roots, tall and strong. It looked like a limb, but I guess it was a new trunk. It grew over the years into a large tree with a strange little section that grew out near its base. The tree had survived. It didn't survive the way I would have predicted (but the park service must have known what they were doing).

If you walk through a grove of trees and look closely, you'll see many signs of the traumas they've endured‑places where limbs have been lost, where trunks had to angle to accommodate an obstacle. If you look at the tree's rings, you'll see the years when water was scarce and the tree had to restrict its growth. Similarly, there are people around you who've been through traumas‑many more than you might think. The signs of trauma are there with the people as well, but they're less obvious. You have to talk with them to determine if they've had to heal over a place where something was lost, or grow in a new direction in order to deal with some obstacle.

Every one of those people has experienced their trauma response in their own particular way, just as you and your loved ones must deal with your particular traumatization in your own way. But the better you understand the territory you're in, the better your chances of finding your way through it. Now you have a map.

Good navigating!