Trauma changes people. Regardless of the type or level of trauma, you are never the same person after it as you were before. Something shifts and life becomes different.
We talked about trauma in my kinesiology class last night and I thought it was very interesting. My Professor described how people react in different ways toward trauma-they can shrink back and get lost in depression, bounce back to a similar state as they were in before the trauma, or they can thrive and grow. We can have Post-Traumatic Stress or Post-Traumatic Growth, with varying categories splashed in between.
This concept of Post-Traumatic Growth is something I hadn’t thought much about before class. I always associated trauma with, well, trauma, meaning something bad has happened. Like a shattered window, I didn’t think you could make something better out of a trauma…but you can. With a window, you can recreate the pieces and create a masterpiece with a little color and the right resources. With life, you can take the trauma, learn from it, and come out changed for the better.
I think I’ve been through every stage of reaction post-trauma. There have been several traumatic events throughout my life and I have responded to some better than others. I became depressed and angry after my initial RSD/CRPS diagnosis, and this worsened after the death of a friend. I used eating disorders to cope with different traumas, eventually finding myself in various treatment centers, trying to pick up the scraps and get my life together. After another death in the family, I was in a better place and knew how to respond without resorting to the angry, depressed girl. Even after the pond jump that led to my current 19 month flare, I’ve gone through several emotions and stages. I was unstable, then depressed, and soon my angry “Hulk” side came out. Then I tried to bounce back to pre-jump Rachel, and now I consider myself to be stable and hopefully thriving one day soon.
Some traumas are seemingly small, others may be disastrous. We have a choice in how we respond to them. Sometimes it may take a while to pick yourself back up, and it may happen through countless nights of tears or days of anger. It’s okay to fall down, it’s even okay to feel the emotions that come when a tragedy strikes. But sitting there, falling deeper and deeper into the trenches of depression will only make things worse.
“There is, in every event, whether lived or told, always a hole or a gap, often more than one. If we allow ourselves to get caught in it, we find it opening onto a void that, once we have slipped into it, we can never escape.”
―Brian Evenson
College on Crutches 