Deep C.U.T.
(Complex Unaddressed Trauma)
Once upon a time, the United States of America sent young men and women into a war-zone to protect its interests. In these war zones, these soldiers witnessed and experienced the worst of human atrocities imaginable - rapes, killings, mass murders, kidnappings, decapitations, amputations, burning, torture - a place and condition where merely living to see the next day was a personal goal fueled by memories and the desirous hope of one day returning home.
The soldiers lived, fought, and survived in this heinous environment for varying time periods: Some for 6 months, some for 1 year, and the longest for 2 years. Some were even sent back after serving an initial tour.
All of these soldiers served in different capacities; some served in the field as Infantry and/or Special-Ops, other as Cooks, Supply, etc., and for different time periods, thus garnering them different experiences. However, as a result of these experiences, which were all traumatic in their own right, the soldiers all developed varying degrees of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) – Normal, Acute, Uncomplicated, Comorbid, and Complex; the latter being the most severe.
Coincidentally, the soldier’s deployment tours all end at the same time to which they are released to go back to their families. However, the United States of America has just gone through an economic turmoil to which funds and resources have been severely depleted with none being reserved for the treatment of the soldiers’ debilitating conditions of PTSD. No debriefings; no therapy; no medicine; no assistance; nothing.
However, what the United States of America did have was land, and instead, offers the land to the soldiers as an alternative with the suggestion that the soldiers could either sale the land for profit and pay for their own treatment, or, they can use the land to build businesses to which they could use the business profits for same.
So, the soldiers accept the land and decide that it would be more feasible to build businesses on the land with the hope that this would provide them an immense return on their investments. So the soldiers along with their unaddressed PTSD move onto this land to build homes and business which proves to be a long, slow process, as rebuilding generally is.
In the meantime, many other soldiers returning from the war-zone with PTSD are met with the same fate and impenitence from the government of the United States of America, and resort to moving to this now-community of soldiers with unaddressed PTSD that varies just as much as the soldiers themselves: Young, old, male, female, light, dark, homosexual, heterosexual, etc. In fact, the main fundamental thing that they all have in common is that they all were sent by the same country to suffer the same traumatic experience.
So before reading further, ask yourself the following questions:
How do you think that this community of individuals with varying degrees of unaddressed PTSD would function? How would they interact with or treat one another? What would their community be like? Would their businesses and community be successful? Why or why not?
How would they interact with the larger community outside of their own? How would the larger community treat them? Would they be accepted and embraced with open arms? Would they be seen as equals?
Now, suppose that instead of enduring these traumatic conditions for 6 months, 1 year, or for 2 years, suppose that they had to endure it for 400 years.
Would their condition be more tenuous and complex?
Isn’t it safe and in fact reasonable to deduce that if someone can be exposed to a traumatic environment for 6 months to 2 years and acquire PTSD, that exposure to such conditions for 400 years – which, by the way, implies an egregious amount of repetitiveness, intention and institutionalization of the trauma (i.e. Jim Crow laws) - would result in the most tiered, fragmented, and complex form of PTSD?
Complex Post-Traumatic Syndrome Disorder (C-PTSD) is a psychological injury that results from protracted exposure to prolonged and repeated social and/or interpersonal trauma with lack or loss of control, disempowerment, and in the context of either captivity or entrapment, i.e. the lack of a viable escape route for the victim. – http://www.en.wikipedia.org/
So, by definition, C-PTSD would be the minimum of what such victims (i.e. exposure to 400 years of trauma) would/could acquire.
Many of the available definitions on C-PTSD site the circumstance of Prisoners Of War (POW’s) as an experience/trauma that could create it, and one could most certainly argue the minimal differences – if there are any - between a POW and a Slave.
For example, according to the United States Department of Veteran Affairs (www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/pages/complex-ptsd.asp), symptoms of C-PTSD include but are not limited to the following:
(Complex Unaddressed Trauma)
Once upon a time, the United States of America sent young men and women into a war-zone to protect its interests. In these war zones, these soldiers witnessed and experienced the worst of human atrocities imaginable - rapes, killings, mass murders, kidnappings, decapitations, amputations, burning, torture - a place and condition where merely living to see the next day was a personal goal fueled by memories and the desirous hope of one day returning home.
The soldiers lived, fought, and survived in this heinous environment for varying time periods: Some for 6 months, some for 1 year, and the longest for 2 years. Some were even sent back after serving an initial tour.
All of these soldiers served in different capacities; some served in the field as Infantry and/or Special-Ops, other as Cooks, Supply, etc., and for different time periods, thus garnering them different experiences. However, as a result of these experiences, which were all traumatic in their own right, the soldiers all developed varying degrees of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) – Normal, Acute, Uncomplicated, Comorbid, and Complex; the latter being the most severe.
Coincidentally, the soldier’s deployment tours all end at the same time to which they are released to go back to their families. However, the United States of America has just gone through an economic turmoil to which funds and resources have been severely depleted with none being reserved for the treatment of the soldiers’ debilitating conditions of PTSD. No debriefings; no therapy; no medicine; no assistance; nothing.
However, what the United States of America did have was land, and instead, offers the land to the soldiers as an alternative with the suggestion that the soldiers could either sale the land for profit and pay for their own treatment, or, they can use the land to build businesses to which they could use the business profits for same.
So, the soldiers accept the land and decide that it would be more feasible to build businesses on the land with the hope that this would provide them an immense return on their investments. So the soldiers along with their unaddressed PTSD move onto this land to build homes and business which proves to be a long, slow process, as rebuilding generally is.
In the meantime, many other soldiers returning from the war-zone with PTSD are met with the same fate and impenitence from the government of the United States of America, and resort to moving to this now-community of soldiers with unaddressed PTSD that varies just as much as the soldiers themselves: Young, old, male, female, light, dark, homosexual, heterosexual, etc. In fact, the main fundamental thing that they all have in common is that they all were sent by the same country to suffer the same traumatic experience.
So before reading further, ask yourself the following questions:
How do you think that this community of individuals with varying degrees of unaddressed PTSD would function? How would they interact with or treat one another? What would their community be like? Would their businesses and community be successful? Why or why not?
How would they interact with the larger community outside of their own? How would the larger community treat them? Would they be accepted and embraced with open arms? Would they be seen as equals?
Now, suppose that instead of enduring these traumatic conditions for 6 months, 1 year, or for 2 years, suppose that they had to endure it for 400 years.
Would their condition be more tenuous and complex?
Isn’t it safe and in fact reasonable to deduce that if someone can be exposed to a traumatic environment for 6 months to 2 years and acquire PTSD, that exposure to such conditions for 400 years – which, by the way, implies an egregious amount of repetitiveness, intention and institutionalization of the trauma (i.e. Jim Crow laws) - would result in the most tiered, fragmented, and complex form of PTSD?
Complex Post-Traumatic Syndrome Disorder (C-PTSD) is a psychological injury that results from protracted exposure to prolonged and repeated social and/or interpersonal trauma with lack or loss of control, disempowerment, and in the context of either captivity or entrapment, i.e. the lack of a viable escape route for the victim. – http://www.en.wikipedia.org/
So, by definition, C-PTSD would be the minimum of what such victims (i.e. exposure to 400 years of trauma) would/could acquire.
Many of the available definitions on C-PTSD site the circumstance of Prisoners Of War (POW’s) as an experience/trauma that could create it, and one could most certainly argue the minimal differences – if there are any - between a POW and a Slave.
For example, according to the United States Department of Veteran Affairs (www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/pages/complex-ptsd.asp), symptoms of C-PTSD include but are not limited to the following:
***Alterations in how the perpetrator is perceived. Examples include attributing total power to the perpetrator, becoming preoccupied with the relationship to the perpetrator, or preoccupied with revenge
***Changes in self-perception. May include helplessness, shame, guilt, stigma, and a sense of being completely different from other human beings.
- This possibly explains the coveted use of the “N-word” that is exercised by part of the black community; a stigma turned term of endearment, not unlike a rape victim embracing promiscuity.
***Alterations in relations with others. Examples include isolation, distrust, or a repeated search for a rescuer
- “A repeated search for a rescuer” – this could possibly explain the Black community’s endeavored search for Black leadership and/or representation; the same being the impetus resulting in the outcome of 97% of the African-American community voting for Barack Obama in the 2008 election. Additionally, this could also explain the mainstay of religion in the Black community (i.e. awaiting rescue by the Savior Jesus Christ), and/or why the areas that comprise the “Bible Belt” are also the areas where Slavery was the most affluent and vociferous.
- And to take it a step further, what impact could the Bible have – which sanctioned the use of slavery in Leviticus 25:44 and Exodus 21:20-21 – on an enslaved people who sought its scriptures for rescue from the very conditions that it arguably justified? Could it possibly alter how they perceive their perpetrator by depicting Him as also the rescuer?
***Changes in self-perception. May include helplessness, shame, guilt, stigma, and a sense of being completely different from other human beings.
- This possibly explains the coveted use of the “N-word” that is exercised by part of the black community; a stigma turned term of endearment, not unlike a rape victim embracing promiscuity.
***Alterations in relations with others. Examples include isolation, distrust, or a repeated search for a rescuer
- “A repeated search for a rescuer” – this could possibly explain the Black community’s endeavored search for Black leadership and/or representation; the same being the impetus resulting in the outcome of 97% of the African-American community voting for Barack Obama in the 2008 election. Additionally, this could also explain the mainstay of religion in the Black community (i.e. awaiting rescue by the Savior Jesus Christ), and/or why the areas that comprise the “Bible Belt” are also the areas where Slavery was the most affluent and vociferous.
- And to take it a step further, what impact could the Bible have – which sanctioned the use of slavery in Leviticus 25:44 and Exodus 21:20-21 – on an enslaved people who sought its scriptures for rescue from the very conditions that it arguably justified? Could it possibly alter how they perceive their perpetrator by depicting Him as also the rescuer?
***Change in one’s system of meanings. May include a loss of sustaining faith or a sense of hopelessness and despair
- In addition to the previous symptom, this may explain the success of Obama’s campaign slogan, “Hope That We Can Believe In.”
All scathing similarities and/or parallels aside, the horrific and traumatic conditions of Slavery are undeniable, as are the conditions/results of war and concentration camps, the latter two being examples of long-term traumas offered by Dr. Judith Herman. Probably the most blatant difference between the 3 is that only one of them was made legal (slavery) and in fact was valued as an economic necessity.
When you consider that the victims and the descendants of the victims of the long-term trauma of Slavery still wrestle with an unaddressed and untreated trauma in a current environment where remnants of the pro-slavery line of thinking have disappeared in rhetoric only, then, the reason behind the social/racial challenges and upheavals still evident and persistent in society today become more clear and understandable, and consequently, more ominous and in need of sincere recovery.
However, as stated by Dr. Judith Lewis Herman in her second book Trauma and Recovery, recovery from C-PTSD is divided into 3 stages (and these are subsequently divided into more stages): Establishing Safety, Remembrance and Mourning for What was Lost, and Reconnecting to Society.
Accordingly, Dr. Herman also believe that before these stages can work, a healing relationship must be established, and that recovery can only come within a relationship where the survivor is empowered.
Regardless of the name that we attach to the disorder, whether it is PTSD, C-PTSD, Shell Shock or what-have-you, it is undeniable that society is in fact stumbling its way through a deep C.U.T. - a Complex Unaddressed/Untreated Trauma; and like any deep cut that goes untreated and/or unaddressed, the wound will bleed out and become infected, effectively weakening the immediate area of trauma before systemically affecting the entire body until death.
To simply conceal, deny, and/or ignore the C.U.T. merely invites greater injury and trauma. And to the extent that society continues to ignore and/or instigate the unaddressed and untreated trauma of its own brethren and sistren - be it for capitalistic gain or out of pure hatred and intolerance which are all symptoms of the trauma - is to this extent that it proves the perpetrators and ignorers to be just as psychologically sick, if not sicker, than the victims themselves.
The responsibility of healing belongs to us all.
Tungz
1 comment:
You. Are. Brilliant.
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