Traumatized

To help a person who has experienced trauma, take her part. Be honest and realistic, but respect what he says and does, take her seriously, try walking in his shoes. Ask questions. Admit errors.
Show interest in her story. Look for messages, reenactments, and other evidence of traumas.

Adults with recent traumas may demonstrate neuroses or compulsion similar to a person traumatized in childhood.

The traumatized person benefits from having an honest understanding advocate.

Know that the past cannot be corrected, but the reality of it can be grieved in a way that allows one to move on in greater health.

The traumatized person is isolated by the trauma and may be lonely and misunderstood without being fully aware of it.

It may be unpleasant to be exposed to the anger and aggression of the person becoming aware of her trauma. The mute inner-child is easier to be with than a newly expressive adult. However the creative marvel of the regained ability to feel may be nearly as rewarding to the witness as to the person returning to their whole self.

The traumatized person has learned a fear of feeling. Once that fear is overcome healing, growth, and development begin and continue.

Change and Balance Enhanced by Listening

~ It has been my experience that life is more lawful than awful.
~ Many neuroses are rooted in childhood.
~ Changes in personality are sometimes forced by trauma.
~ Changes in personality may occur from insights arrived at by repetition, remembering, and reinterpretation.
~ We can choose what seems appropriate effort to avoid trauma now. As children we were less able to do so.
~ We can choose our repetition, remembering, and re-interpretation better as a loving adult.
~ A child needs respect, attention, and understanding. An adult can benefit from the same.
~ A child needs to begin to see himself as others see him. You and I may benefit from similar seeing. A child does not choose by whom she shall be seen. You and I may.
~ Healing and balance may be quicker and surer as feelings are promptly expressed.
Appropriate expression of feelings may be learned. A child may learn not to express or even not to consciously experience feelings of anxiety, rage, anger, despair, dismay, pain, grief, etc. Adults may better choose to learn to feel and express feelings in more appropriately healthy ways.
~ A child may not only learn to repress certain feelings, but also to deny or disappear from consciousness the very memory of the trauma. We adults may find it very difficult to healingly emote, feel, or react to a trauma in a mature way if, for our conscious self, that trauma never occurred.
~ A man may know that he was exploded off the road in a foreign land, but he will benefit by repeating his story. He needs a respectful, attentive, understanding listeners who are able to hear the expression of his feelings or even raw emotions too.
~ Life is not necessarily fair or easy, but we can find it lawful.

Is it Serious?

Lives there a woman who suffered violence as a little girl?
Can it be that she does not know the nature of that violence?
Is it possible that, that happening is effecting her life today?

Is it valuable to be able to articulate ones feelings?
Is it valuable to be able to formulate ones resentments?
Is it valuable to experience ones rage?
How did anger get here?

What does it mean to get through ones trauma?
What might it mean to discover ones true feelings?

What have you paid to get your bit of life?

What does it mean to trust the rightness of life?
Does the baby trust in the rightness of life?

When may loneliness begin?
Who has been responsive to your signals?
Who has noted your pain?

Does a baby benefit by being held and moved about?
How is your need for touch satisfied?

Is there a feeling of abandonment?
How is it expressed?
Have you heard a baby express it?

Can it be true that nature does not make clear signals that someone is being tortured unless it is the case?
Is it precisely as serious as it sounds.