Laying bare the consequences of trauma

  I find it a struggle to engage with the plight of asylum-seeker children held in detention. Of no help to me, the wide acknowledgement that such incarceration is detrimental to their mental health with long-lasting if not permanent consequences. Trauma, we hear, leads to problems with anxiety and depression, at times even to suicide. The term PTSD floats about as some sort of embarrassment. So I thought I would provide a portrait of the consequences of trauma, one that reaches far beyond a overly generalised binary description of anxiety on the one hand and depression on the other. Before I continue I will disclaim any professional psychological knowledge or training.

I am providing here what may happen to the mind of a child through the lens of the mind of the adult.

Sustained trauma is a slow bomb that fragments the mind, sending sub-selves scattering off in all directions. Leaving at the core where once there existed the wellbeing and the joy the bomb obliterated, a knot of ugly fear. A state of permanent alert, poised for flight should fight get too hard, always on guard, startled by the smallest flash or flutter. With alert comes stress, that sense of pressure, weight and effort. This alert stressed state becomes the norm, colouring reality with endless tension and negative thoughts that at times verge on paranoia. Suspicious, wary, drained, you retreat within your life and within yourself. Sometimes you may stare for hours at walls. You have no idea you are in a trance, any more than you are aware that you zone out or go numb from time to time, respite from the vigilance of your ordinary waking state. Memories intrude, lodging themselves in the front room of your mind, haunting you, dragging you back.  Inside your new boxed up self, you can see you are not alone. That there are other selves in the box with you but you scarcely know who they are. And there are times, other times, when one of these selves crashes the scene, takes over the psyche and interprets the world without and the world within. One scene-crasher may be absurdly optimistic, filled with inflated hopes and unattainable plans. Another may be pessimistic, filling the box you inhabit with black.

Over time and with much effort a little co-consciousness may be achieved and you might foster some coherence. But you know you are faulty. You are never sure who is driving you. And so you lose the ability to self-trust. So unpredictable and so draining is this relentless flux that you retreat from the world, preferring a life of little stimulation, avoiding the triggers that launch the extremes.

Here is an extract from a piece I wrote  in 2009. A piece that was cast aside dismissively by someone who had no idea how cruel he was being. I post here to illuminate, not entertain. I am not a poet and I would not claim this as poetry. It is simply a portrait.

 

Queen of the Shit Pile

 

No not funny, I’m not laughing,

Shall I cry instead?

But  I can’t.

I can’t sleep

I can’t concentrate

I can’t relax real well

I can’t remember

I can’t cope

I get confused

I get tired

I get panicked

I’m edgy on edge

I fear, I shock

I don’t want to go outside

I don’t want to be inside

I don’t want company

I don’t want to be alone

I don’t want the fear

I don’t want the stress

I don’t want to keep crying

And bleeding inside.

 

I want to get past this

I want to be well for once

For once free

Of uncertainty

Of insecurity

But then who will save me

From bullies and thugs and fat controllers and evil deniers of truth?

 

Most of all I want to be free

Of my inability to cope

With being in the world

With the world

With all its rough and tumble.

 

I want to feel normal, whatever that might be

And not like a pin cushion,

A tiny advising word

An ambiguity

A rejection of me in my entirety.

A needle prick

A knife stab

And I’m pricked and stabbed all over

Crucified by the crushing

The loneliness of trauma

That severance of belonging

An isolation so painful

It is like dying every day.

 

Unable to cope:-

With public spaces

With queues and waiting

With crowds and audiences

With bureacracies and bosses

With supermarket aisles and driving

Especially with driving.

 

I get so far, and then I have to stop

There is so much I cannot do

So much that confronts me

With myself.

 

I know I hold my breath

I tell myself to breathe

I calm down

It will be all right.

Keep me waiting long

And I feel trapped

Suffocated

Overwhelmed

And I need to get away.

Mouth dry

Vision blurred

Confusion

I tremble and sweat.

 

I try not to sound hysterical

In public where all can hear.

But  I am angry

And I want the world to know

The inside of my prison.

 

Yes it’s time to leave the box

Time to lift the veil

Time to expose to the world

One damaged life in raw relief.

 

No, I haven’t been to war

I have never seen the carnage

And I do not have the luxury

Of a memory

Of before.

 

But isn’t she lovely

So soft and sweet

Caring, compassionate and giving

Understanding and insightful

An inspiration, truly.

Ha! A self-composed veneer

Beneath I am an animal

A timid fawn

With huge eyes cautious

Cunning like a rat

With the survival skills of a cockroach

An adept at gutter-living

Safe in the underworld

Where the rejects live.

 

I know the alcoholics

And the drug addicts in every form

I know the schitzophrenics, the paranoid

The manics and depressives

The socio and psycho paths

The victims and abusers

The oppressors and oppressed

The criminals

The ex-cons

The losers, the dejected.

I know them on the inside

I see inside their souls

I feel their wounds, their pain, their grief

I understand their anguished anger

I feel safe and recognised beside them

At home in the hardship

Protected and secure.

 

A reject on the shit pile I belong

Soiled goods on the sale rack

A marked-down marked-down going cheap.

 

We didn’t know!

We thought she would get fixed

We had no idea she was not fixable

That the damage was that deep.

We thought a little rationalising

A touch of thought control

Some relaxation exercises

Would do the trick for her.

 

Alas it is an illness

For which there is no cure

Her human right to wholeness

Shredded at her core

A wound that rents asunder

Scattered chips and bits in pieces

The matrix of a human.

 

Wierdly, I am psychic

I can read the Book of Life

It is my cross, my burden

That I can penetrate beneath the veil

That I can read you like a script

That I sense the evil in the living dead

And see fractured hearts alive.

 

Hope and ambition have willed me on my way

And a love I see so far from goodness

A love intensely magnifying

If ever I can touch it.

 

Yes I’m lucky I’m so nervous

So strung out highly strung

It keeps me wily

And I’m told that I am strong

But they know not of my addictions

Modest, I agree

It’s fortunate I’m now so sensitive

Or I’d binge like I did wretchedly,

 

Now I live each day, pleasantly

Moderate in my indulgences

That replace the love

I can’t receive.

I bereft my self of need.

Instead I have compulsions

Bizarre little rituals of must

Fulfilling a fatiguing need for order

To create chaos.

Insisting things are done this way

Then forgetting what I’ve said.

And I despair

Of the wasted time I spend staring into nothing

Haunted.

 

Yes, I display myself wide open

For all to hear and stare

But don’t ask any questions

And please

Don’t come too near.

 

Today I am shameless

I tell it as it is

Blunt, direct and candid.

And if I shake

So be it

And if I cry

Hand me a tissue

And if I run away, say

‘God, she’s brave to have been here

We’ll keep an open door for her return.’

 

I am my major life work

My crowning glory

Of achievement and success

Currently at work still

On that project of the self.

It began as a paragraph

A vignette, a cartoon strip

And it grew into an epic

Of encyclopedic length.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: ptsd, trauma