"Let's Give 'Em Something (Not) to Talk About..."

We mentioned in a post yesterday about reading in the introduction to Belleruth Naparstek's book, "Invisible Heroes: Survivors of Trauma and How They Heal," how talking about trauma may actually re-trigger the traumatic memories of PTSD survivors. (That post is linked here.) Further on in the book, she goes into a little more detail:

"Trauma produces changes in the brain that impede a person's ability to think and talk about the event but that actually accentuate their capacity for imaging and emotional-sensory experiencing around it. Imagery [then] uses what's most accessible in the traumatized brain to help with the healing."

And further:

"...Too few survivors know this and, sadly, too few professionals as well.  So people are not only baffled and alarmed by their symptoms; they are more often than not seeking -- and getting -- the wrong kind of help from people accustomed to using discussion, thinking, and language -- help that often misfires."

(Help of a particularly left-brain-oriented rather than right-brain-oriented kind.)  She continues:

"It's not that talk therapy is bad.  The emotional support of a sympathetic listener is as critically important as it ever was.  It's just that it's not enough by itself.  If a person has been deeply impacted by trauma, it's more than likely that he first needs to find an oblique route through the imaginal realm, using metaphor and symbolic language, to help him manage his symptoms, find a sense of safety, recontact his wholest self, and make language a viable avenue again. Once the imagery has established a beachhead of safety within the survivor, then the tools of language and cognition can be enlisted to help with healing.  But without the imagery first, the thinking and talking can run aground and catalyze even more severe symptoms, such as flashbacks and nightmares."

Now Naparstek is well-known for her work with imagery (CDs and DVDs she's produced, examples of which are here and here, etc.), and in the course of the rest of the book, I'm sure she'll bolster her case quite effectively. But what she's saying, even to the untrained ear, is this: there's often another, more indirect (aka, oblique) "way in" with trauma -- where touching on the trauma directly would be just too...traumatizing.

That reminds me of two different experiences.

One with a combat veteran, at the point of suicide, who wanted to discuss his experiences. He had me promise that if we started to discuss what he'd been through, that I wouldn't let him down. I promised, but what happened in the months that followed is that we never actually discussed those experiences in depth, in so many words.  We talked in and around them, and kept circling back to them.  But we never just camped out and stayed there, in a painful way for either one of us.  There was movement: surging forward, but also retreating. And no constant painful pressure to "uncover" all that he'd been through. What impressed me was that even so, he began to do signficantly better. Was it someone really listening to him? Or was it his being able to talk about the parts that mattered to him?  I don't really know.  All I know is that it wasn't constant painful pressure on the sore spots. It moved around, and kept on moving. And yet it helped.

Another is an experience, more recent, with a type of bodywork. An Asian bodywork that we've talked about on the blog here in the past.  I got to experience it for the first time, in the "hands" of a veteran healer, whose training was extensive. It felt a little bit like wrestling.  We were in constant contact. He pushed, pulled; I pushed against; yielded; we kept going.  I noticed that he would push just to the point where it was getting really uncomfortable physically for me; then he would pull back; circle around; do something else; in essence, divert or distract me; then come back to the same spot, where suddenly he was able to go deeper, encounter less resistance, create more change.  Obviously it's hard to articulate about a kinesthetic experience precisely with language, but I was struck by the analogy to conversation about difficult topics with a loved one.  How the give-and-take with pressure on a sore spot could only be there for so long; before the same cycle of retreat; divert; distract; come back and find the spot would yield to greater depth; etc.

Bodywork and therapeutic conversations: maybe both prefer the circuitous, rather than the head-on way in. Trust is crucial, but also the sense that the glaring spotlight of pressure isn't there to crumple underneath. Sideways makes better headway, sometimes.