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In following my previous post, +OWNING THE BURDENS CREATED BY CHILD ABUSE, I find myself thinking about the ancient history of human beings and about how trauma was probably ‘handled back then’.  Everyone is placed equally under the same burden while in the midst of the peritrauma of a traumatic experience.  One way or the other we all participate in one of the only two options as we ‘patiently’ carry the burden that the trauma creates:

(1) We endure the trauma and come out of the experience alive

(2) Or we don’t

But way back in the time of our earlier origins I seriously doubt that we had to patiently carry the burden of traumatic experiences very much past the actual experience of the trauma itself.  Even before humans had spoken language abilities (prior to about 140,000 years ago) we had ways to communicate our experiences to others.  We used facial expressions, gestures, pantomimes, dances and song-music.

‘Back then’ we had no cultural or social reason to postpone our expression of our experience any longer than would have been absolutely essential to ‘the patient survivorship’ of the traumas themselves.  Past that point, communicating about trauma HAD to happen so that others could know what we encountered, faced and survived.  Everyone reaped a benefit from LEARNING about trauma and how to survive it.

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For a long time I have suspected that when trauma survivors cannot learn anything useful from a traumatic experience that will help them and others to avoid a similar trauma in the future or learn something to help better ensure survival of a similar trauma if/when it happens again, we suffer from long term ‘damage’ related to anxiety (i.e. depression, panic, phobias, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), etc.)

In essence, then, no matter what traumatized us – no matter what we patiently endured and survived because there was no alternative – if we cannot express the experience of trauma to our self and to others we are condemned to be FOREVER patient.  If ‘being patient’ means all of the things that I just described in relation to the word itself in my last post, then being forever forced to remain in a state of suspended animation regarding trauma means that being patient too long makes us ALSO have to be ‘patients’ too long.

Being wounded without reprieve or hope of healing keeps us in the state of ‘patient-hood’.  Only most often the ‘patience’ that keeps us being a ‘patient’ is never factually recognized or described.  We simply keep bearing-carrying our burden of suffering – as it destroys us and our lives.

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Again I would say that enduring specific traumas allows those survivors to know the FACTS – in all their minute details – in a way that nonsurvivors of particular traumas will never know.  BUT IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN THAT WAY unless the survivor had the chance, the opportunity, the possibility to absolutely and as nearly completely as possible communicate to others ALL OF THE INFORMATION RELATED TO THE TRAUMA.

How could our species have learned to better prepare for the un-preparable (the hidden dangers in the world we had never experienced before) if we were not able to learn SOMETHING from every trauma that every single person ever experienced?

I imagine way back in our early beginnings – a tribe, a group of people who depended upon one another for their shared and mutual survival, PATIENTLY taking the time – however much time it TOOK – both for a trauma survivor to express what had happened and for the non-trauma survivors to completely UNDERSTAND what the trauma survivor had gone through.

Humans did not win the hominid survival prize because we impatiently ignored traumas.  We did not survive because we ignored what trauma survivors had to communicate about their experience.  Along with the SHARING of the facts and details related to trauma experiences, EVERYONE shared the PATIENCE – EVERYONE shared the burdens created by knowing that ‘trauma is out there’ waiting to kill us.  Learning from trauma to better ensure continued survival for everyone was everyone’s concern.

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Not so with most kinds of abuse humans suffer at one another’s hands today.  Not true for abuse and malevolent treatment suffered by infants and children.  Survivors SURVIVE exactly because of their PATIENCE.  This patience IS the act and the process of enduring trauma in the first place.  That we continue to suffer from and with the burdens created by abuse happens because this state of being patient goes on far, far, far too long.

Trauma has to be shared.  Something useful is SUPPOSED to be learned by traumas by everyone.

I believe that trauma caused by caregiver abuse of infants and children IS NOT NATURAL.  I believe it is always caused in concert with so-called ‘mental illness’.  I’m not going into detail here about this now, but I do want to mention that the state of patience that infant-child abuse survivors were FORCED into in the beginning is often carried forward through their entire lifespan.  When this happens the ‘patient little one’ has become the ‘sick patient’ and will stay in that state (usually deteriorating) for the rest of their lifespan IF THE TRAUMA IS NOT SHARED.

I don’t think there is an alternative.  I think our human species evolved this way.  We cannot find another way out of or around the long term harm that unresolved trauma causes us.  There is no healing alternative because we ARE members of a species that was made this way:  Trauma is NOT meant to be carried patiently ALONE any longer than the amount of time it takes to patiently endure and survive the ACTIVE experience of trauma – as it is actually happening

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